Chapter II: Part 2

The following extract from the address of Lord Brougham to the University of Glasgow will be a sufficient guide, with what has been already said, to the selection of those authors that will tend most to improve the style and diction: "The English writers who really unlock the rich sources of the language are those who flourish from the end of Elizabeth's to the end of Queen Anne's reign; who used a good Saxon dialect with ease, but correctness and perspicuity--learned in the ancient classics, but only enriching their mother tongue where the Attic could supply its defects--not overlaying it with a profuse pedantic coinage of words."

The great masters of oratory should be studied most carefully and diligently; Erskine, Burke, Pinckney, Webster, and, above all, the legal orations of Cicero are the best models for a young lawyer. Read Bolingbroke for specimens of the splendid and ornate; Fox and Pitt for the classical and argumentative; advantage may likewise be derived from the letters of Junius.

In pursuing these studies, the motto must be _multum haud multa_--much, not many. No real advantage and improvement will be gained from a rambling, desultory course of reading. There is a whole sermon in that saying of Hobbes, of Malmesbury, "If I had read as many books as other persons, I should probably know as little." The wisest and best informed teach us, both by counsel and example, to read a little and that well; to count not by the books we have read, but by the subjects we have exhausted. Swift said that the reason a certain university was a learned place was that most persons took some learning there and few brought any away with them, so it accumulated. Such is the effect of a proper course of reading--everything adds and nothing takes away.

We are not counseling an imitation of the _men of one book_, but the pursuit of one system. Choose those authors most suited to the object in view and _know_ them.

The advocate should make choice of his book, Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Burke, Erskine, Bolingbroke, and make that his chief study. One sterling author to call _my own_, ever most conspicuous and most at hand, read, reread, "marked and quoted," will do much to form the mind, to teach one to think, to give precision of expression, purity of taste, loftiness of views and fervency of spirit. No better selection can be made by the advocate than the works of Edmund Burke. "Among the characteristics of Lord Erskine's eloquence," observes one of his recent biographers, "the perpetual illustrations derived from the writings of Burke is very remarkable. In every one of the great state trials in which he was engaged, he referred to the productions of that extraordinary person as to a text-book of political wisdom--expounding, enforcing and justifying all the great and noble principles of freedom and of justice." "When I look," says Lord Erskine himself, "into my own mind and find its best lights and principles fed from that immense magazine of moral and political wisdom which he has left an inheritance to mankind for their instruction, I feel myself repelled by an awful and grateful sensibility from perpetually approaching him." Take, then, the words of this sublime philosopher and orator, bind them up in one thick volume, on which write _wisdom_ in gold letters, and begin to read it through every New-year's day.

Another means of acquiring a command of language is translation, and it is commended alike by the precepts and example of the great masters. Two thousand years ago Cicero stocked his vocabulary by this plan, translating from the Greek into Latin. Chatham translated the orations of Demosthenes again and again into English. Mansfield declared that there was not one of the orations of Cicero that he had not translated more than once. Pitt pursued the same plan for ten years, and to this he ascribed his extraordinary command of language, which enabled him to give every idea its most felicitous expression, and to pour out an unbroken stream of thought hour after hour without once hesitating for a word or recalling a phrase, or sinking for a moment into looseness or inaccuracy in the structure of a sentence. Choate was a most indefatigable translator. This exercise he persevered in daily, even in the midst of the most arduous business. Five minutes a day, if no more, he would seize in the morning for this task. Tacitus was his favorite author. He attended chiefly to the multiplication of synonyms. For every word he translated, he would rack his brain and search his books till he got five or six corresponding English words. This is the true way to translate when style and diction is the object. Turn the passage read into regular English sentences, aiming to give the idea with great exactness and to express it with idiomatic accuracy and ease. This plan of translating is infinitely better than the plan sometimes advised of taking some passage of classic English, getting the ideas from it and then expressing them in the best manner possible. In this latter method, the author has already selected the most appropriate words, and if the student use the same words he will receive no profit, or if other words, it is prejudicial, as it accustoms one to use such as are less eligible.

The student of advocacy can not give too much attention to the culture of _expression_. Orators in every age have made it a specific study. Cicero says, "The proper concern of an orator, as I have already often said, is language of power and eloquence accommodated to the feelings and understanding of mankind." Language and its elements, words, are to be mastered by direct, earnest labor. A speaker ought _daily_ to exercise and air his vocabulary and add to and enrich it. The advocate does not want a diction gathered from the newspapers, caught from the air, common and unsuggestive; but one whose every word is full freighted with suggestion and association, with beauty and power. It is a rich and rare English that one ought to command, who is aiming to control a jury's ear.

Chesterfield, in his letters to his son, said, "Manner is of as much importance as matter"; and that this has been the opinion of all great orators may be gathered from the vast labor expended by them on the cultivation of expression and delivery. How much stress was laid upon this by the greatest of all orators, Demosthenes, appears from a noted saying of his related by both Cicero and Quintilian, when, being asked what was the first point in oratory, he answered, action; and being asked what was the second, he answered, action; and afterward what was the third, he still answered, action. And Plutarch said of him that "he thought it a small matter to premeditate and compose, tho with the utmost care, if the pronunciation and propriety of gesture were not attended to." Esteeming delivery of such vast importance to the orator, there is no wonder that he should have labored for months together in his subterranean study to form his action and improve his voice.

To the superficial thinker, the study of gesture and of the management of the voice may appear to be but "vanity of vanities"--gaudy tinselry and worthless decoration; but the experience of all time has proved that they are powerful to persuade and strong to convince. We all know how much meaning--how much expression--how much power there may be in a look, in a tone of the voice, or in a motion. The impression they make on others is frequently much stronger than any that words can make. They are the language of nature, and are understood by all far better than words, which are only the arbitrary conventional symbols of ideas. The speaker who should use bare words, without aiding their meaning by proper tones and accents, would make but a feeble impression, and leave but a misty and indistinct conception of what he had delivered.

It is surprizing, indeed, to see how perfectly persons practised in the art of gestures can communicate even complicated trains of thought and long series of facts without the aid of words. This fact was known and appreciated by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who made the subject a study far more than have subsequent nations. Cicero informs us that it was a matter of dispute between the actor Roscius and himself whether the former could express a sentiment in a greater variety of ways by gestures, or the latter by words. During the reign of Augustus, both tragedies and comedies were acted by pantomime alone. It was perfectly understood by the people, who wept and laughed, and were excited in every way as much as if the words had been employed. It seems, indeed, to have worked upon their sympathies more powerfully than words; for it became necessary, at a subsequent period, to enact a law restraining members of the Senate from studying the art of pantomime--a practise to which, it seems, they had resorted in order to give more effect to their speeches before that body.

There have been volumes written on this subject of delivery, but they are little better than a "vexation of spirit." The tone of the voice, the look, the gesture, suited to express a thought or emotion, must be learned from experience and the example of living speakers and masters. Curran and many others have made it a practise to speak before a glass, that they might themselves judge of the propriety of their gestures, and correct those at fault. A more condensed or sensible treatise on this subject can not be found than Hamlet's direction to the players:

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you--trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand; but use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwigpated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise.... Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, tho it make the unskilful laugh, can not but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others."

The student who shall follow these directions, which are as applicable to the speaker as to the player, will not go very far wrong.

The first consideration of a speaker must be to make himself heard by all those to whom he speaks. This, tho often neglected, is of the first importance, and is a matter that rests mainly in the management of the voice, and not in the strength of lungs. Nor is it, as many suppose, a natural talent, for the voice is susceptible of the greatest culture, and may be formed after almost any model. To make oneself audible, it is not necessary that the voice should be pitched on a high key. Strength of sound does not depend upon the key or note on which one speaks, but on the proper management of the voice. A speaker may render his voice strong and full while speaking in a middle or conversational tone, and will be able to give the most sustained force to that pitch, as it is the one to which in conversation he is accustomed. The conversational key is the one that the advocate should, with rare exceptions, adopt; otherwise he will exhaust himself and be heard with pain by his audience. Grattan tells us that he heard Lord Chatham speak in the House of Lords; and it was just like talking to one man by the buttonhole, except when he lifted himself in enthusiasm, and then the effect of the outbreak was immense; and of Harrison Gray Otis it is said that when you met him in the street and heard him talk, you heard the orator Otis almost as much as if he were in Faneuil Hall talking about politics.

In the next place, the student of advocacy must study to articulate clearly and distinctly. On this, as much as on the quantity of sound, depends the capacity to make oneself heard.

We need say nothing with regard to emphasis, pauses, tones and gestures. Every one who goes about his work in earnest will devote proper attention to these matters, and will gain more from experience and observation than from the rules laid down in the books. One thing seldom laid down in the books is of the highest importance to the advocate: that is, to study always to _feel_ what he speaks. Unless he do this, his oratory will be little more than an empty and puerile flow of words. "The author who will make me weep," says Horace, "must first weep himself." "In reality," adds Henry Fielding, "no man can paint a distress well which he doth not feel while he is painting it; nor do I doubt but that the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears." In Shakespeare's Richard II, the Duchess of York thus impeaches the sincerity of her husband:

"Pleads he in earnest? Look upon his face,
His eyes do drop no tears; his prayers are jest;
His words come from his mouth; ours, from our breast;
He prays but faintly and would be denied;
We pray with heart and soul."

No kind of language is so generally understood, or has such force and weight, as the language of feeling. The advocate must be in downright earnest before he can impress his hearers.

It only remains for us to add, that the student of oratory must exercise himself continually in both writing and speaking. Writing is said by Cicero to be "the best and most excellent modeler and teacher of oratory"; "for," he continues, "if what is meditated and considered easily surpasses sudden and extemporaneous speech, a constant and diligent habit of writing will surely be of more effect than meditation and consideration itself." Write with as much pains as possible, and write as much as possible. It is even as Quintilian said: "It is not writing rapidly that you come to write well, but by writing well you come to write rapidly." In mental culture, as in the culture of the earth, the seed sown in the deepest furrows finds a more fruitful soil, is more securely cherished and springs up in its time to more exuberant and healthful harvest. Without this discipline, the power and practise of extemporaneous speech will yield only an empty loquacity--only words born on the lips. In this discipline, deep down there are the roots, there the foundations; thence must the harvest shoot, thence the structure ascend; there is garnered up, as in a more sacred treasury, wealth for the supply of even unanticipated exactions. Thus, first of all, we must accumulate resources sufficient for the contests to which we are summoned. In writing, seek for the best; do not eagerly and gladly lay hold on that which first offers itself; apply judgment to the crowd of thoughts and words which fill your mind and retain those only of which your judgment deliberately approves. Nor should every word be allowed to occupy the exact spot where the order of time in which it occurs would place it. Seek rather by a variety of experiments and arrangements to attain to the utmost power and eloquence of style. There is nothing like the pen to correct vagueness of thought and looseness of expression. Every argument, every speech should, so far as possible, be carefully written out. It is not necessary, nor is it even advisable, to commit it to memory, save in rare instances. The mind should be left untrammeled by any set speech to take advantage of the inspiration of the moment. But the simple act of carefully composing and writing down an argument will fix in the mind the general order and sequence of facts and illustrations, and will greatly aid in a clear and forcible arrangement. The night before Alexander Hamilton delivered his celebrated speech, which more than anything else led to the establishment of a liberal and more just law regarding libel and slander in the State of New York, he wrote the argument all out and then deliberately tore it up.

Besides frequent practise in writing, the student must have constant practise in speaking, which is of more real value than all the precepts of the masters.

It is sometimes said that men by speaking succeed in becoming speakers, but it is just as true that men by speaking badly succeed in becoming bad speakers. It is frequently the case, that students do nothing more in practise than to exercise their voice, and not even that skilfully--and try their strength of lungs and volubility of tongue. Such practise is but a waste of breath. The student should make it a cardinal rule always to do his best even while practising in his room; to speak on subjects that he has deliberately considered, and in such a style as he would adopt were an audience before him. Of course, that kind of speaking will be most advantageous to the advocate which is most in accordance with the business of his life. Prominent advocates in every age have, while developing their powers, made it a practise to propose a case similar to those brought in the courts, and to make arguments thereon as nearly as possible as they would were it an actual case in court. Cicero followed this plan two thousand years ago, as he himself has told us, and Curran and Choate were both indefatigable in this practise.

Such are the means, such the labors by which the student may make himself an advocate. It is not the work of an hour or a day or a year, but of years--years of application and of industry--of patient plodding and painful study. It is not by starts of application and intermittent labor that anything valuable can be achieved. It is the outgrowth of well-directed and persistent effort. In nothing more than oratory are the lines of the poet true:

"The Father of our race Himself decrees
That culture shall be hard."

It has been the glory of the great masters of the art to confront and to overcome; and all the wisdom of these latter days has discovered no other road to success. These suggestions apply not only to the lawyer, but to every man who would become an efficient public speaker and a leader of men.