verses, making the sonnet very compact. Sometimes the sonnet is made up of distichs of alternate rhymes. In the Italian sonnet, which Milton adopts as his model, the two quatrains are bound together by the rhyme extending through them, and the two tercets are similarly connected.

§ 57. A very important element affecting poetic form is the casura, which consists in a division of a poetic foot or verse by the interruption of the sense. It is of the two

kinds : :

1. The cæsura of the Foot, in which parts of the same foot are separated by a suspension of the voice in a reading that properly renders the sense.

2. The cæsura of the Verse, in which such a pause divides the verse.

It varies in strength according as the interruption of the thought is greater or less.

As the principle of poetic harmony requires that the verbal form should coincide with the thought, the violations of this law are faulty, except when introduced for some urgent reason, as for the sake of variety, or of energy. Where, however, partial suspensions of the sense are introduced in coincidence with the regular divisions of the voice, the poetic harmony is not disturbed and the effect of the cæsura is very pleasing. Thus the cæsura of the verse at the end of the second foot, and the cæsura of the foot on the fifth syllable of an heroic verse generally make the poetic form more perfect. But it is more or less faulty when the divisions of the feet, or of the verses, or of the couplets, or of the stanzas, do not correspond with the divisions of the thought. To carry the sentence over incomplete, thus, from one stanza to another is a serious fault; as it is to separate the closely connected parts of the sentence by the verse. At all events, some higher object, as the better presentation of the thought, must be recognized to justify such disagreement between the idea and the outer poetic form.

CHAPTER X.

ORATORY.

§ 58. ORATORY is discourse addressed to a present audi❤ ence. It implies at once a speaker and a hearer in im mediate communication. It has two grand departments, according as its ultimate and governing end or object is to be accomplished in the mind addressed or only through it. The leading branches in these two grand departments are sacred or pulpit oratory in the first; and in the second, forensic oratory, including the two kinds of judicial and deliberative or parliamentary. See "Art of Discourse," Introduction, Chapter IV. English oratory has a grand history in each of these departments.

§ 59. In pulpit eloquence, which took the lead, Hugh Latimer, 1475-1555, is the earliest of distinction whose discourses have been preserved. He was a learned, earnest, droll but powerful preacher. Richard Hooker, 1534-1600, is better known as the author of "Ecclesiastical Polity," from which an extract has been given in the First Part, profound and yet clear in thought, and forcible as well as pure and rhythmical in diction. In the following century appear the great names of Joseph Hall, warm in his piety, rich in his conceits, and silvery in style; William Chillingworth, remarkable for perspicuity and severest logic in reasoning; Thomas Fuller, sententious and quaint; Jeremy Taylor, of great learning, luxuriant imagination, and flowing, even redundant diction; Isaac Barrow, whose masterly discourses are characterized by their exactness of method, accuracy of discrimination, richness of invention, and preg

nant brevity of style; Robert Leighton, a divine of heavenly spirit and admirable simplicity and sweetness of expression; John Tillotson, clear, forcible, but wanting in all the oral properties of discourse, in melody, in rhythm, and in harmony; Edward Stillingfleet, sound in judgment and energetic in utterance; Robert South, reputed to be the wittiest of divines; and Richard Baxter, earnest, instructive, practical. The eighteenth century is less prolific in pulpit oratory. It presents, however, the eminent names of Joseph Butler, Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, Thomas Sherlock, Robert Lowth, and Robert Hall, besides the eloquent Whitefield and Wesley, and the illustrious American theologian and preacher, Jonathan Edwards. The nineteenth century abounds in sacred oratory, and affords master-pieces in all the several departments of eloquence, so that the student of sacred eloquence may find models of excellence in any desired attribute of discourse. The further progress in this branch of our literature will hardly be in advancing any one characteristic of pulpit eloquence beyond existing exemplars, but in the fuller and richer combination of excellences already exemplified.

§ 60. Forensic has entered far less than sacred oratory into the permanent literature of our tongue. Eloquence is essentially a matter of the time, the occasion. Its divinest strains pass away on the fleeting air, and its traces are at best but faint and dim. Of the early periods of English literature we have preserved no remains of high oratory.

In judicial eloquence, we read of those legal luminaries in the reign of James I., Sir Edward Coke, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Fleming, who were contemporaries. Among them the last named stood highest as an orator by general consent at the time, yet his name is hardly known to his own profession at the present day. Successors to this high renown as advocates are the rare names of Sir Matthew Hale, 1609-1676, Lord Mansfield, 1705–1792, and Thomas Erskine, 1750-1823, preeminently the greatest of British advo

cates. To this brief list add the names of Lord Ellenborough, Lord Brougham, Sir Samuel Romilly, and the Irish Curran and Plunkett, and the record seems complete of the very eminent judicial orators of Great Britain. The American Bar has a much more recent but hardly less brilliant history, and the judicial speeches of William Wirt, 1772-1834, Daniel Webster, 1782-1852, Rufus Choate, 1799-1859, and Seargent S. Prentiss, 1808-1850, have become incorporated into the permanent forms of our literature.

§ 61. In deliberative, that is to say here, in parliamentary eloquence, the first of British orators whose oratory has been sufficiently preserved for study and, perhaps, the first in oratorical power, is the elder Pitt, Lord Chatham, 1708– 1778, whose eloquence was not that of argument and elaborated thought, but of vehemence and of action. A diligent student of Spenser and of Barrow, his diction was pure and expressive, as well as easy and fluent. His thought was rapid and abrupt, flashing rather than radiant, impetuous and imperious. His outward manner, his voice, his attitude and gesticulation, his action, was a gifted nature improved and perfected by most assiduous culture. His son, William Pitt, the younger, 1759-1806, succeeding by a short interval, rivaled his father's eminence in the House of Commons. Inheriting a mind of rare vigor and capacity, he was placed under a most careful training and discipline. His first speech in parliament at the early age of twentyone, two years after his father's death, was a triumph, prompting Burke to say he was "not a chip of the old block, but the old block itself." His oratory was in strong contrast with that of his father, not fervid and electric, but on the contrary cold, studied, dignified. Lucid, argumentative, polished, he was ever self-possessed and temperate. His contemporary and rival, Charles James Fox, 17491806, less logical than Pitt, surpassed him in the warmth, the earnestness, the passionate outflow of his eloquence.

He has been regarded as the British Demosthenes. If less effective as a speaker before a listening assembly, much higher as a literary orator must be ranked another star in this brilliant constellation of parliamentary eloquence, Edmund Burke, 1730-1797. More learned, more philosophical, more imaginative, he was too much of a scholar, too much of a philosopher, too much of a poet, to be successful in the highest degree, in the arena of eloquence. His speeches, listened to with little enthusiasm, will be read with delighted interest and profit by every student of English oratory. In this bright group stands also uneclipsed by the great lights around him, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1751-1816, the dramatist as well as orator, whose speech before the House of Lords in the great trial of Warren Hastings, Burke pronounced "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition." To this illustrious list must still be added the names of Grattan, Canning, and Brougham whose speeches have worthily enriched the parliamentary literature of Great Britain. In the American legislative halls, the more conspicuous names in our oratorical litera ture are Patrick Henry, 1736-1797, Fisher Ames, 17581808, John Randolph, 1773-1833, John C. Calhoun, 17821850, Henry Clay, 1777-1852, Daniel Webster 17821852, Edward Everett, 1794-1865, each a model in bi own peculiar style of oratory.