ultimate ground of the distinction lies in the aim. The orator seeks an effect in another mind; the poet seeks only to express beautiful ideas in beautiful forms for the sake of the expression itself.

Poetry, thus, has both an essential nature and a form of its own. The form is the natural product of the peculiar poetic life or spirit. It is only in partial truth that we can say ́mere verse is poetry;' as we can only in partial truth say ́ an idiot is a man,' since reason, which the idiot lacks, is the essential attribute of man. So, on the other hand, it is only in partial truth that we can say the peculiar poetic spirit without the proper poetic form makes discourse poetry.” It is only as we may call a disembodied spirit a man; it has the essential nature, not the form. As a human spirit and a human body unite in our conception of a man; so the poetic spirit and the poetic form must unite in any just conception of poetry.*

* In a review of Hegel's Aesthetics in the British and Foreign Review for Feb. 1842, this idea of the nature of poetry is happily developed. “Verse," it is there concluded, “is not synonymous with poetry, but is the incarnation of it; and prose may be emotive -poetical. but never poetry.”

The following passages, quoted in this article, will serve still further to sanction and elucidate some of the positions given in the text.

“All emotion which has taken possession of the whole beingwhich flows irresistibly, and therefore equally-instinctively seeks a language that flows equally like itself, and must either find it, or be conscious of an unsatisfied want, which ever impedes and prematurely stops the flow of feeling. Hence, ever since man has been man, all deep and sustained feeling has tended to express itself in rhythmical language; and the deeper the feeling, the more characteristic and decided the rhythm, provided always the feeling be sustained as well as deep. For a fit of passion has no natural connection with verse or music; a mood of passion the strongest.' Westminster Review, April, 1838. The term rhythm, here must

CHAPTER II.

OF RHETORIC AS A DEVELOPING ART.

§ 10. As every proper act respects a faculty, (§ 2,) and as every such faculty is susceptible of development and invigoration which the art seeks as its great aim to promote and secure, every true conception of rhetoric must regard it as a developing and invigora ting art.

There is a most remarkable opposition between the views of the ancients in this respect and the current opinions of the moderns. With the ancients, rhetoric was chiefly prized as an art which developed and cultivated the faculty of speaking. Their written systems and their teachings in schools were designed and fitted to draw out this faculty, and strengthen and improve it by judicious practice. They sought this even, as there is some reason to believe, at the sacrifice of good taste. They loved luxuriance and labored in every way to promote it. The moderns, on the other hand, have too much regarded rhetoric as a merely critical art. They have directed their attention mainly to pruning,

evidently be taken in its largest import, to include all the various modes in which a recurring uniformity of expression can appear in discourse, whether rhyme or alliteration.

"Poetry and eloquence, are both alike the expression or uttering forth of feeling. * * * Eloquence supposes an audience; the peculiarity of poetry appears to us to lie in the poet's utter unconsciousness of a listener. Poetry is feeling confessing itself to itself in moments of solitude, and bodying forth itself in symbols, which are the nearest possible representations of the exact shape in which it exists in the poet's mind. Eloquence is feeling pouring itself forth to other minds, courting their sympathy, or endeavoring to influence their belief, or move them to passion or to action."-Monthly Repository, Vol. III. p. 64.

repressing, and guiding; and have almost wholly neglected to apply any stimulus to the faculty of discourse itself. Their influence on the student of oratory has been, accordingly, at best but a negative influence; and any thing but fostering and nourishing. This has been an almost unavoidable result from their excluding from their systems the art of invention. For it is here-in invention-that the creative work in discourse mainly lies. Style, considered apart from invention, is lifeless and dead; and can feel no stimulus if applied. It drops, indeed, when thus regarded, from the position of a creative art, to the level of a mere science. It is, thus, not without reason that merely critical systems of rhetoric are generally regarded as of more injury than benefit to the student of eloquence, at least until the faculty of speaking has been considerably developed.

The commonly received maxim," he who is learning to speak with accuracy and order is learning also to think with accuracy and order," expresses but a part of the truth. The study of style, and especially, the study of style as an art in the exercise of composing, undoubtedly conduces to accurate and methodical habits of thought. But "to speak with accuracy and order," including in the expression not only the selection of language, but also the invention of thought, acts more directly on the intellect in determining its habits. The exercise not only disciplines it to regular and accurate thought; it also directly invigorates and develops the intellect itself. Indeed, there is no exercise that more directly and more powerfully tends to mental development and invigoration, when pursued in conformity with the principles of thought and expression. The mental effort called forth in the invention of thought and the embodiment of it in appropriate language is, when directed intelligently and correctly, at the same time, the most pleasing and also the most in

vigorating and fostering that is possible to the human mind. Rhetoric, therefore, studied as an art, in connection with a practical application of its principles, may and should be, one of the most pleasing and one of the most profitable of studies.

§ 11. The faculty of discourse or the power to communicate thought by language is the common attribute of men; and is susceptible of indefinite degrees of improvement and cultivation.

This

Speech is the distinctive attribute of humanity. general truth needs no modification to meet the case of deafmutes. While, undoubtedly, individuals differ indefinitely in the degrees to which they possess the power of vigorous thought and of forcible expression,-while there are geniuses here as in every other art, still it remains true that this faculty is subject to the laws which regulate all the various activities of our nature. The degree of excellence to be attained in discourse will depend on the training-on its mode and the degree to which it is carried. Orator fit—the orator becomes such. There is no such thing as a natural orator in the strict sense of the expression. The most eminent orators and writers have ever been those who have submitted themselves to the most thorough training. Patrick Henry, the most illustrious example of natural oratory, so far as there is any such, went through a course of training in his daily studies of human nature as drawn out by himself in his little shop, his every day trials on his lingering customers of the power of words, his deep and enthusiastic investigations into history, and particularly his patient and continued study of the harangues of Livy, which, to say the least, is very uncommon. The orator is the product of training.

§ 12. The means by which every art seeks its development and improvement are twofold: by a study of the nature and principles of the art, and by exer

cise.

It is obvious that there can be no true skill or excellence in any art unless its nature and the necessary principles which govern it are understood. It is equally obvious that no amount of this knowledge will, without exercise, secure practical skill in the art.

Obvious and unquestionable as are these remarks, yet the entire force and propriety of each of them are assailed, indirectly and in application, by different classes of minds. One class rejects the study of principles in an art on the ground that the observance of rules at the time will inevitably impede the execution. They ridicule the notion of a poet's asking himself, at the time of composing, what this rule requires and that rule prohibits; of a musician's referring constantly, while performing, to his gamut, to the rules of time, harmony, force, &c., which he finds laid down in his Musical Grammar. They object to the use of Grammars in acquiring any art, whether of poetry, oratory, or music, because, they say, such study makes only stiff and awkward performers.

This view is extremely superficial and partial. It is so tar true, indeed, that a conscious observance of rules in composing will impede the free operation of the mind; will make the proceeding mechanical, and hence, awkward and lifeless. But it by no means follows from this, that when the rule has, by study and application, become a principle in the mind, ruling it unconsciously, as is the case with the expert artist, in all its free action, the proceeding will be less free, living, graceful, than it would have been without study, and of course, in ignorance or at hap hazard. On the