DO we need more public speakers in this country? We ask the question because we often see paragraphs going the rounds of the press, advising fathers to teach their boys to “spout” as a means of getting on in the world, considering the countless occasions on which, in this country, a man is called to address his fellows. Moreover, we are reminded that the speaking class par eminence, — that is, the lawyers, — usually number nine-tenths of the United States Congress.
There is force in these suggestions; yet we are fully of the opinion that the advice is mischievous; that, instead of swelling the number of public speakers in this country, it would be a mercy to the community, and should be the solicitude of every one having the control of boys, to diminish it. This running at the mouth has become a terrible epidemic, and we believe that the health of the body politic demands that it should be checked rather than encouraged. The facility for extempore speaking which dazzles so many persons, begets self-conceit and a thirst for public notice, and tempts thousands of our young men to seek temporary notoriety at the expense of a solid and enduring reputation. Instead of cultivating and disciplining their brains, storing their minds with the hived wisdom of the ages, and, above all, acquiring that most valuable and important of all arts, the art of thinking consecutively and with effect, they study clap-trap and sensational 280 oratory, — the art of producing instantaneous and ephemeral, instead of deep and lasting effects. Habits of speaking thus formed speedily react on the habits of thinking, and instead of weighing questions carefully and trying to ascertain their merits, young men view them only as pegs upon which to hang speeches. An easy utterance, a lively verbosity, a knack of stinging invective, and a command of that piquant ridicule which always brings down the house, soon come to be preferred to the profoundest knowledge, the largest grasp of mind, and the most thorough comprehension of a subject, which, owing to the very embarrass des richesses, hems and stammers in trying to wreak itself upon expression.
There is hardly any gift so dangerous or so worthless as what is vulgarly termed eloquence. The French have rightly characterized it as the flux de bouche, — a mental diarrhœa. It is a mistake to suppose that it is difficult to acquire the faculty of fluent speaking; almost any man can succeed who will try often, and who can harden himself against the mortification of frequent failures. Complete self-possession and a ready flow of language may thus be acquired mechanically; but it will be the self-possession of ignorance, and the fluency of comparative emptiness. Such a habit may teach him something of arrangement, and a few of the simplest methods of making an impression; but, as Lord Brougham has said, “his diction is sure to be much worse than if he never made the attempt. Such a speaker is never in want of a word, and hardly ever has one that is worth having.” The truth is, full men are seldom fluent. Washington seldom spoke in public, and when he did, it was in a few pointed sentences, delivered in an easy, conversational way. In the convention 281 that framed the Constitution of the United States he made but two speeches, of a few words each; yet the convention acknowledged the master spirit, and it is said that but for the thirty words of his first speech, the constitution would have been rejected by the people. Neither Franklin nor Jefferson had “the gift of gab,” though the one wrote the Declaration of Independence, and the other “snatched the lightning from the skies and the sceptre from tyrants.” Though silent and slow-tongued, each in the weightiest debate was effective, because he spoke tersely and from a full mind, and drove a nail home with every blow. The latter changed the messages of the Executive to Congress from oral to written discourses, because of his aversion to public speaking. President Jackson was as tongue-tied as Grant. Napoleon said that his greatest difficulty in ruling was in finding men of deeds rather than of words. When asked how he maintained his influence over his superiors in age and experience when he commanded in Italy, he said, “By reserve.” Moltke is said to be silent in eight languages. He rarely speaks, except in the crash of solid shot, and the shriek of the angry shell. When the Creator was to choose a man for the greatest work ever done in this world, it was Moses, the man “slow of speech,” and not Aaron, the man who could “speak well,” that He commissioned. It was said of Col. John Allen, a Kentucky jurist, that he knew more than he could say; and of the noted Isham Talbot, whose tongue ran like a flutter-mill, that he said more than he knew.
The most convincing speakers have been niggard of their words. The reason why the classic orators of antiquity spoke with such terseness and condensed energy, is that they turned over their subjects long and deeply, 282 and made the pen a constant auxiliary of the tongue. By this double means — the cogitatio et commentatio, as Cicero calls it, added to the assidua ac diligens scriptura, — they laid up in the arsenal of the memory a supply of weapons for any emergency that might arise; and the sentences thus turned over and over in the laboratory of thought, and submitted to criticism and revision by being embodied in written composition, were immeasurably more weighty and effective than those which in our day are thrown off in the hurry of debate, when there is no time to pause for the best thoughts and the most pregnant and pointed expression.
It is said that the Germans, long-winded as they are in their books, and though they will endure any amount of printed matter, unappalled by size of volume, number of pages, or closeness of type, will not tolerate a long speech out of a lecture-room. A ten-minutes’ harangue is an exception; one of an hour’s length is a phenomenon; one of two hours never dreamed of; and as for the feat of speaking four or five hours consecutively, which has been achieved by some leathern-lunged American politicians, it is looked upon as an impossibility, or, if credited on evidence too positive to doubt, is ranked with rope-dancing, balancing one’s self heels upward on the point of a steeple, or similar eccentric and useless performances to which men sometimes pervert their powers.
The weightiest men in the British Parliament have ever been slow of speech. For a speaker who has something to say, John Bull has an exhaustless patience; but for mere loquacity he has an unmitigated contempt. Hemming and hawing, — stammering, — want of tact, — poverty of diction, — all are borne with patience, so long as the hearers 283 believe that the speaker has some special knowledge, some telling fact, some wise suggestion, which he will contrive to get out, if he is suffered to take his own time and way. But the instant a suspicion arises that he is talking “for buncombe,” — that he is trying to dazzle his hearers with oratorical pyrotechnics, — that he is, in short, vox et preterea nihil, — they give reins to their indignation, and cough him down without mercy. So far is this carried, that a traveler tells us that, in the House of Commons, it is almost unparliamentary to be fluent, — to speak right on, without hemming and hawing; and quite unlordly, because smelling of a professional aptitude, to march through a long sentence without losing the way, — without stumbling over Lindley Murray and possibly the Queen herself, — and without the speaker coming out of the sentence at last nearly where he went in. The most skilful debaters in that body, instead of spinning out their words like a juggler blowing endless ribbons from his mouth, cultivate a prudent reticence. Like Anthony, they are plain, blunt men. They shrink from antithesis, and epigram, and point, and regard fluency as a debater’s most dangerous snare. Nor is this opinion ill-grounded. Its truth was strikingly illustrated a few years ago by the comparative success of that brilliant parliamentary orator, Mr. Horsman, and Lord Palmerston. It was remarked that the very brilliancy of Mr. Horsman converted his hearers into hostile critics, piquing themselves upon their skill in seeing through the magic colors in which his genius shrouded the truth; whereas Lord Palmerston’s dexterous hemming and hawing only made his audience sympathetically anxious to help the struggle of the honest advocate of a sound cause against the disadvantages of his own oratorical defects.
284If an Englishman would succeed as a speaker, he first seeks to store his mind with facts, and, before studying oratorical tricks and arts, he tries by patient study and profound meditation to master the subjects upon which there is a demand for knowledge. Not till he has honestly worked out a problem by brooding over it like a hen over her eggs, does he prepare to lay the solution of it before the public. What is the secret of Mr. Bright’s oratorical power? Practice in debating clubs? No; but the habits of keen observation and reflection fostered by his public and private life, — the constant claims on ease and readiness caused by a political canvass, the demand on the resources of practical comment and sagacious observation made at the hustings or in the House of Commons. It is because he has brooded for years in solitude over the subjects on which he has delivered himself with so much fire, that his mind has acquired that depth of passion, earnestness, and force which the playful and facile contests of the college debating society would only have diluted and diminished. In short, oratory is the weapon of an athlete, and it can never be wielded to any purpose by a mere stripling. The heroes of collegiate discussions gain intellectual agility, readiness, facility; but this suppleness of mind is too often gained at the expense of higher and more sterling qualities, and especially of that unity of personal character which is one of the great sources of impressiveness. It takes serious business and real purpose to train the orator; and if the aspirant begins his career too early, the strain is too great for the system that is to support it, — the tax eats into the capital, — the practice, in Shakspeare’s words,
“Lays on such burdens as to bear them
The back is sacrifice to the load.”
285College life and college debating-clubs, it has been truly said, give brightness, alertness, wit, candor, fairness, grace, to the intellects which they discipline; but they do not give, they rather take away, that effect of intensity and massiveness, that subduing and overpowering impressiveness which come of brooding thought and purpose, — which come, that is, of the tone of mind which has not accustomed itself to look at questions with other men’s eyes. It is because he cares less for manner than for matter, — less to be quick and fluent than to be strong and full, — because he thinks long and deeply on the subject which he speaks upon, — that the English orator is weightier and more impressive than the American. The English care most for the foundation of their speeches; we, for the superstructure. We fight splendidly in debate, but it is to win or perish, and we exhaust ourselves by a single effort. They have less dash and brilliancy, but great reserved force, and renew the attack to-morrow with as much vigor as at the first onset. It has been justly said that “if the maiden speeches of some of England’s most brilliant and polished debaters have been downright failures, it has been owing to inexperience, not to the lack of solid information, — to want of practice in the tricks and mechanical devices of oratory, and in no degree to the absence of convictions or sound thought.”
But, says some one, is it then of no importance to cultivate the faculty of speech? Do not men of fine abilities sacrifice half their power and influence by not learning the art of speaking well in public? Is it not painful to see a man who has spent years in self-culture, standing dumb as a heathen oracle, with his intellect 286 smitten with indescribable confusion, the moment he opens his lips in public, for lack of a few happy sentences in which to embody his t;houghts? Yes; but it is not necessary to join a debating club, or to thrust one’s self forward as a speaker in all assemblies, in order to become a good public speaker. Every time one opens his lips in society, he has an opportunity to acquire and strengthen the habit of giving clear and forcible utterance to his thoughts. Instead, then, of bidding our young men “spout,” we would bid them read widely, think deeply, reason logically, and act sensibly. We would with Richter exhort them never to speak on a subject till they have read themselves full upon it, and never to read upon a subject till they have thought themselves hungry upon it. When a sensible and thoughtful man has anything to say, he will always find a way of saying it, when circumstances require him to speak. On the other hand, if a young man begins spouting on all occasions, while his faculties are yet immature, and his knowledge scanty, crude, and ill-arranged, he will be almost sure to retain through life a fatal facility for pouring forth ill-digested thoughts in polished periods, and a hatred for cautious reflection. We have rarely known a fluent speaker who said things that stuck like burrs in the memory; but we have heard hesitating and artless talkers who have blurted out the most original, the deepest and the most pregnant things which we have cared to remember. No, — we want no more spouting. We want thought, and taste, and brevity, and that Doric simplicity of style which is so nearly allied to the highest and most effective eloquence.