LECT. XXIII. Rules for the Use of META- LECT. XXIV. Of CONTRAST in general, and particularly of Wit, the rifible, and the ridiculous, 23.5 LECT. XXV. Of BURLESQUE, PARODY, the MOCK-HEROIC, HUMOUR, and IRONY, 252 LECT. XXIX. Of PERSONIFICATION, 295 LECT. XXX. Of IMITATION, and the Satif- 311 1 The INTRODUCTION and the DISTRIBUTION of the Subject. THE use of speech is common to all man kind. For we find none of the human race but who are capable of expreffing their ideas, fentiments, and intentions to others, in a more or less adequate manner, by words: and this capacity was neceffary to that mutual intercourse, and free communication, without which beings of our focial nature could not be happy. It is the province of art to improve upon nature, by adding to her powers and advantages: and, for the exercise of our intellectual and active powers, all the gifts of nature are little more than the bare unwrought materials of those accomplishments, from which refult the dignity and refined happiness of focial life. Thus ORATORY is the natural faculty of speech improved by art; whereby the use of it is perfected, facilitated, and extended; and confequently its value and influence greatly increased. And the excellence of this art is the more generally acknowledged, and its effects the more admired, because, language being common to us all, all men can the more easily conceive both the importance, and the difficulty of the improvements of which it is capable. Very few perfons ever find themselves at a lofs to deliver a fingle fentence or two at a time; because they are able to fee at one view the whole of what they intend to fay. But it is not common to find a perfon able to acquit himself with propriety in a speech of confiderable length, even though he prepare himfelf by digefting beforehand all that he intends to fay; because the order and connexion of fentiment, and variety of diction, neceflary in a continued fpeech, are not easily carried in memory: and it requires a very extraordinary invention and recollection to speak long, in a proper and graceful manner, quite extempore. Nor can a perfon, without the affiftance of art and inftruction, eyen compofe a fet difcourfe upon any fubject, becaufe it requires greater exactnefs in the ufe of words, more accuracy of method, and variety of tranfition than perfons uninftructed and unuted to compofition can be mafters -mafters of. For this reafon we see many perfons who make a good figure in conversation, by no means able to make a fpeech, or a compofition of any confiderable length. It is in this respect, where the powers of nature fail us, in expreffing our fentiments to advantage, that we have recourse to the art of Oratory. It may not be amifs, at the entrance upon thefe Lectures upon Oratory and Criticism, to premise one caution; which is, that we muft not expect too much from the art; fince this can do little for us in comparison of what must be the fruit of our own previous application to Science. The art of oratory can only confift of rules for the proper use of those materials which muft be acquired from various ftudy and obfervation, of which, therefore, unless a perfon be poffeffed, no art of oratory can make him an orator. In order to speak, or write well upon any fubject, it is neceffary that that subject be thoroughly understood, that every argument which is to be used be previously collected, and the value of it afcertained. How abfurd, for inftance, would it be to imagine that a perfon, who had never ftudied law, government, and history, fhould be enabled, by the art of oratory, to make a political harangue, or write a differtation upon the constitution of a ftate? With what fuccefs would an orator, who had not ftudied the |