plishment of the purposes of their art.-Design, artifice, a wide and accurate knowledge of the principles and the modifications of human character, complexity of structure, a skilful distinction and combination of parts, the power to give (amid persuasion) a refined pleasure to the imagination -the savage orator knows not eniinently to exercise or produce: but, in the vivid and forcible expression of the feelings of nature, he is scarcely to be equalled by the most consummate master of the oratorical art, in its most elaborate and artificial form. The speeches of the Indian Chiefs in North America; the pithy harangues of the Scythians of antiquity; the figurative brevity of the ELOQUENCE of the Lacedæmonians in the earlier times of their Commonwealth; the remains of the poesy of the ancient Caledonians; the rude addresses which are related to have been made to our voyagers and travellers, by savages in many different parts of the world; are, all, of this species of ELOQUENCE. This is the FIRST ERA in the rise of human ELOQUENCE, in which its existence, as one of the incipient arts of life, can be clearly discerned.

Nor that, even in liveliness and energy of expression, the ELOQUENCE of all savage hordes, must uniformly excel. There are states of sickliness in the health, and languid torpor in the feelings of the infant, in which sensibility is imperfect, and all the exterior efforts and emotions are without vivacity. In the same manner, there are, in savage life, occasional degradations of all the powers of humanity, in which the human animal becomes incapable of keen sensation, of distinct perception, of any vivid and impressive communication of whatever may pass within it. Such, for instance, is the condition of those miserable beings, cast on the most desolate coasts, or driven to the extremities of the habitable earth, who, from infancy to death, are, as it were, conti

nually

nually perishing under the utmost endurances of cold, hunger, and terror.

III. THE history of mankind evinces, that the first rude ELOQUENCE of lively and vigorous savage life, is naturally diable to be superseded by an ELOQUENCE more artificial indeed, but less just in taste, and much less powerful.

Ir is at the first rise of the arts, that ART appears the most admirable, to those whom it is exercised to accommodate. To invent an useful art, is, to rise above the level of the first ignorant and helpless simplicity of savage life, infinitely higher than the ingenuity of the greatest discovery or invention of a civilized age, rises above the common intelligence of the age and country in which it is made. Only in that earliest period of society, are the inventors of arts exalted, in the imagination of men, to the rank of deities, on account of their inventions. While mankind see little or nothing but natural appearances and changes, whose relafions of causation, gradations, connexions, and dependencies, they cannot comprehend; HUMAN ART, which seems, as it were, to create like Nature, yet of which they can better conceive the agency, commands, above all things else, their curious and delighted regard. Struck with its power and its general utility, they consider mere art itself, as something altogether divine. Of nature, they have before them, innumerable different appearances, among which to chuse : of the creations of art, they possess, as yet, too few, to compare them with one another, with any fastidious discrimination. The more, indeed, this art seems to recede from nature; the more fantastic the new combinations into which it assembles nature's elements and features;--so much the more does it, at this æra of society please: for, so much the greater does the power of art appear; and so much the Vol. I.

b

inore

1

more of useful or mysterious authority over nature, does it seem to confer upon man. In the admiration and in the proud exercise of mere art, its genuine usefulness and beauty are, hence, apt to be, by the barbarian and savage, wholly, or almost wholly, forgotten. It is thus that the sudden, unexpected acquisition of any thing new and important, naturally betrays men, in every period of society, to abuse it. The sudden acquisition of unlooked-for wealth, hurries him, on whom it is bestowed, to vain unmeaning extravagance, and contemptible pride. An ingenious youth, when his mind opens to new knowledge, is liable to become conceited and pedantic, and to pervert that knowledge from its proper ends. A person eminently skilful in music, in dancing, in fencing, in riding, or in any other accomplishment, is apt to forget its just relation to the proper happiness and utility of his condition, and to devote himself to a degree that shall render him contemptible and, perhaps, wretched, to the exclusive pursuit of that in which he is conscious of rare excellence, The principle in human nature by which men are hurried into such errors as these, is the same with that which leads savages and barbarians into an exercise of art, incompatible with taste and beauty.

In every art of barbarians, the influence of this principle is conspicuous: in none, more remarkably, than in their ELOQUENCE. It produces systems of gestures having no reference to the emotions of native feeling, those symbolical ceremonies which religion consecrates-fantastically artificial modes of regulating the tones of the voice, in formal speech,→ alliterations, antitheses, rhymes, balanced sentences, such as occur in the poesy of the Hebrews, puns, and all the uncouth, yet laboured, formalities of barbarian oratorical expression. These constitute that which, among barbarians, is accounted

the

the art of ELOQUENCE, and is used as such, upon every occasion of grave, elaborate speaking, in their religious or political solemnities. The time when it prevails, is the second period in the advancement of artificial ELOQUENCE. Metaphors begin, in this period, to be used with a cold profusion, the effect, not of fervid passion, not of paucity of general ideas, but of the constant affectation of something laboriously artificial. The greater part of the Runie and Scandinavian poetry, most of the poetical remains of the ancient Welch, the first artificial forms of poetry and eloquence among the ancient Hebrews, all that has appeared elaborately fantastic in the speeches and poesy of people between the savage and the barbarian state, and whether in ancient or in modern times, belongs to the species of the ELOQUENCE of this second period in the general advancement of the art. Poetry may be comprehended, for this period, with ELOQUENCE: for, they are not originally two distinct arts, but one only; and their subdivision begins just where this period has its end. To the people among whom this ELOQUENCE prevails, it is highly delightful: to others, whether in a lower or a higher state of civility, it is disgusting and unintelligible. Over the passions, and the general persuasion of the mind, it possesses no power.-Yet, these barbarians are not so far removed from the simplicity of nature, but that, on extraordinary occasions, native emotion bursts the fetters of their aukwardly laboured ELOQUENCE, and declares itself with the tones, the gestures, the figures of nature herself-arte potentior omni. On these occasions, the heart pours forth that sort of ELOQUENCE which belongs to former periods of the art, with some improvement, however, in the design. The artificial ELOQUENCE in general, of the second period, excels that of the first, in compass and perspicacity of design. But, the design

b2

sign is necessarily frustrated, where cold unnatural artifice destroys the genuine energy of expression.

THE history of human society presents many instances, in which fantastic barbarism of ELOQUENCE has had its reign exceedingly prolonged, in connexion with that of the barbarism of manners. Such, as the Koran sufficiently evinces, was the fate of ELOQUENCE among the Arabians. It was-it is such still, among the Persians, with all the servile disciples of their literature and language. Of the same style is almost all the literature of Hindostan, whether Arabic, Persian, or Sanscrit. Such, too, has been, for ages, the ELOQUENCE, and all the ornamented literary composition, of the Chinese. Precisely of this character, was that which was known and admired in Europe, as formal ELOQUENCE and elegant writing, from the fifth almost to the fifteenth century of the Christian æra. Where nascent civility is blasted by a new invasion of barbarism; where local circumstances are unfavourable to the incessant mutual intercourse of all the members of a community; where a people are, on all hands surrounded by tribes or nations more savage and barbarous than themselves; where the reign of peace and justice has not yet commenced, or is incessantly disturbed and overthrown while it but begins to diffuse its blessings; where barbarian life is either too hopelessly destitute and wretched, or, without order and industry, too abundantly supplied with all the primary gratifications of sense; in all these cases, the natural improve-.. ment of the oratorical art, cannot but be retarded; and the second period of the progress of ELOQUENCE will, of course, be indefinitely prolonged. Other causes need not be sought to explain the prevalence of false taste, for so many ages, in the regions of the East, and in other parts of the World.

IV. WHERE