Public Speaking and Debate: With an Essay on Sacred Eloquence by Henry Rogers. Revised with Introd. and Notes by L.D. Barrows

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Carlton & Porter, 1863 - 234 pages
 

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Page 167 - And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered; that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Page 164 - neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came; And, lo! Creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?
Page 166 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
Page 88 - For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.
Page 160 - On what foundation stands the warrior's pride? How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide; A frame of adamant, a soul of fire, No dangers fright him, and no labours tire...
Page 15 - The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object — this, this is eloquence ; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.
Page 167 - I have heard, That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ.
Page 166 - O ! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings ; who, for the most part, arc capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise.
Page 164 - Mysterious Night ! when our first Parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue ? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came ; And lo, Creation widened in man's view.
Page 50 - Those rules of old discovered, not devised, Are nature still, but nature methodized; Nature, like liberty, is but restrained 90 By the same laws which first herself ordained.

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