Atlantic Monthly | Page 3

assembly with a flood of animal spirits, and makes all safe and
secure, so that any and every sort of good speaking becomes at once
practicable. I do not rate this animal eloquence very highly, and yet, as
we must be fed and warmed before we can do any work well, even the
best, so is this semi-animal exuberance, like a good stove, of the first
necessity in a cold house.
Climate has much to do with it,--climate and race. Set a New Englander
to describe any accident which happened in his presence. What
hesitation and reserve in his narrative! He tells with difficulty some
particulars, and gets as fast as he can to the result, and, though he
cannot describe, hopes to suggest the whole scene. Now listen to a poor
Irish-woman recounting some experience of hers. Her speech flows like
a river,--so unconsidered, so humorous, so pathetic, such justice done
to all the parts! It is a true transubstantiation,--the fact converted into
speech, all warm and colored and alive, as it fell out. Our Southern
people are almost all speakers, and have every advantage over the New
England people, whose climate is so cold, that, 'tis said, we do not like
to open our mouths very wide. But neither can the Southerner in the
United States, nor the Irish, compare with the lively inhabitant of the
South of Europe. The traveller in Sicily needs no gayer melodramatic
exhibition than the _table d'hôte_ of his inn will afford him, in the
conversation of the joyous guests. They mimic the voice and manner of
the person they describe; they crow, squeal, hiss, cackle, bark, and
scream like mad, and, were it only by the physical strength exerted in
telling the story, keep the table in unbounded excitement. But in every

constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material
foundation for the higher qualities of the art.
But eloquence must be attractive, or it is none. The virtue of books is to
be readable, and of orators to be interesting, and this is a gift of Nature;
as Demosthenes, the most laborious student in that kind, signified his
sense of this necessity when he wrote, "Good Fortune," as his motto on
his shield. As we know, the power of discourse of certain individuals
amounts to fascination, though it may have no lasting effect. Some
portion of this sugar must intermingle. The right eloquence needs no
bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them. It draws
the children from their play, the old from their arm-chairs, and the
invalid from his warm chamber; it holds the hearer fast, steals away his
feet, that he shall not depart,--his memory, that he shall not remember
the most pressing affairs,--his belief, that he shall not admit any
opposing considerations. The pictures we have of it in semi-barbarous
ages, when it has some advantages in the simpler habit of the people,
show what it aims at. It is said that the Khans, or story-tellers in
Ispahan and other cities of the East, attain a controlling power over
their audience, keeping them for many hours attentive to the most
fanciful and extravagant adventures. The whole world knows pretty
well the style of these improvisators, and how fascinating they are, in
our translations of the "Arabian Nights." Scheherzarade tells these
stories to save her life, and the delight of young Europe and young
America in them proves that she fairly earned it. And who does not
remember in childhood some white or black or yellow Scheherzarade,
who, by that talent of telling endless feats of fairies and magicians, and
kings and queens, was more dear and wonderful to a circle of children
than any orator of England or America is now? The more indolent and
imaginative complexion of the Eastern nations makes them much more
impressible by these appeals to the fancy.
These legends are only exaggerations of real occurrences, and every
literature contains these high compliments to the art of the orator and
the bard, from the Hebrew and the Greek down to the Scottish
Glenkindie, who
--"harpit a fish out o' saut water, Or water out of a stone, Or milk out of
a maiden's breast Who bairn had never none."
Homer specially delighted in drawing the same figure. For what is the

"Odyssey," but a history of the orator, in the largest style, carried
through a series of adventures furnishing brilliant opportunities to his
talent? See with what care and pleasure the poet brings him on the stage.
Helen is pointing out to Antenor, from a tower, the different Grecian
chiefs. "Antenor said: 'Tell me, dear child, who is that man, shorter by a
head than Agamemnon, yet he looks broader in his shoulders and breast.
His arms lie on