public orator. They are a kind of comment to what he utters, and enforce every thing he says, with weak hearers, better than the strongest argument he can make use of. They keep the audience awake, and fix their attention to what is delivered to them, at the same time that they shew the speaker is in earnest, and affected himself with what he so passionately recommends to others. Violent gesture and vociferation naturally shake the hearts of the ignorant, and fill them with a kind of religious horror. Nothing is more frequent than to see women weep and tremble at the sight of a moving preacher, though he is placed quite out of their hearing; as in England we very frequently see people lulled asleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowing and distortions of enthusiasm.

If nonsense, when accompanied with such an emotion of voice and body, has such an influence on men's minds, what might we not expect from many of those admirable discourses which are printed in our tongue, were they delivered with a becoming fervour, and with the most agreeable graces of voice and gesture?

We are told that the great Latin orator very much. impaired his health by this laterum contentio, this vehemence of action, with which he used to deliver himself. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous for this particular in rhetoric, that one of his antagonists, whom he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had procured his banishment, and seeing his friends admire it, could not forbear asking them, if they were so much affected by the bare reading of it, how much more they would have been alarmed, had they heard him actually throwing out such a storm of eloquence.

How cold and dead a figure, in comparison of these two great men, does an orator often make at the British bar, holding up his head with the most insipid

serenity, and stroking the sides of a long wig that reaches down to his middle? The truth of it is, there is often nothing more ridiculous than the gestures of an English speaker; you see some of them running their hands into their pockets as far as ever they can thrust them, and others looking with great attention on a piece of paper that has nothing written on it; you may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, moulding it into several different cocks, examining sometimes the lining of it, and sometimes the button, during the whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think he was cheapening a beaver, when perhaps he is talking of the fate of the British nation. I remember when I was a young man, and used to frequent Westminster-hall, there was a counsellor who never pleaded without a piece of packthread in his hand, which he used to twist about a thumb or a finger all the while he was speaking: the wags of those days used to call it the thread of his discourse, for he was not able to utter a word without it. One of his clients who was more merry than wise, stole it from him one day in the midst of his pleading; but he had better have let it alone, for he lost his cause by his jest.

I have all along acknowledged myself to be a dumb man, and therefore may be thought a very improper person to give rules for oratory; but I believe every one will agree with me in this, that we ought either to lay aside all kinds of gesture, (which seems to be very suitable to the genius of our nation) or at least to make use of such only as are graceful and expressive.

No. CCCCVIII. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18.

Decet affectus animi neque se nimium erigere, nec subjacere serviliter.

TULL.

We should keep our passions from being exalted above measure, or servilely depressed.

6

Mr. Spectator,

I HAVE always been a very great lover of your 'speculations, as well in regard of the subject, as to 'your manner of treating it. Human nature I always 'thought the most useful object of human reason, and 'to make the consideration of it pleasant and enter'taining, I always thought the best employment of human wit: other parts of philosophy may perhaps make 6 us wiser, but this not only answers that end, but makes us better too. Hence it was that the oracle pro'nounced Socrates the wisest of all men living, be6 cause he judiciously made choice of human nature for 'the object of his thoughts; an enquiry into which as 'much exceeds all other learning, as it is of more consequence to adjust the true nature and measures of right and wrong, than to settle the distance of the planets, and compute the times of their circumvolutions. 'One good effect that will immediately arise from ' a mere observation of human nature, is, that we shall cease to wonder at those actions which men are used 'to reckon wholly unaccountable; for as nothing is · ' produced without a cause, so by observing the nature ' and course of the passions, we shall be able to trace 6 every action from its first conception to its death. 'We shall no more admire at the proceedings of Ca'tiline or Tiberius, when we know the one was actu'ated by a cruel jealousy, the other by a furious am'bition: for the actions of men follow their passions as 'naturally as light does heat, or as any other effect

flows from its cause; reason must be employed in adjusting the passions, but they must ever remain the 'principles of action.

The strange and absurd variety that is so apparent ' in men's actions, shews plainly they can never pro'ceed immediately from reason; so pure a fountain ' emits no such troubled waters; they must necessarily arise from the passions, which are to the mind ( as the winds to a ship, they only can move it, and they too often destroy it; if fair and gentle, they guide ' it into the harbour; if contrary and furious, they over'set it in the waves: in the same manner is the mind 'assisted or endangered by the passions; reason must then take the place of pilot, and can never fail of se'curing her charge if she be not wanting to herself: 'the strength of the passions will never be accepted as an excuse for complying with them; they were de· signed for subjection, and if a man suffers them to get the upper hand, he then betrays the liberty of 'his own soul.

As nature has framed the several species of beings 'as it were in a chain, so man seems to be placed as the middle link between angels and brutes: hence 'he participates both of flesh and spirit by an admira'ble tie, which in him occasions perpetual war of pas'sions; and as a man inclines to the angelic or brute part of his constitution, he is then denominated good or bad, virtuous or wicked; if love, mercy, and good 'nature prevail, they speak him of the angel; if ha'tred, cruelty, and envy predominate, they declare his kindred to the brute. Hence it was that some of the 'ancients imagined, that as men in this life inclined 'more to the angel or the brute, so after their death they should transmigrate into the one or the other; ' and it would be no unpleasant notion to consider the 'several species of brutes, into which we may imagine 'that tyrants, misers, the proud, malicious, and ill-natured might be changed.

As a consequence of this original, all passions are in all men, but appear not in all; constitution, edu'cation, custom of the country, reason, and the like C causes, may improve or abate the strength of them, but still the seeds remain, which are ever ready to ( sprout forth upon the least encouragement. I have heard a story of a good religious man, who, having been bred with the milk of a goat, was very modest in public by a careful reflection he made on his ac• tions, but he frequently had an hour in secret, wherein he had his frisks and capers; and if we had an op'portunity of examining the retirement of the strictest 'philosophers, no doubt but we should find perpetual returns of those passions they so artfully conceal from the public. I remember Machiavel observes, that " every state should entertain a perpetual jealousy of ' its neighbours, that so it should never be unprovided when an emergency happens; in like manner should reason be perpetually on its guard against the pas•sions, and never suffer them to carry on any design that may be destructive of its security; yet at the ‹ same time it must be careful, that it do not so far 'break their strength as to render them contemptible, and consequently itself unguarded.

The understanding being of itself too slow and la-* C zy to exert itself into action, it is necessary it should 'be put in motion by the gentle gales of the passions, which may preserve it from stagnating and corruption; for they are necessary to the health of the mind, as the circumvolution of the animal spirits is to the health of the body; they keep it in life, and strength, and vigour; nor is it possible for the mind to perform • its offices without their assistance: these motions are given us with our being; they are little spirits that ' are born and die with us; to some they are mild, easy and gentle, to others wayward and unruly, yet never too strong for the reins of reason and the guid( ance of judgment.