explains the injuries he had received coldly and plainly. Demofthenes declares that he could not give credit to the tale. Thus provoked, the Client raises his voice, and his paffion breaks forth in trope and figure. The orator inftantly declares himself convinced. Calidius the Roman Pleader was devoted to Atticism; and never ventured to make the leaft excurfion beyond the strict bounds of clearness and precision. He accufed one Gallius of an attempt to poison him, and offered the fulleft proofs of his guilt. But Cicero tells us, that when he came to answer him as advocate for the accused, he urged it as a proof of the falsehood of this charge, that Calidius had pleaded, (to use his own expreffions) tam folute, tam leniter, tam ofcitanter; that neither his action nor his ftyle bespoke that violence of emotion, which fuch an event, had it really happened, must have excited in his mind. ubi Tu iftuc M. Calidi, nifi fingeres, fic ageres ? dolor ubi ardor animi? qui etiam ex infantium ingeniis elicere voces et querelas folet. DE CLAR. ORAT. C. 80. Ed. OLIV. It is by no means neceffary for the present argument, that the proof here urged by these great mafters, should be infallible and irrefragable. It is fufficient that it hath a foundation in reason, and is generally confonant to observation and experience. He, whofe Elocution is not warmed and animated by an affecting fubject, may give other proofs of his fincerity, tho' he fails in poffeffing his hearers with an immediate prefumption in his favour. He who uses the language of paffion to conceal falfehood, and mifguide his hearers, may be still liable to detection, tho' he hath infpired them with fentiments favourable to his wicked purpose. The final prevalence of reafon or information in either cafe is by no means means an argument against what hath been advanced of the natural and generally received fignification of such modés of fpeech as have been described. And in the case of falsehood and deception, it is to be observed, that the natural con nexion, which every man feels in himself, and discovers in his fellows, between a fincere warmth and force of fentiment, and a lively and impaffioned form of expreflion, is the very circumstance which renders Eloquence fo dangerous a wea→ pon, when directed by a lively fancy joined with a fraudulent or malignant heart. Tacitus gives us the hiftory of a mutiny raised in a Roman army by fome feditious harangues and cabals. The mutineers are joined by a party ftill more turbulent and licentious. The general interpofes and endeavours to bring the chief leaders to justice; but their affociates take the alarm, fly to their relief and refcue them. In the midft of their tumultous exultation, a common foldier raises himself upon their shoulders, is advanced before the general's pavilion, and addreffes himself to the crowd in the following manner. * "Yes, my fellow foldiers! You have restored these our "unoffending, our miferable companions, to freedom and fecurity. But fay, who fhall reftore to my brother his dear "life? Who shall give my brother back to thefe arms? He was dispatched to us from the camp of Germanicus, upon * Vos quidem inquit, his innocentibus et miferrimis lucem et fpiritum reddidiftis fed quis fratri meo vitam, quis fratrem mihi reddit? quem miffum ad vos a Germanico exercitu de communibus commodis, nocte proxima juğulavit per gladiatores fuos, quos in exitium militum habet atque armat. Refponde Blæffe, ubi cadaver abjeceris? ne hoftes quidem fepulturæ invident. Cum ofculis, cum lacrymis dolorem meum implevero, me quoque trucidari jube; dum interfectos nullum ob fcelus, fed quia utilitati legionum confulebamus, hi fepeliant. TACIT. ANN. 1. "affairs "affairs which concern the interefts of us all; and laft Tell night, did this man's emiffaries bury their weapons in his "throat; those bloody ruffians, whom he keeps prepared " in arms, to wreak his vengeance on the foldiers. "me Blæfus, where have you caft out his corpse ?—Even "the enemies we fight against allow the rites of inter"ment.-Let me indulge my grief in kiffing the remains, "and bathing them with my tears. Then, iffue forth your << orders, and let me too be murdered. And let these our "companions confign us to one grave; two wretches who "died for no crime but that of zeal and affection for the ❝ army." The effect of this pathetic Eloquence was alarming and terrible; and the confequences we are told might have been fatal to the general, had not the impofture been instantly detected. But it may be faid, that the perfons, to whom this speech was addreffed, were ignorant and turbulent; ready of themselves to catch the flame of paffion. Let us then suppose a person of the greatest refinement and most confummate judgment, temperate, difpaffionate, and clear of all the popular infection, present in this affembly. Would this fpeech, delivered with all the affecting vehemence of action, have been heard by fuch a man with abfolute indifference? Would he have at once confidered this manner of addrefs, as a perfuafive turn given to the elocution, to fupply the defect of an inward confcious perfuafion in the Speaker? On the contrary, even on the firft perufal of the narrative, I presume it will be deemed no great argument of the reader's fenfibility, that he does not feel a confiderable degree of emotion, and an impatience to be informed of the final event. A judiCious obferver might have recollected, that the groffeft false hood hood and hypocrify have frequently affumed the strongest marks of truth, and hence might have fufpended his opinion of this foldier's veracity; yet ftill he would have agreed with Quinctilian, Quid enim aliud eft caufæ ut lugentes utique in 'recenti dolore difertiffime quædam exclamare videantur, et ira nonnunquam indoctis quoque eloquentiam faciat, quam quod illis inest vis mentis et veritas ipfa morum? (L. 6. C. 2.) And far from grounding any suspicion of falsehood meerly on the paffionate style and manner of his harangue, I presume he would have concurred with the vulgar, in confidering this as the immediate evidence given of his fincerity. And if he had proceeded to examine this evidence with more acuteness and penetration than the vulgar, it must have been by looking for fomething unnatural and affected in the fpeech and action; something which a man, really afflicted by the death of his brother, could not have expreffed, fomething like the unnatural exclamations of MACBETH, and his affected distraction at the King's Murder, હ Here lay Duncan, His filver fkin laced with his golden Blood, &c. Which, as the learned commentator obferves, "difcover the "declaimer not to be affected in the manner he would re"prefent himself. CHA P. IV. Effay on human understanding, B. I. C. I. + B.3. C. 8. extenfive is the figurative part of every language, fo ob Svious to be adopted, 10 unavoidable, upon all occafions, that even strict and fevere reafoning cannot always be fup- "beauties +". "fociety together, the common conduit whereby men conwhose fountains cannot be corvey their knowledge Ibid. C.9." rupted, tho' the pipes may be stopped or broken ‡”Here are tropes and figures, which furely do not infinuate wrong ideas, do not mislead the judgment, are not perfect. Vide B.3. cheat |. C. 8. The |