Institutio Oratoria

when the stops which produce the treble notes are closed, and a bass note is produced through the main aperture only.

He will also see that final syllables are not clipped, that the quality of speech is continuously maintained, that when the voice is raised, the strain falls upon the lungs and not the mouth, and that gesture and voice are mutually appropriate.

He will also insist that the speaker faces his audience, that the lips are not distorted nor the jaws parted to a grin, that the face is not thrown back, nor the eyes fixed on the ground, nor the neck slanted to left or right. For there are a variety of faults of facial expression. I have seen many, who raised their brows whenever the voice was called upon for an effort,

others who wore a perpetual frown, and yet others who could not keep their eyebrows level, but raised one towards the top of the head and depressed the other till it almost closed the eye.

These are details, but as I shall shortly show, they are of enormous importance, for nothing that is unbecoming can have a pleasing effect.

Our actor will also be required to show how a narrative should be delivered, and to indicate the authoritative tone that should be given to advice, the excitement which should mark the rise of anger, and the change of tone that is characteristic of pathos. The best method of so doing is to select special passages from comedy appropriate for the

These are not only most useful in training the delivery, but are admirably adapted to increase a speaker's eloquence.

These are the methods to be employed while the pupil is too young to take in more advanced instruction; but when the time has come for him to read speeches, and as soon as he begins to appreciate their merits, he should have a careful and efficient teacher at his side not merely to form his style of reading aloud, but to make him learn select passages by heart and declaim them standing in the manner which actual pleading would require: thus he will simultaneously train delivery, voice and memory.

I will not blame even those who give a certain amount of time to the teacher of gymnastics. I am not speaking of those, who spend part of their life in rubbing themselves with oil and part in winebibbing, and kill the mind by over-attention to the body: indeed, I would have such as these kept as far as possible from the boy whom we are training.

But we give the same name to those who form gesture and motion so that the arms may be extended in the proper manner, the management of the hands free from all trace of rusticity and inelegance, the attitude becoming, the movements of the feet appropriate and the motions of the head and eyes in keeping with the poise of the body.

No one will deny that such details form a part of the art of delivery, nor divorce delivery from oratory; and there can be no justification for disdaining to learn what has got to be done, especially as chironomy, which, as the name shows, is the law of gesture, originated in heroic times and met with the

We are told that the Spartans even regarded a certain form of dance as a useful element in military training. Nor again did the ancient Romans consider such a practice as disgraceful: this is clear from the fact that priestly and ritual dances have survived to the present day, while Cicero in the third book of his de Oratore [*](lix. 220.) quotes the words of Crassus, in which he lays down the principle that the orator

should learn to move his body in a bold and manly fashion derived not from actors or the stage, but from martial and even from gymnastic exercises.

In my opinion, however, such training should not extend beyond the years of boyhood, and even boys should not devote too much time to it. For I do not wish the gestures of oratory to be modelled on those of the dance. But I do desire that such boyish exercises should continue to exert a certain influence, and that something of the grace which we acquired as learners should attend us in after life without our being conscious of the fact.