Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/80

 48 STATESMEN AND SAGES out upon a visit or received one," says Plutarch, " he would take something that passed in conversation, some business or fact that was reported to him, for a sub- ject to exercise himself upon. As soon as he had parted from his friends, he went to his study, where he repeated the matter in order as it passed, together with the arguments for and against it The substance of the speeches which he heard he committed to memory, and afterward reduced them to regular sen- tences and periods, meditating a variety of corrections and new forms of ex- pression, both for what others had said to him and he had addressed to them. Hence it was concluded that he was not a man of much genius, and that all his eloquence was the effect of labor. A strong proof of this seemed to be that he was seldom heard to speak anything extempore, and though the people often called upon him by name as he sat in the assembly, to speak to the point de- bated, he would not do it unless he came prepared." It is related that when in speaking he happened to be thrown into confusion by any occurrence in the as- sembly, the orator Demades, the foremost extempore speaker of the age, often arose and supported him in an extempore address, but that he never did this for Demades. Demosthenes was not, however, the slave of manuscript or memory. He declared that " he neither wrote the whole of his orations nor spoke without first committing part to writing." There was said to be greater spirit and bold- ness in his impromptu speeches than in those which he had elaborately prepared. People thought that sometimes when he spoke out thus on a sudden, his elo- quence was inspired from above, as when once he uttered, in regular though un- premeditated verse, the forceful oath : " By earth, by all her fountains, streams, and floods." Demosthenes's first speeches were harsh and obscure. The sentences were too long, the metaphors violent and inapt. On the occasion of his first set address before a public assembly he even broke down. He was, however, indomitable in his determination and efforts to speak well, and persevered until at last the most critical heard him with delight. Notwithstanding certain defects which nice critics very early remarked, such as undue vehemence, argumentation and intensity too long sustained, and, in general, lack of variety and relief, Demos- thenes's oratory is worthy the exalted regard which the best readers have in all ages accorded to it. His thought is always lucid and weighty, his argument fair and convincing, his diction manry and solid. He never uses a superfluous or a far-fetched word, never indulges in flowers, word-painting, or rhetorical trickery of any kind. He shows no trace of affectation, no effort to surprise or to be witty. He depends for effect upon truth logically and earnestly presented. If such a style, everywhere perfectly kept up, was in any degree artificial, how matchless the art which concealed the art ! So plain and straightforward are many of the speeches, that one is tempted to refer their wonderful power when spoken to some richness of elocution not appreciable now. Says Hume, treating of De- mosthenes' manner, " Could it be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern assembly. It is rapid harmony exactly adjusted to the sense. It is ve-