Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/101

Rh to show their knowledge of the world. In short, that simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive to any great perfection, is no where more eminently useful, than in this.

I have been considering that part of oratory, which relates to the moving of the passions; this I observe is in esteem and practice among some church divines, as well as among all the preachers and hearers of the fanatick or enthusiastick strain. I will here deliver to you (perhaps with more freedom than prudence) my opinion upon the point.

The two great orators of Greece and Rome, Demosthenes and Cicero, though each of them a leader (or as the Greeks called it, a demagogue) in a popular state, yet seem to differ in their practice upon this branch of their art: the former, who had to deal with a people of much more politeness, learning, and wit, laid the greatest weight of his oratory upon the strength of his arguments, offered to their understanding and reason: whereas Tully considered the dispositions of a sincere, more ignorant, and less mercurial nation, by dwelling almost entirely on the pathetick part.

But the principal thing to be remembered is, that the constant design of both these orators, in all their speeches, was, to drive some one particular point; either the condemnation or acquittal of an accused person, a persuasive to war, the enforcing of a law, and the like: which was determined upon the spot, according as the orators on either side prevailed. And here it was often found of absolute necessity to inflame or cool the passions of the audience; especially at Rome, where Tully spoke, and with whose writings young divines (I mean