Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/165



Will's Coffeehouse,. 9.

HE subject of the discourse this evening was Eloquence and graceful Action. Lysander, who is something particular in his way of thinking and speaking, told us, a man could not be eloquent without action: for the deportment of the body, the turn of the eye, and an apt sound to every word that is uttered, must all conspire to make an accomplished speaker. Action in one that speaks in publick, is the same thing as a good mien in ordinary life. Thus, as a certain insensibility in the countenance recommends a sentence of humour and jest, so it must be a very lively consciousness that gives grace to great sentiments. The jest is to be a thing unexpected; therefore your undesigning manner is a beauty in expressions of mirth: but when you are to talk on a set subject, the more you are moved yourself, the more you will move others.

There is, said he, a remarkable example of that kind. Æschines, a famous orator of antiquity, had pleaded at Athens in a great cause against Demosthenes; but having lost it, retired to Rhodes:  quence