A GRAMMAR OF ELOCUTION; CONTAINING THE PRINCIPLES OF THE ARTS OF READING AND SPEAKING; ILLUSTRATED BY APPROPRIATE EXERCISES AND EXAMPLES, ADAPTED TO COLLEGES, SCHOOLS, AND PRIVATE INSTRUCTION: THE WHOLE ARRANGED IN THE ORDER IN WHICH IT IS TAUGHT IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. BY JONATHAN BARBER, "A full knowledge of the PRINCIPLES and Practice of an art ena- NEW-HAVEN: PUBLISHED BY A. H. MALTBY. 9280.830.210 A MARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1830, by necticut. BALDWIN AND TREADWAY, PRINTERS. 1370 47-174 32 TO JAMES RUSH, M. D. PHILADELPHIA. DEAR SIR, THE treatise which you published in 1827, entitled the "Philosophy of the Human Voice," was the first work that ever presented a true and comprehensive record of the vocal functions. Physiology is a science, the details of which, are discoverable only by observation and experiment. The history of the functions of the voice, is a legitimate department of that science, and you have investigated it in the only true method. Your work is strictly inductive: its philosophical principle is therefore correct. It combines, at the same time, such fulness of detail, with such an orderly classification of the vocal functions, as to entitle your views of the subject, on the ground both of the comprehensiveness of the particulars, and the felicity of the arrangement, to the denomination of A SCENCE. Much less originality, depth, and accuracy of investigation, devoted to some art which mankind in general have been taught to consider profitable, would have brought you a more immediate recompense of fame; not however, perhaps, a larger portion of ultimate glory. As to the practical tendency of your treatise, I would observe that it satisfied my curiosity, as to the elements of the art which I teach, and enlarged to so great an extent my resources as a teacher, that the advantages I am constantly deriving from it, of themselves prompt me to a full and grateful acknowledgement of its merits. It naturally led to a friendly intercourse between us : for what is more powerful, when good moral qualities are not deficient, to attract and bind one man to another, than fellowship in elevating intellectual pursuits. The method of investigation adopted in your work, shows the reason why the ancients did not reduce elocution to a science. Recent times first disclosed the true mode of investigating nature; and your treatise will be admitted by all competent judges, to be a triumphant exhibition of its efficacy. This "Grammar of Elocution," is fruit gathered from the vine which you planted; it is adapted to special purposes, which will be set forth in the preface, but is by no means intended as a substitute for your valuable work. In what I have said of that work, I have only discharged a debt of public justice, and told what I believe to be the truth; I confess it has been with pleasure, because I can subscribe myself Your sincere Friend and Servant, JONATHAN BARBER Cambridge, October 1831. PREFACE. The value of the following work must be estimated, I. by the importance of the subject of which it treats, and II. by the manner in which that subject is treated. I. As respects the importance of delivery, I shall offer an argument, which I consider as conclusive. It is founded on the opinion and practice of the Greek and Roman orators. Their evidence to the importance of the art of Elocution, and to the care with which it was cultivated among them, is full and clear. I see no reason to believe, that the ancients had any record of the functions of the voice-any science of Elocution, in the sense in which we possess it in the works of Steele and Rush, or in which I have endeavored to display it in this Grammar. The discourse of Quinctilian on the voice, may be considered as revealing to us the Ultima Thule of their researches. But they endeavored to compensate by practice, for their deficiency in principles. The Greeks, especially, entertained very high conceptions of the end and objects of the fine arts generally, and of the art of speaking, among the rest. They were not satisfied, unless their efforts surprised, moved, delighted. They considered the true end of a fine art, was, to communicate a high degree of satisfaction to a cultivated taste; and they continued to labor, till they attained that end. Hence the long and painful preparatory exercises in speaking, to which they submitted, in the presence of their rhetorical masters. These, however, were, as regards Elocution, rather an appeal to the taste of those masters, than to any |