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IT is perhaps impossible to form a systematic classification of any great and complicated object in nature, art, or science, which shall include, within a formal distribution of parts, every particular incidental to its composition. There are certain anomalies belonging to the system, as fully as any of its regular parts, which yet resist every attempt to bring them under the discipline of a general arrangement. The framers of systems are commonly driven to the expedient of assigning them a separate and miscellaneous apartment by themselves; and, however different their characters may be from each other, to assemble them under the single standard of their common insubordination.
Of this description are those accidents of discourse, concerning which I am now to speak, digression and transition. They are thrown together, not from any natural similitude between them, but merely because they are not reducible to any of the heads of a general division, and yet are among the most common ingredients of every public discourse.
I have thought them entitled to a particular lecture by themselves, under this general department of disposition. From their very miscellaneous nature, it was not very material where in the order of arrangement this lecture should be assigned. The practice of preceding writers has so much varied, as to leave the choice of position quite arbitrary; but I have concluded, that the most suitable place for a lecture, itself digressional from our regular subject, would be immediately before that, which will treat of the conclusion; and after those, which have explained all the other essential parts of a public oration.
The terms of art, originally used by the Greek writers, are almost always significant. The digression was by them termed παρεκζασις, meaning literally something outside of the foundation; and it is defined by Quinctilian an extraordinary excursion of speech, treating of some object foreign tot he cause, but having some useful connexion [sic] with its purpose.
In the ancient schools of declamation, where they professed to reduce every thing to rule, and where oratory was solved into a species of clockwork, the digression was considered as on of the regular parts of oration. It was limited with industrious idleness to a certain class of topics; and it was stationed at one permanent post between the narration and the proof. It was a sort of moral lecture served up, by way of refreshment to the auditory, at the principle resting place on their journey. From the declamatory floor the practice was carried to the public tribunals, and became there one of the instruments, by which eloquence was corrupted. It has an easy and plausible succedaneum for argument, and from being first admitted as its precursor soon encroached, so as often to occupy all its place.
This abuse was emphatically censured and rigorously excluded from the system of Quinctilian, who justly remarks, that digressions may contribute essentially to the fartherance [sic] of the argument, and are still more adapted to the ornament of an oration; but that they ought never to be confined to any one place, or to any list of enumerated topics. They may be scattered over every part of a speech, and they may range over the whole extent of the orator’s conceptions. But they should arise naturally from the subject, and not be crowded upon it by intrusion. Instead of breaking the chain, they ought rather to form the connecting link between two successive parts; ad their highest perfection consists in their appearing without incongruity, as the natural conclusion of the one and the commencement of the other.
In practice it is not always easy to point out all the parts of a discourse, which might be embraced under the general name of digression. Strictly speaking every thing, not included of necessity within the six regular parts, is digression. Descriptions, personal panegyric or invective, exclamations of passion, excuses, palliation, reproach and conciliation, amplification and diminution, all addresses the feelings, and all the common place remarks upon human nature, the moral and political reflections, the brightest gems, and the most attractive charms of eloquence, partake of the digressive nature. They are indeed often so closely allied to the question or proposition, that they appear indissolubly incorporated with it. But whether premeditated or occasional, they are often interwoven with grace and elegance in the texture of the discourse, when it might still subsist in all its strength without them.
And hence it is, that the most important precept, which a rhetorical teacher can inculcate respecting this part of a discourse, is negative. The rules for the management of digressions are obvious and simple; but the caution the most necessary to an orator is to beware of admitting them with too much indulgence. They are like foreigners in the bosom of a national society. Received under just and prudent restrictions they may contribute to the honor and prosperity of the commonwealth; but they should never be admitted in such numbers, or with such a latitude of powers, as to give them the control of the political body.
A digression is a stranger; and as such let your general rule, as a public speaker, be to exclude it from your discourse. To this general role, as to all others, exceptions must be allowed; and the condition for such exception should be, that when admitted it shall contribute to the common interest, and not usurp an undue proportion of space in the fabric. This caution is peculiarly necessary to all extemporaneous speakers. For written and even for unwritten, but premeditated discourse, the judgment has time to select and discriminate between the first thoughts, which the fertility of invention produces to the mind. But it requires a very rigorous and habitual restraint upon the operations of your own understanding to speak on the spur of the occasion without curvetting beyond the boundaries of the road. There was therefore nothing absurd, however seemingly paradoxical, in the apology, which we are told was once made by Phocion, the most nervous and concise of all the Athenian orators. As an excuse for having spoken, one day, longer than was his usual custom, he said he had not the time to make his speech short.
But of all the forms of public oratory that, which is the most liable to the excesses of digression, and which requires the severest curb to repress them, is that of the bar. To caution those of you, who have it in contemplation to devote yourselves in future life to that profession, against this fault, in more general terms, would not be to discharge the duties of this place. In order effectually to guard yourselves from that tendency to impertinent digression, which has been the common disgrace of lawyers wherever and whenever there has existed law to disgrace, I would entreat you to trace the sources, whence this propensity to wordy flatulence most commonly proceeds, and to remark the forms, in which it most frequently appears.
The first of the causes, which has made the sounding emptiness of the bar so proverbial throughout the world, is indolence; the want of that industry, which is necessary for a lawyer to probe to the bottom the cause, upon which he is to speak. When he is not thoroughly acquainted with the real strength and weakness of his cause, he knows not where to choose the most impressive argument. When the mark is shrouded in obscurity, the only substitute for accuracy in the aim is in the multitude of the shafts. You have not weighed in impartial scales the arguments, which offer themselves to your own mind. Your natural resort is to take them all; and to scatter the two bushels of chaff for fear of losing the two grains of wheat. You content yourself with the reflection, that different minds see the same object with different views; that the judge might think important that, which you might reject as weak; that an omission may always be fatal; that redundancy, though tedious, is safe; and, instead of selecting with discernment, your only care is to accumulate with profusion.
This disposition is further promoted by an inconsiderate deference to the prejudices and passions of the client. The cause of every suitor is important to himself; and when he pays a man for becoming his speaker, he does not readily bestow his money without an equivalent. The substantial justice of most causes lies within a narrow compass; but the anxiety of a litigant might be added to Agur’s list of things, which say not “it is enough.” Ready as the generality of mankind are to deride the loquaciousness of lawyers, individually they are the first to instigate the vice, which they are most prone in common to censure; and many a client fancies his counsel has not said enough in his behalf, when, in the opinion of every other human being, he would only be chargeable with having said too much. Still stronger is the temptation to this unmeaning exuberance of words from the professional success and reputation, which it is often found to acquire. It is not every judicial auditory, that can distinguish with unerring taste between speaking well and speaking long. They who measure eloquence by the hour have a standard much more easy and more common, than they who poise it by the scales of intellect. The art of speaking for hours together without intermission is itself no common endowment, and it will ensure a certain grade of professional profit and reputation; as where there is no stamp of sovereign authority upon the coin, a gilt medallion may obtain a circulation equal to that of sterling gold.
Add to this the rivalship of professional competition, and the contagion of mutual example. When the advocate on one side has spent three hours in darkening a cause, which ten minutes might have unfolded in all its light, his opponent feels as if his reputation were at stake. In the lowest deep, his ingenuity must find a deep still lower. He must not only refute his adversary’s arguments, but he must provide for an equal consumption of time. The emulation of verbosity seldom can be satisfied even with equal returns; the palm of multiloquence [sic] must be earned by a preponderance in the quantity of sound; and the ardor of victory urges a double and treble retaliation for every idle sentence, uttered by the adverse party. Last of all among the causes, which stimulate to vain discourse, is the vanity of the speaker. However tiresome to others, the mst indefatigable orator is never tedious to himself. The sound of his own voice never loses its harmony to his own ear; and among the delusions, which self-love is ever assiduous in attempting to pass upon virtue, he fancies himself to be sounding the sweetest tones of justice, when he is only listening to the music of his own vain tongue.
Thus stimulated at once by so many of the motives, which oper5ate upon the conduct of men; by the sense of duty, by the sting of ambition, by the spur of reputation, by the feather of vanity, and even by the charm of indolence, it is not surprising that superfluity of speech has been the most universal imputation upon the general character of lawyers under every form of government, and in every age, where such a profession has existed. And as the fault has thus arisen uniformly from the same causes, it has presented a similar uniformity of effects. The redundancies of judicial oratory seldom argumentative; for argument, however incorrect, requires a certain labor of the mind. But where the substantial purpose is only to apply a cartain [sic] distention of the lungs for a given length of time, the toil of meditation is altogether discarded, and the speaker resorts to his memory alone for his materials. Among the complications of his memory he recurs to those, which are the most familiar from having the longest been lodged there; which are most easily retained from their character of generality; and which are most easily adapted to every subject from the very frequency of their application to all. That, which answers most completely to all these characteristics, is general history. Among the ancient writers there are two, who have severely satirised [sic] this propensity for lawyers to overflowing digression; one of them a Greek, and the other a Roman; Lucian and Martial. “If,” says the former in those ironical directions to orators, which I mentioned in one of my earliest lectures, “if,” says he, “you have to argue an action for slander or adultery at Athens, launch at once into the transactions of India or of Ecbatana; mingle with every thing a little of Marathon, a little of Cymaegyrus; you can say or do nothing without it. Plough the perpetual wave of mount Athos; trample the soil of the Hellespont; darken the sun with clouds of Persian arrows; vanquish over again Xerxes; and be sure to share the glories of Leonidas; echo and re-echo the names of Salamis, Artemesium, and Plataea. Would you reach the very summit of vulgar admiration, begin with the siege of Troy; or rather go back to the wedding of Deucalion and Pyrrha, carefully bringing down your history from that period to the present.” This picture no doubt was taken from the life. It is a satire upon the diffuse wanderings of the Athenian 1awyers in the days of Lucian. That of Martial is in the form of an epigram upon the judicial orators of Rome in his age.
Non de vi, neque caede, nec veneno;
Sed lis est mihi de tribus capellis.
Vicini queror has abesse forto;
Hoc judex albi postulat probari.
Tu Cannas, Mithridaticumque bellum,
Et perjuris Punici furoris,
Et Sullas, Mariosque, Muciosque,
Magna voce sonus, manuque totâ.
Jam dic, Posthume, de tribus capellis.
VI. 19.
In English it might read thus.
No dagger keen, no poison’d bowl
Forms, of my suit, the constitution;
’Tis of three kid my neighbour [sic] stole
I come to court for restitution.
With thundering voice, and outstretch’d arms
My lawyer fights o’er all our battles;
Now thrills with Cannae’s dire alarms,
And now of Mithridates prattles.
Oh! let thy tongue, Verboso, cease,
Which trust in Punic faith forbids;
Let Sylla, Marius, sleep in peace;
And say—one word about my kids.
In both these instances you will observe, that the fault specifically ridiculed is that of bursting through the bounds of the question into the boundless field of general history; and the incidents alledged [sic] by Lucian are those, which were most familiar to the recollection of the Greeks, as those selected by Martial are allusions to the most memorable periods in the history of Rome. I could easily refer you to similar sallies against the lawyers of modern times, and in divers nations and tongues; but it is unnecessary to multiply examples. Thus much I hope may suffice to warn you against the abuses of digression; and to enable you, with the aid of your own reflections, to prescribe for yourselves the rules for its management when admissible.
Transition, as you will understand by the natural force of the term itself, means a passage; a going across from one part of the subject to another. It is not an essential part of a discourse, for it is often silently made, without any formal notice. But if the speech be long and complex it is an [sic] useful assistant to the divisions, into which it is carved; and serves the same purpose as division itself. It is merely a short notification to the audience, that the orator has done with one part of his discourse, and is about commencing upon another. The same natural aversion of mankind to abruptness at the commencement or close of an oration, which has established the custom of opening with an exordium and of ending with a peroration, has erected these bridges over the various inlets, which intersect the different regions of the province.
The object of transition is then always the same; and one of the principal difficulties of its use is the diversification of its forms. To this end it is sometimes made complete, referring both to the part concluded and the part commenced; and sometimes imperfect, an index only to one of the parts. Sometimes it is announced with studious formality, and sometimes it involves itself in the shell of indirect allusion. It does not appear much to have engaged the attention of the ancient rhetoricians. I find no precept in any of them concerning it. Among some of the modern writers, particularly the French, it has been refined with an affectation, which often reduces it to quaintness. But, as it was not included in the ancient theories of composition, it was often neglected in their practice, The transitions of the ancient classics have often been complained of, as too abrupt; though Dr. Johnson ingeniously conjectures, that they are only so in appearance. He thinks they were usually performed by indirect allusion; and that the reason why they appear to us so disjointed is only because we have lost the intermediate idea, which was understood without being expressed, and which connected the various parts together in community.
Transitions, fully displayed, contribute to perspicuity; and Cicero employs them the most formally upon those orations, where he was most solicitous to make his meaning clear and his discourse memorable to all his hearers; in his first oration at the bar. that for Quinctius, and his first oration to the people, for the Manilian law. In the oratorical discourses of modern times sermons are the compositions, in which variety and elegance of transition are most important, and most studied.
There are in the Paradise Lost two examples of transition, which may indicate the uses of propriety of this form of speech more effectually, that any to be found in the volumes of oratory. That incomparable poem was first published in ten books. But the author, afterwards considering that the seventh book, which contained the celestial colloquy sublime between Adam and the angel Gabriel, and the tenth, which embraced the whole of his interview with the archangel Michael, were of a length disproportionate to the rest, and exceeding that measure, which from the days of Homer has been found most suitable to the relish of readers, divided each of these books into two. The treatment of the subject was such, that this new division could be made with ease. But to avoid the appearance of an abrupt separation the addition of a few lines became necessary, by way of transition between the two parts of the divided books. Thus the seventh book, in all the editions subsequent to the first, closes with the narrative of Gabriel to Adam. The eighth begins with Adam’s thanks for his condescension. And the transition is formed by the addition of three lines, and a slight alteration in that, which began the reply of Adam at first. Thus instead of this line,
To whom thus Adam gratefully replied,
the introduction to the eighth book now gives us the following picture.
The angel ended, and in Adam’s ear
So charming left his voice, that he a while
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear;
Then, as new waked, thus gratefully replied.
The division between the eleventh and twelfth books was made at the point, where Michael, after discovering to Adam the fortunes of his posterity until the flood in a vision, continues in the form of a narrative the history of mankind, until their restoration to the divine father by the death of Christ. The following are the lines, which were added at the new arrangement of the books. And here the employment of the very word itself sufficiently manifests their purpose. They stand at the entrance of the twelfth book.
As one, who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed, so here th’ archangel paus’d
Betwixt the world destroy’d and world restor’d,
If Adam ought perhaps might interpose;
Then, with transition sweet, new speech resumes.
In extemporaneous oratory (by which I mean every species of public speaking, not previously written) the most pleasing and impressive species of transition is made by seizing upon some occasional incident or circumstance, furnished to the orator while he is speaking; or to some event so recent, that it cannot be supposed to have entered into the orator’s premeditations [sic]. The interest, the animation, the liveliness, which this infuses into a discourse, must be obvious upon a moment’s reflection. The faculty of seizing upon such circumstances and improving them to the purpose of his cause is one of those excellencies, which no precepts can teach, and which you can acquire only from the liberality of your own genius, and improve by observation of examples from the princes of eloquence.
Such for example is that bold and hazardous appeal to his audience, by which Demosthenes, in his oration for the crown, made his transition from the exordium to the argument in defence [sic] of himself. The whole oration you know is defensive against the accusation, which Eschines had just pronounced. Eschines had there intimated, that Demosthenes had often charged him with being the friend and intimate of Philip and Alexander. Mark his reply. “Citizens, you well knew this man’s venal prostitution before I opened my lips. He calls it forsooth friendship and intimacy. You heard him just now say, in speaking of me, ‘the man who upbraids me with the intimacy of Alexander.’ I upbraid thee with the intimacy of Alexander! How couldst thou obtain it? I never called thee the friend of Philip, nor the intimate of Alexander. I am not so mad; unless we are to call menial servants the friends and intimates of those, who hire them upon daily wages. But how is this? Impossible! No! I formerly called you the hireling of Philip. I now call you the hireling of Alexander; and so does this whole assembly. If you doubt it, ask them; or I will ask them for you. Citizens of Athens, do you believe Eschines to be the intimate of Alexander, or his hireling? You hear their answer.”
It is evident that, on his putting the question, a general cry of hireling resounded from the audience. And now consider what an immense advantage Demosthenes had gained over his adversary, when he had thus at the very threshold a sort of verdict from the judges themselves, pronouncing his accuser the hireling of Alexander.
In the fourth of Cicero’s orations against Verres the orator, after relating several instances of robbery, committed by that culprit, makes a pause to exclaim against the general degeneracy of the age. To contrast the scandalous vices of the times with the manners of an earlier period, he gives an anecdote of Lucius Piso, a man who had lived within the memory of many among his auditors. The honorable Roman, when holding in Spain the same office, which Verres had so infamously abused in Sicily, had accidentally lost his gold ring. And so scrupulous had he been to guard against every suspicion of malversation, that he sent for a goldsmith to come to him, while sitting on his judicial bench at Cordova; had the gold weighed out to him, and directed him to make the ring there, in the face of the public. He then adds, “to compare Verres with Piso would indeed be ridiculous; to embrace in the memory at one time, or include in one discourse the catalogue of his crimes would be impossible; I can only touch upon them in a cursory manner, and by whole classes at once. This anecdote of Piso’s ring now reminds me of one, which I had utterly forgotten. How many honorable men think you there are, from whom he has plucked the gold rings on their fingers? Just so many as ever met his eye, and happened, by the value either of the stone or its enchasing, to suit his taste. He never hesitated an instant. The following fact is incredible, but so well known, that I think he will not deny it himself.” The orator then proceeds to a new order of the criminal’s depredations. It will be needless to lengthen the quotation, which I adduced only for the purpose of holding up to your notice the elegance of the transition.
In the short speech of Burke at Bristol, declining the election of 1780, there is an example of transition not inferior in elegance to those, which you have just seen drawn from the richest fountains of Greece and Rome. His canvassing speech, delivered two days before, stands perhaps unrivalled among the productions of his eloquence. But Bristol was not Athens nor Rome. The people of Bristol on that occasion deserved the character, which the resentments of the poet Savage had imputed to them before.
Thee, thee, what senatorial souls adorn!
Thy natives sure would prove a senate’s scorn;
Do strangers deign to serve thee; what their praise?
Their generous services thy murmurs raise.
SAVAGE, LOND. AND BRIST. DELIN.
A Burke was no fit representative for them. He found they had fixed, in preference to him, upon some of those senatorial souls, best calculated to prove a senate’s scorn. He renounced the contest; and, taking leave of them, made this admirable and pathetic allusion to an event, which had occurred the day before, the sudden death of another candidate, “Gentlemen, the melancholy event of yesterday reads to us an awful lesson against being too much troubled about any of the objects of ordinary ambition. The worthy gentleman, who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, had feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.”
In strict conformity to the rules and regulations of this institution, I should now say something to you on the subject of amplification. But the length of this lecture has exceeded already the measure of time, upon which I can reasonably expect that attention, which can alone make it in any degree profitable to you. Amplification is an article, which deserves more than a momentary regard from the rhetorical student; and perhaps it belongs more properly to the next subdivision of the science, upon which we are to treat, than to those, which form the basis of our inquiries. To that future investigation then it may now suffice to refer you; and in my next lecture I hope, by treating of the conclusion of a discourse, to bring our disquisitions upon this second department of rhetoric to a conclusion.
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