above, he speaks of this marvellous unity and condensation as a thing as much within the reach of mediocrity as of genius. It is, on the contrary, the perfection of Greek art, and the orations of Demosthenes are in this, as in every other respect, the most exquisite model of it. Another excellence, that has been mentioned repeatedly in the course of the preceding remarks, remains to be particularly noticed. Not only do the orations of Demosthenes resemble the great works of nature in this, that their beauty and sublimity are inseparable from utility, or more properly speaking, that utility is the cardinal principle of all their beauties, but there is still another analogy between them. It is, that the grandeur of the whole result is not more remarkable than the elaborate and exquisite finish of the most minute details. Dionysius, in the essay so of ten referred to, aims to show that the orator was by far the greatest master of composition the world had ever seen. This critic may be relied on for such a purpose. His fault is, that he exacts in all things rather a pedantic precision and accuracy. In short, he is hypercritical, and is too little disposed to make allowance for small blemishes, even when they are redeemed by high virtues, or to approve and relish the non ingrata negligentiathe careless grace of genius. But, in Demosthenes, whose eloquence makes him perfectly ecstatical in its praise, he searches in vain for a spot, however minute. He takes his examples at random, and finds every thing perfect every where. Certainly, in the critical comparisons which he institutes between him and Plato and Isocrates, it is impossible not to admit the soundness of his judgments. This prodigious perfection of style he affirms to have been a creation of the orator's. He had studied, he thinks, all the masters who had gone before him, and, selecting from each what he excelled in, made up a composition far superior to any of its ingredients. Thucydides gave him his force and pregnancy, Lysias, his clearness, ease, and nature, Isocrates, his occasional splendor and brilliancy, and Plato, his majesty, elevation, and abundance. That Demosthenes studied, and studied profoundly, all these models, we have no doubt. Of Thucydides, espe cially, the tradition represents him to have been a devoted admir er. But eclecticism, imitation, was out of the question with him. Undoubtedly he was indebted to them for having done so much to perfect the instrument he was to use-the Greek language; and their beauties and defects were hints to him in the training of his own mighty and original genius. But that is all: had they never written, his works would not, probably, have been so unblemished in the execution, but they would infallibly have formed an era in literature, and displayed very much the same excellences that now distinguish them. The instrument, of which we have just spoken, must not be lost sight of in appreciating the Greek masters, and especially Demosthenes. When one reads the rhetorical works of Cicero and Dionysius, one cannot but perceive that the ancient languages, from their complicated and highly artificial structure, admitted of certain graces that cannot be aimed at, to any thing like the same degree, by any modern composition. One of these is harmony and rhythm. The effect, which a polished and musical period (in the right place) had on the ears of an Attic, and even of a Roman assembly, is scarcely intelligible any where but in southern Europe. But there was immense difficulty in avoiding a vicious extreme in the use of this art. If it were not directed by the most exquisite taste and judgment, it became very offensive, and gave to a business speech the air of a mere panegyrical or scholastic declamation. Not only so, but nothing was harder to avoid than the uttering of a complete verse, and nothing was reckoned more vicious. In this, as in every other respect, Demosthenes is pronounced by Dionysius a perfect model of judgment and excellence. With a compass, a fulness, a pomp and magnificence of periods that distance the efforts of Isocrates in the same style, he displays such an inexhaustible variety of cadence, his tone is so continually changing with the topic, there is every where such an appearance of ease and simplicity, that while the ear is always charmed, the taste is never once offended. He takes care always of the great capital object of eloquence the being, and seeming to be in earnest. For this reason it is that he throws in occasionally those abrupt and startling sentences, so ignorantly censured by Blair. He thus avoids that concinnity which is too apparent and somewhat offensive in Cicero, who continually forgets his own maxims on this subject that in all things sameness is the mother of satiety.* That so great a master of the human heart as Demosthenes, that a statesman, occupied with the gravest public affairs, that a political leader, excited even to fanatacism by the conflict of parties and the war of the popular assembly, should have time or even inclination to give a thought to such minutia of style, may seem, at first, strange. But it is not so. In the first place, this perfection was become nature with him by the time he made his first appearance on the Bema. That lamp had not been burning in vain, in deep solitude, from his early youth upwards. But, independently of that, it is a mistake to suppose that they whose writings and speeches have had the greatest sway over the minds of men, have been ever careless about the form and finish of their works. The very reverse is the fact. Franklin, Paine, Cobbett, Paul Louis Courier, Beranger, Swift-were all not only * On this whole subject see Dionys. Hal. π. τ. λ. Δημοσθεν. δεινότητ. § 33, et sqq. and Cic. orat. cc. 44-70. good, but exquisite, writers; minutely versed in all the secrets of the art of composition. And there is yet another instance, still more remarkable, as presenting more than one coincidence with Demosthenes. We mean J. J. Rousseau-the master, the Socrates of the French Convention, whose frantic declamations were mere paraphrases or perversions of his political speculations. Never, perhaps, has a writer exercised a more terrible influence; yet look at his matchless style, and see what he says, in his Confessions, of his extreme slowness and labor in composition.Those pages, which seem to have been filled up as with a flood of spontaneous, irrepressible passion, in "those burning ecstacies" of his, were the tardy product of years of deep and mature meditation; those musical periods, that natural, various, and abundant language of sensibility excited even to madness; they were not dropped there in a fit of Sibylline rage and inspiration, but weighed, and trimmed, and recast, and polished over with a most mechanical precision and pains-taking, hundreds of times, before they were sent forth to wring and agitate the hearts of men. Shall we wonder at the elaborateness of Demosthenes, in the midst of by far the most cultivated people (we mean, of course, in reference to art) the world has ever seen? No better is needed of their taste, than the pains he took to satisfy it; his masterpieces were such because they required them to be so; and, both by his efforts to please them, and his success in doing so by works matchless in every perfection, he is the pride and glory, as he was the idol, of the democracy of Athens. One thing more, and we have done. These speeches, however elaborately composed, were still speeches. Every thing is done to give them an air of business, and the appearance of being the spontaneous effusions of the moment. No extemporaneous harangues were ever more free and natural.* They were made to be delivered-some of them before tribunals composed of many hundred judges, others before the ecclesia itself, all of them in vast assemblages of people. Under such circumstances, in animated conflicts with able and eloquent adversaries, a graceful, impressive manner, a clear, audible, passionate voice, and all the other attractions of delivery were highly necessary. His own repeated failures, on account of some defect from personal disadvantages in this way, led him to utter the sentence so often repeated since, that, to an orator, the one thing needful is good "acting."+ This comprehends the management of voice, air, countenance, gesture, movements upon the Bema, and the * See cont. Timocrat. § 31. Cont. Mid. § 22, and F. A. Wolfe, ad Leptin. § 18. +'oxgiois-not "action" as it has been improperly translated. The best essay, beyond comparison, we have ever met with, upon delivery, is in the author ad Herenn 1. iii. cc. 11. 15; the great object of all is to seem in earnest-ut res ex animo agi videatur. attainment of the perfect self-possession, sure tact and nice sense of propriety necessary to it. The art of delivery was rendered peculiarly important at Athens, by the extreme impatience and intractableness of the audiences. We see evidence of this in all the remains of the orator. Whole pages of the very prepossessing opening of Eschines, on the Embassy, are deprecatory of prejudice and unwillingness to hear argument. Many other examples might easily be cited. In this, as in every other excellence of his art, Demosthenes was without a rival; and his perfection here, too, must be described by the same epithets-he was natural and in earnest. His most formidable rival acknowledged this by describing him, as he does, as a magician or juggler in oratory, and as one whose passions are so much under his control that, when occasion demands it, he can cry more easily than others laugh. On this subject, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the essay already recited, after describing the effect of these orations upon him, adds, "If we, at such a vast distance of time, and no longer feeling any personal interest in the subjects, are so agitated, and controlled, and carried about in every direction by his eloquence, how must the Athenians and other Greeks have been led by the man then-when they were in the midst of the real struggle so vitally touching themselves, and he was delivering his own language with the dignity that belonged to him, and the courage of an elevated spirit, adorning and enforcing every thing with a suitable delivery, (of which, as all confess, and as is indeed evident from the very tone of his speeches,†) he was the greatest master. Such was Demosthenes, the Man, the Statesman, and the Orator. If what we have written from impressions made upon us by a long and rather intimate conversation with the great original, should be found, as we flatter ourselves it will, to place some things in his history and character in a new or more striking light, to the general reader, we shall be most amply rewarded for the pains we have been put to in writing this article. In conclusion, we give it in as our experience, that the trouble (certainly not inconsiderable) of acquiring a competent knowledge of Greek for that purpose, is far more than compensated by the single privilege of reading Demosthenes. The remarks we proposed making on the Epimetrum of M. Westermann, and Lord Brougham's admiration for the spurious speeches, are, for want of space, necessarily omitted here. *Esch. de Fals. Legat. § 20 and 27, calls him yons, cont. Ctesiph. § 71. † π. τ. λ. Δημοσθεν. δεινότητ. § 22. THE ORIGIN, HISTORY AND INFLUENCE OF 1. Lehrbuch eines civilistischen Cursus, vom Geheimen Justiz-Rath Ritter HUGO, in Göttingen, Dritter Bandwelcher die Geschichte des Römischen Rechts bis auf Justinian enthält. Elfte, sehr veränderte Auflage. Ber lin: 1835. 2. Corpus Juris Civilis, ad fidem Manuscriptorum aliorumque subsidiorum criticorum recensuit, commentario perpetuo instruxit EDUARDUS SCHRADER, Jctus. In operis societatem accesserunt THEOPH. LUCAS. Frider. Tafel, Philolog. GUAlth. Frider. CLOSSIUS. Jctus. Post hujus discessum, CHRISTOPH. JOH. C. MAIER, Jetus. Tomus Primus, Institutionum Libri iv. Berolini: MDCCCXXXII. 3. Gaii Institutionum Commentarii Quatuor, cura. AUGUSTI GUIL. HEFFTER. Bonna: MDCCCXXX. 4. Commentaries on the conflict of Laws, Foreign and Domestic, in regard to Contracts, Rights, and Remedies, and especially in regard to Marriages, Divorces, Wills, Successions, and Judgments. By JOSEPH STORY, LL. D., Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University. Boston: 1834. 5. Institutionum Juris Romani Privati Historico-Dogmaticarum Lineamenta, observationibus maximè litterariis distincta in usum prælectionum denuo adumbravit et Legum Duodecim Tabularum nec non Edicti Prætoris atque Edilitii sententias integras, etc., adjecit. D. CHRIST. GOTTLIEB Haubold, antecessor, Lipsiensis. Post mortem auctoris edidit atque additamentis auxit D. CAROLUS EDUARDUS OTTO, Professor Lipsiensis. Lipsia: 1826. MR. HALLAM, in his "History of the Middle Ages," speaking of the civil law and its earlier professors in modern times, remarks, that he "should earn little gratitude for his obscure diligence, were he to dwell on the forgotten teachers of a science that is likely soon to be forgotten." As we do not affect to have done more ourselves than glance over the pages of the Corpus Juris Civilis Glossatum, and know (we confess it with shame) little more of those restorers of Roman jurisprudence than may be learned from Gravina or Terrasson, it is not for us to take up the glove for Azzo and Accursius, or to censure very severely the historian who omits their names in a general view of the progress of society. Yet Accursius has found in the first of elementary writers of the old schoolt a champion whose Chap. IX. P. II. * + Heinecc. Hist. Jur., § ccccxvii. He quotes and confirms the elaborate panegyric of Gravina de Ortu et Progr. Jur. Civ. § CLV. |