LORD ROSEBERY'S ADDRESSES.*
LOliD ROSEBERY'S addresses are very amiable specimens of the oratorical art. They realise as little as they pretend. The opinions which they express, whether of politics or of literature, are superficial and inconclusive. Lord Rosebery says nothing that is new of Burke, Burns, and Stevenson, and says it passably well. We have beard many times before of "the sedulous ape," and we are all familiar with Burnt:es flashing eye, but there is no reason why these commonplaces should not be repeated in an after-dinner speech. Our doubt is whether they are worth being excavated from the columns of a daily paper. For the most of speeches are transitnry alike in form and substance, and even though a book be not destined to last, it has at the outset some show of per- manence.
Yet if Lord Rosebery's speeches deserved the honour of type and paper, they might have been modestly adapted to the new enterprise. References to the noble chairman are out of place in a printed book, and the fact that some years since Lord Rosebery proposed the health of Lord This and Lord That is quite immaterial. A little care might have removed such stumbling-blocks as these, but only a complete transformation could convert a set of spoken addresses into literature. A man does not speak as he writes ; a loose style and a flowing gesture are sufficient to impress a present audience, but he who would make appeal to a critical reader relies upon higher qualities of phrase and thought than those which a flashing eye and a quick impression may palliate. In other words, a speech should be written before it be printed, unless the orator would produce a feeble, erroneous effect.
"Now Lord Rosebery is said by his editor to belong to the very small and select verbatim class." That is to say, every word that he says is reproduced by the Shorthand writer with mechanical fidelity. Thus the periods which were once designed to attack the ear take another and more difficult passage to the brain, and perforce lose their effect. When a man stands upon a platform he relies upon his person- ality as well as upon the sense of his oration ; he stirs a set of nerves which are never excited by the reading of a book. A pleasant voicei a graceful movement, may impart dignity to the commonplace, but it is evident that the commonplace is no longer dignified when the movement is still and the voice silent. Oratory, indeed, is, from one point of view, a branch of histrionics, and as the actor writes his name fh snow, so the dead orator speedily melts from the memory of those that hear him. And it is a strange paradox that the bitterest enemy of eloquence is the stenographer, who most faithfully perpetuates it. For shorthand is no critic of style, and it reproduces vain repetitions with the same care which it bestows upon satire and epigram. Now the worst is, that as a man talks he ties up his phrases, so to say, with large pieces of packing-thread. Which keep the parcels loosely together, and confuse their shape and import. But the pack- ing-thread must be tightened before the speech becomes litera- ture. To change the image, the orator gains time to think, not by flashes of silence, but by the use of iterated and superfluous statements. And the vigilant reporter writes them all down
• Appreciations and Addresses delivered by Lord Rosebery. London : John Lane. [5s.)
in an inextricable jumble, until it is almost impossible for the "verbatim man" to win the reputation of true eloquance.
It is not surprising, therefore, that we hear n1nch concerning the decay of Oiatory. Yet it may be that our orators are not less accomplished than their ancestors ; only we know more about them. Before the habit of shorthand it was never remembered accurately what the speaker said. Time was when a published speech was a pamphlet, which had been rewritten and revised by the orator before it could be read. In fact, tht actual delivery was not always a necessity of eloquence. Neither Demosthenes's Meidias nor some of Cicero's orations lost their influence because they were not spoken, and since the ancient orators depended upon their own memory and skill for the editing of their speeches, we may be sure that they shaped them afresh for the eye of tills reader. So it is that the masterpieces of Demosthenes and Cicero have a literary quality apart from their legendary eloquence. We feel that they were once delivered, yet in another form; we feel also that, they have been designed with infinite art to give the reader (who may not hear them) a clear sense of their splendour. As we con them with our eye we realise the effect which they once produced upon another's ear. But the stenographer has destroyed this subtle appreciation, and has made men equal in all save in the space allotted to them.
Again, how shall we estimate, the benefit which such a writer as Dr. Johnson conferred upon the speeches which he reported? -tinder his hand the halting statements of second- rate orators were changed Into balanced, antithetical prdse; taw is it any wonder that he deemed even Burke under a debt of gratitude to his pomp of style. And Berke himself exemplifies better than most the divorce between literature and eloquence. For Burke was a man of letters aiming at oratory,—and the speeches which we still adaiire fell upon deaf, inappreciative ears. The phrases were magnificent, the cadence was perfectly harmonised for the study, but Burke's efforts were rather spoken pamphlets than noble speeches. He lacked the trick of presentation, the gift of histrionics, the vibrating voice which might have moved his audience, so that he lulled those who heard him to slumber, and shook with passion those who contemplated his purple patches of print. Once upon a time he delivered a speech upon India, which, says Lord Rosebery, was "so wearisome and so ineffective that Dandas, who was the Minister to answer it, turned round to Pitt, and they both agreed that it was not worth answering. When it came to be printed, it was that famous speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts, which Pitt and Dundee both read with a stupor of admiration, and wondered as to how they could have mistaken it when it was delivered." And this perversity is typical of Burke's talent. In him the man cif letters was stronger than the orator, and lie could only live with security upon paper.
But Burke's experience is rare enough. The most of orators have no worse enemy than the patient clerk who thinks to give them immortality. Bright and Gladstone are already unreadable ; and even Lord Beaconsfield, though he did sow his discourses with epigram, proves how fluffy a Dian of genius may be. Hansard, indeed, is the grave of many a reputation. For where the voice and the gesture are gone. the unrevised English appears bald indeed. And so the failure of Lord Rosebery's little book is explained. The addresses were spoken for the moment, and collected in a book they seem as lifeless as dried butterflies.
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