The Making of an Orator. By John O'Connor Power. (Methuen
and Co. 6s.)—This is an 'interesting book. How, indeed, could it fail to be so when a man accustomed to the business of speaking, who has had the opportunities of public life, tells us about a subject with which he is particularly acquainted, and illustrates it with the great examples which history supplies? If there were nothing else in Mr. O'Connor-Power's volume than the chapters in which he deals with Demosthenes "On the Crown," Cicero " Against Catiline," and the " Examples from Modern Oratory," it would be worth reading. Here we have illustrations from Sheridan, Burke, Fox, Pitt, and Erskine, and the more recent speakers who figure in his "Further Examples." We are also privileged to listen again to some of the great voices of our own times. An orator, in the strict sense of the word, can no more be "made" than can a poet; but a man may learn to speak, as he can learn to write verse, the difference being that the concionator mediocris has a raison d'dtre which does not exist for the mediocris poeta. What man is there—one might almost say what woman is there—who may not be called upon to assume the position of what our author calls the "occasional speaker " ? Here provision is made against such a contingency, and even if the peril never is realised, a pleasant and informing volume will have been read.
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