Rudiments of Public Speaking and Debate; Or, Hints on the Application of Logic  (English, Paperback, Holyoake George Jacob)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART III. APPLIED POWERS. CHAPTER XIX. CRITICISM. Assuming that the various principles discussed in this treatise are practical and relevant, the application of them to the judgment, to literary and oratorical efforts, will be Criticism. For instance, after what has been said under the head of Effectiveness, the assenting reader will be prepared to pronounce that no work, consisting of many pages, should have detached and distinguishable beauties in every one of them. No great work indeed should have many beauties ; if it were perfect, it would have but one, and that but faintly perceptible, except on a view of the whole. After what has been said in reference to the individuality resulting from Method, the reader of the works of the facetious American satirist, Paulding, will be able to decide to what extent he has the fault, in common with some others, of labelling his characters, gay, sedate, or cynical, as the case may be, with descriptive names, as if doubtful of their possessing sufficient individuality to be otherwise distinguished. If a hero cannot make himself known in his action and conversation, he is not worth bringing upon the boards. The student who coincides with what has been explained relative to Brevity, will on reading such a passage as this—" Nicias asked merely for quarter for the miserable remains of his troops who had not perished in the Asinarios,or upon its banks"—be at no loss in discovering the superfluous information given, that Nicias asked for quarter for those who " had not perished." No general asks for quartet for those who have. The same writer tells us, that "Discipline yielded to the pressure of necessity. They hurried down the steep in confusion and without order, and trod one another to death in the stream." Necessity is all " press...