The vocabulary of Burke contains few words which need to be studied beforehand, and indeed it is perhaps better to treat the speech as so far a logical rather than an imaginative work that without other preparation than a thorough mastery of the circumstances under which it was delivered and of the political issues with which it dealt the class may be given the text directly. In the first reading the thing to be insured is the intelligent comprehension of the language and of the argument. In the first half-dozen paragraphs, for instance, such passages as these must be made perfectly clear: I hope, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair, your good nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence toward human frailty. The grand penal bill. Returned to us from the other House. We are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. From being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. This is clear enough in meaning, but the class should notice the suggestion of the biblical phrase which insinuates that a good deal of the political fluctuation which has complicated the question of the treatment of the colonies has been like the hysterical instability of those who run after every fresh eccentricity offered in the name of religion. I really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh principles to seek upon every fresh mail that should arrive from America. It is in your equity to judge. Parliament, having an enlarged view of objects. A situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name. That the public tribunal (never too indulgent to a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity. We must produce our hand. Somewhat disreputably. The whole oration is studded with passages such as these, and it is the habit of too many instructors to expect the student to depend upon notes for the solution of such difficulties. I have already indicated that I believe this to be an unwise and weakening process; and in a political document of this sort a drill for elucidating difficulties may well be undertaken when in an imaginative work more latitude may be allowed in the way of sliding over them. The reading of the speech as a whole could hardly be attempted with any profit until the class has mastered its technicalities and its logic. The oration differs in this from more imaginative literature. Here it is not only proper but necessary to make analysis part of the first reading.