For this author, who was not any less shrewd than the one whose
methods we have just been observing a little, had also early
discovered in the great personages of his time, a disposition to
moderate his voice whenever he went to speak to them on matters of
importance, in his natural key, for his voice too, was naturally loud,
and high as he gives us to understand, though he '_could_ speak small
like a woman'; he too had learned to take the tone _from the ear of
him to whom he spake_, and he too had learned, that it was not enough
merely to speak so as to make himself heard by those whom he wished to
affect. He also had learned to speak according to the affair he had in
hand, according to the purpose which he wished to accomplish. He also
is of the opinion that different kinds of _audiences_ and different
_times_, require different modes of speech, and though he found it
necessary to compose his works in the style and language of his own
time, he was confident that it was a language which would not remain
in use for many ages; and he has therefore provided himself with
another, more to his mind which he has taken pains to fold carefully
within the other, and one which lie thinks will bear the wear and tear
of those revolutions that he perceives to be imminent.
But in consequence of our persistent oversight of this Art of
Tradition, on which he relies so much, (which is as fine an invention
of his, as any other of his inventions which we find ourselves so much
the better for), that appeal to 'the times that are farther off,' has
not yet taken effect, and the audience for whom he chiefly laboured is
still 'deferred.'
This so noble and benign art which he calls, with his own natural
modesty and simplicity, the Art of _Tradition_, this art which grows
so truly noble and worthy, so distinctively human, in his clear,
scientific treatment of it,--in his scientific clearance of it from
the wildnesses and spontaneities of accident, or the superfluities and
trickery of an art without science,--that stops short of the ultimate,
the human principle,--this so noble art of speech or tradition is,
indeed, an art which this great teacher and leader of men will think
it no scorn to labour: it is one on which, even such a teacher can
find time to stop; it is one which even such a teacher can stop to
build from the foundation upwards, he will not care how splendidly; it
is one on which he will spend without stint, and think it gain to
spend, the wealth of his invention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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