Notwithstanding this limitation, there can be no question that in the oratory of debate the Greeks taught the Romans, then through them Mediæval Europe, then after the Renaissance, modern Europe directly, so that even now they are the acknowledged masters in this splendid art. It is all the more astonishing, as we might naturally think that a society without printing and consequently without a great reading public would not have aimed at producing an eloquence which was not only splendid to read when the heat of controversy was allayed, but worthy of study and of analysis by the critics of succeeding generations. Nevertheless, with no better means of publication for readers than manuscript copies, and without any hope of great celebrity, or of great profit as the authors of written speeches, these Greeks produced work which has perfectly stood the test even of new and exacting conditions. In spite of their limited public, the orators had attained to as clear a notion as we have of the importance of appealing to a reading and thinking public which could study their arguments and their style at full leisure, and so, not content with the orations primarily intended for delivery, they also perfected the prose essay, and even the prose dialogue, a very peculiar form of literature, inasmuch as it is the literary stereotyping of an apparently spontaneous conversation. But when I speak of a reading public, perhaps I should limit it somewhat, and say a public accustomed to hear reading aloud. That is the intermediate stage between a mere audience and the mere readers of books. I am quite accustomed to that intermediate stage in Ireland. You may see there any day groups of people hearing a newspaper or book read out, and if the great body of the public is of this class, then the writer must think not only of what he has to say but how it will sound when read aloud. I take the same principle to have animated the composers of the splendid English Book of Common Prayer. They desired to affect the hearer not only by the sentiment, but by the sound of their Liturgy. Now this is the very step in prose writing which was taken by the Greek students of eloquence, and most notably by Isocrates, the father of the political prose essay in Europe. There were no doubt accidental or personal causes which conspired to this result at this moment. Isocrates, with great natural gifts for style and for composition, was wholly deficient in voice and in physique for the profession of public speaking, nor had he the extraordinary energy and perseverance shown by Demosthenes in overcoming these defects. So it occurred to him that he might exercise his influence by prose writing in the form of open letters or political pamphlets, where he puts his thoughts into the most polished periods and the most refined language.