162 LITERARY VALUES 



There is something martial in eloquence, the roll 

 of the drum, the cry of the fife, the wheel and flash 

 of serried ranks. Its end is action ; it shapes events, 

 it takes captive the reason and the understanding. 

 Its basis is earnestness, vehemence, depth of convic- 

 tion. 



There is no eloquence without heat, and no po- 

 etry without light. An earnest man is more or less 

 an eloquent man. Eloquence belongs to the world 

 of actual affairs and events ; it is aroused by great 

 wrongs and great dangers, it flourishes in the forum 

 and the senate. Poetry is more private and personal, 

 is more for the soul and the religious instincts ; it 

 courts solitude and wooes the ideal. 



Anything swiftly told or described, the sense of 

 speed and volume, is, or approaches, eloquence ; 

 while anything heightened and deepened, any mean- 

 ing and beauty suddenly revealed, is, or approaches, 

 poetry. Hume says of the eloquence of Demosthe- 

 nes, " It is rapid harmony, exactly adjusted to the 

 sense. It is vehement reasoning without any ap- 

 pearance of art ; it is disdain, anger, boldness, free- 

 dom, involved in a continual stream of argument." 



The passions of eloquence and poetry differ in this 

 respect ; one is reason inflamed, the other is imagi- 

 nation kindled. 



Any object of magnitude in swift motion, a horse 

 at the top of his speed, a regiment of soldiers on the 

 double quick, a train of cars under full way, moves 

 us in a way that the same object at rest does not. 

 The great secret of eloquence is to set mass in mo- 



