286 



ON VOICE AND LANGUAGE; 



could conceal a confederate, even if such a person should be in employ- 

 ment. No sooner, however, had they met than the old banker's ears were 

 again assailed with the same hideous and sepulchral cries, upbraiding him 

 for having suffered his father to remam for four and twenty hours longer in 

 all the torments of purgatory ; denouncing that, unless the demand of the 

 ten thousand crowns was instantly complied with, the sum would be 

 doubled ; and that the miser himself would be condemned to the same 

 doleful regions, and to an increased degree of torture. M . Cornu moved 

 a few paces forward, but he was assaulted with still louder shrieks : he ad- 

 vanced a second time, and now, instead of hearing his father's voice alone, 

 he was assailei! with the dreadful outcry of a hundred ghosts at once, those 

 of his grandfather, his grea^ grandfather, his uncles and aunts, and the 

 whole family of the Cornus for the last two or three generations ; who, it 

 seems, were all ecjually suifering in purgatory — and were included in the 

 genera] contract for the ten thousand crowns ; all of them beseeching him 

 in the name of every saint in the calendar to have mfercy upon them, and 

 to have mercy upon himself. It required more fortitude than M. Cornu 

 possessed to resist f ^ ■ ihreats and outcries of a hundred and fifty or two 

 hundred ghosts at a ?ine. He instantly paid the ten thousand crov/ns 

 into the hands of Lov« 's Brabant, and felt some pleasure that by postponing 

 the payment for a day, he had at least been able to rescue the whole family 

 of the Cornus for the same sum of money as was at first demanded for 

 his father alone. The dexterous ventriloquist, having received the money, 

 instantly reiurned to Paris, married his intended bride, and told the whole 

 story to his sovereign and the court, very much to the entertainment of 

 all of them. 



It is certain, that hitherto no satisfactory explanation has been offered of 

 this singular phaenomenon ; and I shall, therefore, take leave to suggest, 

 that it is, possibly, of a much simpler character than has usually been ap- 

 prehended ; that the entire range of its imitative power is confined to the 

 larynx alone, and that the art itself consists in a close attention to the almost 

 infinite variety of tones, articulations, and inflections the larynx is capable 

 of producing in its own region, when long and dexterously practised upon, 

 and a skilful modificaiion of these effects into mimic speech, passed for the 

 most part, and whenever necessary, through the cavity oi the nostrils, in- 

 stee J of through the mouth. The parrot, in imitating human language, 

 employs the larynx and nothing else ; as does the mocking-bird, the most 

 perfect ventriloquist in nature, in imitating cries and intonations of all kinds. 



But the parrot and the mocking-bird, it may, perhaps, be said, open their 

 mouths, and employ their tongues, which the ventriloquist, on many occa- 

 sions, does not do ; and that hence the organ of the tongue is equally ne- 

 cessary to inarticulate and to articulate language. 



Such, I well know, is the general opinion ; but it is an opinion opposed , 

 by a variety of incontrovertible facts, and facts of a most important and sin- 

 gular nature, though they have seldom been attended to as they deserve. 



Every bird-breeder knows that it is not necessary for birds to open tlieir 

 bills in the act of singing, except for the purpose of uttering the note already 

 formed in the larynx, that would otherwise have to pass through the nostrils, 

 which, in birds, prove a much less convenient passage for sound than in 

 man ; and of so little use is the tongue towards the formation of sound, that 

 instances are not wanting of birds that have continued their song after they 

 have lost the entire tongue by accident or disease. But without dweUing » 

 upon these points, which are of subordinate consideration, I pass on to 

 observe, and to produce examples^ that it is not absolutely necessarv for 



