ON ELOCUTION. 
499 
describing the way in which he was wont to exhibit himself when 
called upon to speak in public, on a subject even perfectly well 
known to him, and his astonishment and despair at his failure, 
took pains to comfort him, and to explain what he must learn and 
do to make him eventually successful. In doing so he specially 
directed his attention to study and thought ; the acceptance of 
advice and instruction from the cognoscent ; the abolition of self- 
consciousness and mauvaise honte ; and practise, by speaking and 
reading to the poor, or to his family, but not to cabbages. (Here he 
introduced an anecdote from " Menagiana," of a poor student 
who, having been accustomed to practise his Latin oration before 
rows of that esculent in his garden, broke down in presence of the 
dons of his university, with the despairing exclamation, " Domini, 
bene video quod non estis caules." My Lords ! I well perceive 
that you are not cabbages.) Conceding that practice might be 
difficult for a man who had no family, |nor other human corpus vile 
upon which he could inflict it, he cited Demosthenes declaiming 
to the " sad sea waves Moliere to his housekeeper; and his 
Scotch tutor to cows and rabbits, as personages who were fully 
aware of its value, and resorted to different remarkable ways of 
carrying it out. 
Having adverted to the apparent ease with which a Parisian 
workman, or Neapolitan Lazzarone, made a speech on a congenial 
subject, when an average Briton, similarly situated, would fail, 
the lecturer attributed the fact to the freedom of such foreigners 
from fear of ridicule and mauvaise honte, and observed that it 
suggested another reason for the Briton's dislike to elocution ; 
viz., his uneasiness at hearing others successfully perform that 
which he shrank from attempting himself. In reinforcement of 
this suggestion, he stated, that the same had been the case with 
the pursuit of music, by men, fifty years ago, when he heard an 
officer of the 10th Hussars tell a comrade, who was talking en- 
thusiastically of his piano, not to mention such a machine, because 
he could not help thinking any man who played upon it a beast. 
Congratulating his hearers upon the change which had taken 
place in regard to music since that time, he declared that during 
the intervening period, he had often felt great astonishment at the 
equal dislike shown by his countrymen for public reading, which 
he had always considered to be a most charming intellectual 
pleasure. He added, however, that he saw signs of a satisfactory 
