Practical English Composition · Part 11

II

EDINBURGH, Sept. 20, 1887.--Edmund Burke was the theme of a lecture delivered last night before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society by Mr. Augustine Birrell. "Nobody is fit to govern this country who has not drunk deep at the springs of Burke," said Mr. Birrell, and he backed up this contention with a wealth of wit and argument which delighted and convinced his audience.

The following is a summary of his lecture: "To give a full account of Burke's public life is no part of my plan. I propose merely to sketch his early career, to explain why he never obtained a seat in the cabinet, and to essay an analysis of the essential elements of his greatness. Born in 1729 in Dublin, he grew up with a brother who speculated and a sister of a type who never did any man any serious harm; acquired at school a brogue which death alone could silence; at Trinity College, Dublin, became an omnivorous reader; came in 1750 to London to study law, armed with a cultivated curiosity and no desperate determination to make his fortune; immediately, like the sensible Irishman he was, fell in love with Peg Woffington; for six years rambled everywhere his purse permitted, read everything he could lay his hands on, and talked everlastingly; in 1756 published an 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,' and married Miss Jane Mary Nugent; in 1758 dared at David Garrick's dinner table to contradict Dr. Johnson; in 1765 became a member of Parliament; and for the next sixteen years was the life and soul of the Whig party. When that party, in 1782, finally came into power, Burke's only reward, however, was a minor office, a fact which, in view of his great merits, has amazed posterity. The explanation is that his contemporaries probably knew him, not as a commanding genius, but as an Irishman who was always in debt, whose relatives were rather disreputable, whose judgment was often wrong, and whose temper was violent. His significance for us grows from the fact that he applied the imagination of a poet of the first order to the business of life. He saw organized society steadily and saw it whole. Perceiving that only a thin crust of conventionality protects organized society from the volcanic heats of anarchy, he was afraid of reformers. He could not agree to dispense with the protection afforded by the huge mountains of prejudice and the ancient rivers of custom. He was the High Priest of Order. He loved justice and hated iniquity. The world needs his wisdom to-day."

Mr. Birrell's lecture was full of good phrases. For instance:

1. We have the spectacle of Burke in his old age, like another Laocoön, writhing and wrestling with the French Revolution.

2. Lubricating religious differences with the sweet oil of the domestic affections.

3. Quaint old landladies wonder maternally why he never gets drunk, and generally mistake him for an author until he pays his bill.

4. I love him for letting me warm my hands at it (his wrath at Gerard Hamilton) after a lapse of a hundred and twenty years.

5. His letters to Arthur Young on the subject of carrots still tremble with emotion.

6. This is magnificent, but it is not farming.

V. Queries

1. What part of the task of reporting a speech is easy? Why?

2. Wherein lies its difficulty?

3. What are the three essentials of a good report?

4. What is the commonest fault in reporting speeches?

5. What arrangement of material is suggested?

6. How many main ideas should a speech contain?

7. Name and describe the six parts of a speech.

8. Are any of them ever omitted? When, how, and by whom?

9. Discuss the value of argument in a lecture.

10. Who was Demosthenes?

11. When did the battle of Lexington occur?

12. Discuss the etymology of "Parliament."

13. Explain the subject of each paragraph in Model I.

14. Divide Paragraph 3, Model I, into the six parts of a complete speech.

15. What are the important places in a sentence? Did the writer of these models recognize this fact?

16. Find a metaphor in Model I. An alliteration. An antithesis.

17. Point out the Four W's, and discuss the sentence structure.

18. What is the subject of each paragraph in Model II?

19. Write a note of fifty words on Augustine Birrell.

20. Explain the nature and location of Ireland, Wales, Chester, Durham, Dublin, Edinburgh, London.

21. Who were David Garrick and Dr. Johnson?

22. Why did Burke stand no higher with his contemporaries?

23. Explain the nature of Burke's importance to the world to-day.

24. Have the British adopted his principles in the management of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa?

25. Explain the figure of speech in each quotation in the last paragraph of Model II.

26. Find in Paragraph 2 of Model II a metaphor and an antithesis.

27. How many of the six parts of a speech can you find in Lincoln's Gettysburg speech?

VI. Composition

Hear and report a speech. If this appears to be undesirable or impossible, the teacher may read one to the class. The following are suggested:

1. Macaulay's Speech on Education. 2. One of the lectures in Thackeray's English Humorists or Four Georges. 3. Phillips's Toussaint L'Ouverture. 4. Webster's Bunker Hill Speeches. 5. Lincoln's Peoria Speech against Douglas. 6. One of Birrell's Obiter Dicta Lectures.

Others equally good will probably suggest themselves.

VII. Suggested Time Schedule[6]

Week I Week II

Monday--I, II, III. V, 15-27. Tuesday--IV, 1. Oral Composition. Wednesday--IV, 2. Oral Composition. Thursday--V, 1-14. Written Composition. Friday--Speaking. Speaking.

[6] SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS:

1. Inspect notebooks frequently.

2. Do not forget home-reading.

3. Be careful to assign a definite task each day.

4. Do not forget the minutes of the previous meeting.

5. Call on everybody every day, even if it is only to recite one line of a poem.

6. Don't do the reciting yourself. Give the class a chance. Make them assume responsibility. Require them to rewrite themes until they are perfect in technique, but do not bother too much to point out their errors. Let the pupils discover them.

7. Chapters V, VI, and XII of Book I should be reviewed at frequent intervals until their contents become as familiar as the alphabet. This result can be obtained only by time and persistency. Before it is reached, the average pupil will have learned and forgotten over and over again the material involved. These chapters may sometimes be reviewed as wholes, but it is also well to take a small section of each daily.

VIII. Memorize

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved and forever grew still!

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentiles, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord. LORD BYRON.

CHAPTER XII

DRAMATIC NOTICES

"To hold the mirror up to Nature." SHAKESPEARE.

I. Assignment

Write a notice of one of the plays now on the local stage.

II. Explanation

To keep its readers informed of the character of the plays being presented at local theaters is one of the functions of the newspaper. If the play is a classic, only the quality of the acting need be discussed. If it is new, the notice should also include a description of the play and of its merit. Fortunately, this can always be determined by one simple test--a test suggested by no less a critic than William Shakespeare: Does it hold the mirror up to nature? Does it give, in other words, an accurate picture of life? The stage, it may be added, always has been and is now infested by many so-called plays which are not plays at all, but mere conglomerations of more or less (usually less) moral and amusing jokes and antics. The events which some of them depict could occur neither on the earth, in the sky above the earth, nor in the waters underneath the earth. From others it would be impossible to cut out any character or scene without improving the whole. They fill the theater with people and the manager's pocket-book with money, but they are not plays.

III. Models

I

The Melting Pot comes to New York with a Chicago indorsement and the authority lent by the name of Mr. Israel Zangwill, as author. Mr. Zangwill's theme is that the United States is a crucible in which all the races and nationalities of the world are to be fused into one glorious people.

As a play The Melting Pot has the intellectual tone to be expected from Mr. Zangwill. It also has really poetic touches. In humor it is less successful. In dramatic construction it is faulty, as are so many of the contemporary plays which try to teach or preach something.