Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

expression of the feeling produced by the occasion. Notice in this fact the necessary difference between a spoken production and one that is merely written for publication. (Compare also with Patrick Henry's speech (CXXXV.), in point of impassioned energy.)

XII.-ODE.

1. How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blessed!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mold,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

2. By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung.
There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,

To dwell a weeping hermit there!

William Collins.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. Read an account of the adventures of the author (want of recognition, wretched death, etc.). Have you read (and committed to memory) any of his "Odes, Descriptive and Allegorical"? (published in 1746, and considered to be the best lyrical poems of the language). II. Fin'-ğer (fing'ger), hål'-lowed, knĕll (něl), grāy (grey).

III. Meaning of un and final n in unseen ;—er in sweeter?
IV. Dirge, hermit, hallowed, pilgrim, deck, dress.

V. Personification of spring, fancy, honor, freedom; in what guise is each conceived? "Turf that wraps their clay "-note the appropriateness of the metaphor implied, like a "martial cloak " in which a warrior "takes his rest" (Burial of Sir John Moore). Find points of contrast and resemblance between this piece and the one preceding (in dignity of style, atmosphere of feeling implied, choice of words, subject in the present surroundings, or in a large assembly, or merely ideal or general, etc.).

XIII. THE DEATH OF LE FEVRE.

1. My Uncle Toby went to his bureau, put his purse into his breeches pocket, and, having ordered the cor poral to go early in the morning for a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep.

2. The sun looked bright, the morning after, to every eye in the village but Le Fevre's and his afflicted son's. The hand of death pressed heavy upon his eyelids; and hardly could the wheel of the cistern turn round its circle, when my Uncle Toby, who had rose up at an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant's room, and without preface or apology sat himself down upon the chair at the bedside, and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain, in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked how he did, how he had rested in the night, what was his complaint, where was his pain, and what he could do to help him; and without giving time to answer any one of the inquiries, he went on and told. him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the corporal, the night before, for him.

3. "You shall go home directly, Le Fevre," said my Uncle Toby, "to my house; and we'll send for a doctor to see what's the matter; and we'll have an apothecary; and the corporal shall be your nurse; and I'll be your servant, Le Fevre."

4. There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul and showed you the goodness of his nature; to this, there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned

to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that before my Uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it toward him.

5. The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart, rallied back; the film forsook his eyes for a moment; he looked up wistfully in my Uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon his boy; and that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken.

6. Nature instantly ebbed again; the film returned to its place; the puise fluttered, stopped, went on, throbbed, stopped again, moved, stopped-shall I go on? No.

Laurence Sterne.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. Tell enough of the life of this author to explain the circumstances under which he wrote "Tristram Shandy."

II. Indicate (i. e., with diacritical marks, hyphens, and accents) and explain (i. e., classify according to the form given in the treatise on Spelling, in the Appendix) the unusual combinations of letters in bū'-reau (bū'-rō—eau for ō; oa, ou, ow, oe, oo, being more frequently used for ō, and ew, eo, and au, less so), eye'-lid (i'-), eûr'tain (-tin), in-quīr'-ies, a-pŏth'-e-ea-ry, fa-mil-iăr'-i-ty (-yǎr-), kneeş (neez), çîtʼ-a-del, lieū-těn'-art's (lū-), Le Fevre (le fāvr).

What should

III. Explain effect of 's in son's (§ 2)-son's what? we say instead of "had rose" (2)? Effect of super in superadded? Mention some other words in which super has the same meaning.

IV. Use synonymous expressions for wonted, preface, apology, ebbed, concerting, corporal, beckoned, insensibly, wistfully.

[ocr errors]

V. "Wheel of the cistern" (see Eccl. xii. 6). Notice the concise style in § 6. What is personified there? Who questions? Who answers No"? Describe in your own words the character of Uncle Toby from the glimpse of him given in this piece.

XIV. MATTER-OF-FACT AND EARNEST IDEAS.

FIRST CLASS: MATTER-OF-FACT IDEAS.

(Merely Intellectual, and without Feeling.)

All such unemotional ideas, whether narrative, descriptive, or didactic, whether in prose or verse, require, in reading, the same "moderate" degree of "force" and "time" and "slide" of voice. The general force should be just loud enough for every word to be easily heard, with just enough additional force and quantity and slide on the emphatic words, for the sense to be clearly understood.

EXAMPLE.

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the towncrier spoke my lines."

("Hamlet to the First Player," Shakespeare.)

Analysis. These are the words of Shakespeare (not of some other author), spoken by Hamlet (not by some one else), and to a particular person (the first player). These, then, are three important distinctive ideas, and must be emphasized in introducing the reading lesson.

The first distinctive point in Hamlet's request is not the general idea-"Speak the speech, I pray you”—for this is not new to either party, but is understood. Hamlet has asked the player, before, if he would study the speech, and he has consented.

It must be, then, the manner of speaking it. It can not be in the word "pronounced," for that is not a point of difference" pronounced" and "speak" having the same meaning. "Speak the speech as I spoke it to you,"

"Pronounce the speech as I pronounced it to you,"

makes no distinctive point of sense whatever. But "speak it as I`" (as Hamlet") "spoke it to you," is the distinctive point of the request. And this manner is made still more definite by the explanatory word which follows, viz., "trippingly on the tongue." "Tongue" must not

be emphasized, because it does not express a differential idea. Whatever the manner, it must be spoken “on the tongue," of course. "Mouth" stands out in sharp contrast to trippingly, and so is most emphatic; and the comparison of the "town-orier" presents a very distinct picture of the most monotonous and senseless elocution, and therefore must be emphasized accordingly.

The example, marked in accordance with the analysis given:

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth' it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines."

SECOND CLASS: EARNEST IDEAS.

All such as are spoken with more or less mental excitement and fervor, as in the warmth of debate, yet not characterized by any specific emotion.

To be read with "louder force" (the degree increasing with the growing earnestness), and with "longer" emphatic "quantity" and "slide," than matter-of-fact ideas require.

EXAMPLE.

"When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments.

"Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities

« ÎnapoiContinuă »