The Book Of Public Speaking, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies Volume 1-5 (1913) Rare

Books are in very good condition.

Individual Book Size: 24 x 5 x 17cm

Book Set Size: 25 x 24 x 17cm

Total Weight: 4.2 KGS

THE art of public speaking is one thingeloquence is another.

Often one hears successful examples of the former far removed from the latter. The mere ability to speak fluently is not uncommon, but far more important than the mere flow of language is the power of putting forward convincingly the views and opinions which the speaker desires to impart. When to that ability is added the gift of polished and fluent diction, the added attraction of real eloquence, then one has the orator, although there are singularly few in the present age who can truthfully lay claim to that distinction.

By the very nature of things real eloquence must be a diminishing quantity, and the dominating factor driving to that end is the growing cult of unemotionalism broadening widespread down through the Universities and Public Schools to the great middle-class. To-day the appeal is to the intellect, to the reason of one's audience.

The growing change in the fashion of our speaking is nowhere more plainly evidenced than in our Courts of Law.

Advocates are practised and professional speakers paid on each occasion to achieve by their powers of speech a particular end. It must be a foregone conclusion that they will endeavour to use the methods of speech which experience shows to be most successful. Only those who frequent the Courts can properly realize how seldom one hears the least attempt to employ the effect of mere language. Sheer earnestness sometimes carries an advocate before a jury into the appearance of a resort to eloquence, but such a state almost always is unintentional and unpremeditated. It is only in the ordinary pubic political meeting and when there is a tendency for the intellect to be subordinated to the loyalty of party feeling, that enthusiasm can be raised by the emotionalism of eloquence.

The growth of cynicism and the repression of emotion are having a striking effect on public speaking in this country.

The oratory of half a century ago is dead; the tearing eloquence of the Midlothian campaign has given place to the reasoned skill of Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asquith, and Mr. Bonar Law. Lord Rosebery is a lonely survivor of that greater age, unless Mr.

Redmond can be bracketed with him.