s
general confidence in the grandeur of man's nature, the magnificence
of his conceptions, the immensity of his aspirations, &c., delivered
himself thus:--'By the greatness of human ideals--by the greatness of
human aspirations--by the immortality of human creations--_by the
Iliad_--_by the Odyssey_'--Now, that _was_ bold, startling, sublime.
But, in the other case, neither was the oath invested with any great
pomp of imagery or expression; nor, if it had--which is more to the
purpose--was such an oath at all representative of the peculiar manner
belonging to Demosthenes. It is always a rude and inartificial style
of criticism to cite from an author that which, whether fine or not in
itself, is no fair specimen of his ordinary style.

What then _is_ the characteristic style of Demosthenes?--It is one
which grew naturally, as did his defects (by which I mean faults of
_omission_, in contradiction to such as are positive), from the
composition of his audience. His audience, comprehending so much
ignorance, and, above all, so much high-spirited impatience, being, in
fact, always on the fret, kept the orator always on the fret. Hence
arose short sentences; hence, the impossibility of the long,
voluminous sweeps of beautiful rhythmus which we find in Cicero;
hence, the animated form of apostrophe and crowded interrogations
addressed to the audience. This gives, undoubtedly, a spirited and
animated character to the style of Demosthenes; but it robs him of a
large variety of structure applied to the logic, or the embellishment,
or the music of his composition. His style is full of life, but not
(like Cicero's) full of pomp and continuous grandeur. On the contrary,
as the necessity of rousing attention, or of sustaining it, obliged
the Attic orator to rely too much on the _personality_ of direct
question to the audience, and to use brief sentences, so also the same
impatient and fretful irritability forbade him to linger much upon an
idea--to theorise, to speculate, or, generally, to quit the direct
business path of the question then under consideration--no matter for
what purpose of beauty, dignity, instruction, or even of _ultimate_
effect. In all things, the _immediate_--the instant--the _praesens
praesentissimum_, was kept steadily before the eye of the Athenian
orator, by the mere coercion of self-interest.

And hence, by the way, arises one most important feature of
distinction between Grecian oratory (political oratory