When not a flow'ret bends its little stalk

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(Save where the bee alights upon the bloom), There, rapt in gratitude, in joy, and love,

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The man of God will pass the Sabbath noon;

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Silence his praise, his disembodied thoughts
Loosed from the load of words), will high ascend

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Beyond the empyrean.'

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-The Worship of God in the Solitude of the
Woods.-JAMES GRAHAME, 1765–1811.

This passage from Othello gives us an excellent exercise on the "orotund":

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Even so my murderous* thoughts with violent pace Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,

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Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up."

-Othello, Act 3, Sc. 3.

§ 2.-ABRUPT FORCE.

This is the sign of anger, wrath, danger, etc. Public speakers of all sorts, clergymen, actors, orators, etc., almost all suffer sooner or later, when ignorant of the

* This word is substituted for "bloody," which is the true reading.

correct mode of using "abrupt force." They strain their voices to such an extent in passionate utterance, that very soon the voice "breaks," or inflammatory and other affections of the bronchiæ are induced which soon incapacitate the unfortunates for public speaking of any kind. Their mistake is in endeavoring to give abrupt force with the throat and head voices, instead of the chest voice, which should be used the same as in the orotund. For the cultivation of this particular intonation, instead of the "swell" of the "orotund," the word is "exploded" with equal force at one impulse; the vowels are all short, given instantaneously, and each consonant rendered with intensity-if I may so express it.

If in the exercise which follows the pupil wills that his voice come from the lowest part of the chest, and that each word be expelled with one sudden heaving of the diaphragm, he will find that he has at his command a quality of voice for expressing passion, which he may use ad libitum and for almost any length of time, without feeling fatigue, and with no danger of tearing "passion to tatters to very rags-to split the ears of the groundlings."

The queen says:

"By heaven! I will acquaint his majesty Of those gross taunts I often have received!”

Exercise:-(Vowels all abrupt like this: "What? threat you me," etc.)

Gloster. What? threat you me with telling of the king?

Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said
I will avouch, in presence of the king:

Ere you were queen, aye, or your husband king,
I was a pack horse in his great affairs.
A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
A liberal rewarder of his friends;

In all which time, you and your husband
Grey, were factious for the house of Lancaster
And Rivers! so were you !

A flourish, trumpets; strike alarum, drums!

*

*

Strike, I say!"

-Richard III., Act 1, Sc. 3.

Exercise:

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king! Confusion on thy banners wait;

Though fanned by conquest's crimson wing,

They mock the air with idle state.

Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!"

-The Bard.-THOMAS GRAY.

The following is an exercise for the practice of abrupt force; but it is of equal importance in the exercise it gives us for the recovery of the voice on a low key, after reaching a climax on a high key. The first sentence as far as "fiend" is pronounced on a low key with mere force (not abrupt); then on a higher key, with abrupt force, as far as "anything"; then recover the voice on a low key at "that's due," rising higher

and higher until "come" has been pronounced. Now recover the low key at "O," rise higher and higher, recover the low key at "some" (giving the next two words on the same key), raise the voice slightly at "thou," reaching gradually the highest point of the "chest voice"; after the word "amend" recover the low key; raise it again at "I am," etc.; ́ recover low key at "villain-like"; raise the key somewhat on "lesser," thence descend gradually to a very low tone, at which finish.

Post. Ay, so thou dost,

(Coming forward.)

Italian fiend!—Ah me, most credulous fool,
Egregious murderer, thief, any thing

That's due to all the villain's past, in being.
To come !-O, give me cord, or knife, or poison,
Some upright justicer! Thou, king, send out
For torturers ingenious; it is I

That all the abhorred things of the earth amend,
By being worse than they. I am Posthumus,
That kill'd thy daughter:-villain-like, I lie;
That caused a lesser villain than myself,
A sacrilegious thief, to do't.

§ 3.-CLIMAX.

This means "ascent"; it is a figure in rhetoric in which a sentence rises as it were step by step; or a series of sentences or particulars rise in importance or dignity to the close, and the voice must correspond with this upward progress and increased power by

rising in "pitch" and in "force." "Casura," as applied here, means "the pause" which we make in reading, in order to call attention to, and to give weight to the clause immediately following.

I append several examples for the practice of "climax." After a climax has been reached on any sentence or series of sentences, the voice resumes on a very much lower key.

"A hungry, lean-faced villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A thread-bare juggler and a "fortune-teller":
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,

climax.

A living dead-man]:—this pernicious slave
Forsooth took on him las a conjuror],
And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as 'twere outfacing me,

Cries out (caesura)-I was possessed!"

"And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip,

A critic; nay, a night-watch constable;

climax.

A domineering pedant-o'er the boy,
Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

This wimpled,* whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior], [giant-dwarf-Dan Cupid,
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets,† king of codpieces,

* Hooded.

+ Petticoats.