Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

weights, who had never been accused of light conduct, used all their influence in urging the pendulum to proceed."

Peculiar significance: "Mark you his absolute shall?
-They chose their magistrate:

And such a one as he, who puts his shâll,
His popular shâll, against a graver bench
Than ever frown'd in Greece!"

"Let any man resolve to do right now, leaving then to do as it can; and if he were to live to the age of Methuselah, he would never do wrong."

RULE ON THE MONOTONE:

The tones of sublime or grand description, of rev erence and awe, of horror and amazement, require the monotone.

Examples.

Sublime description:"his form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd, and the excess
Of glory obscur'd; as when the sun new rīsen
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams, ōr from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations, and.with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs."

Reverence: "And chiefly thou, Ō Spirit! that dōst prefer,

Befōre all temples, the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou knowest :".

Awe: "The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain

While I gāze upward to thee.-It would seem

As though Gōd pour'd thee from his hōllow hand,
And spake in that loud voice which seem'd to him
Who dwelt in Patmos, för his Saviour's sake,
The sound of many waters, and hād bīd
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,

And notch his centuries in the eternal rock,"

Horror: "I had a dream which was not all a dream:
The bright sun was extinguish'd; and the stars
Did wänder darkling in the ēternal space,
Rayless and pathless; and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;"— Amazement :- "What may this mean,

That thou dead cōrse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous ?" *

ERRORS IN INFLECTION.

The common errors in inflection, are the following: 1st, too frequent repetition of the rising inflection; thus,

"As we perceive the shadow to have moved, but did not perceive its moving; so our advances in leárning, consisting of insensible stéps, are only perceivable by the distance."

The puerile and feeble tone thus given to the above sentence, will be corrected by substituting the falling inflection on the words 'moved' and 'learning,' which produces a natural and spirited variety of expression.

2. The opposite error is not uncommon-that of using too often the falling inflection, which gives reading a formal and laboured tone; thus,

"As we perceive the shadow to have moved, but did not perceive its moving; so the advances we make in learning, consisting of insensible stèps, are only perceivable by the distance."

The heavy effect of this reading will be removed by using the rising inflection at 'moving' and 'steps.'

The principle of the monotone seems to be founded on the conviction that no mere vocal distinction, or turn of sound, is adequate to express the highest conceptions or the profoundest emotions of the soul. The monotone indicates, as it were, the temporary inability of the voice for its usual function. This very circumstance, however, as it ultimately associates sublimity or unwonted excitement, with the utterance of one reiterated note, gives the monotone a peculiar and indescribable power.

3. A third error consists in omitting the contrasts of inflection in antithesis: thus,

"Life is short, and art is lòng."

"Homer was the greater gènius, Virgil the better àrtist."

This fault destroys the spirit of the contrast; the effect of which depends entirely on giving opposite inflections to the words 'short' and 'long,' 'genius' and 'artist.' The more sharply these inflections are pointed against each other, the more vivid becomes the contrast in the sense.

4. A fourth error is that of drawing up the voice to a note unnecessarily high, in the rising inflection, and consequently of sinking equally low, on the falling inflection.

The fault thus created is that of an artificial and mechanical style of reading, constituting the chief difference between formal tones and those which are natural. This defect may be exemplified by reading the following sentences with the tones of question and answer, at the places which are designated by the rising and falling inflections.

"As the beauty of the body always accompanies the health of it, (?) so is decency of behaviour a concomitant of virtue."

"Formed to excel in peace as well as in wár, (?) Cæsar possessed many great and noble quàlities."

This fault would be removed by substituting, for the excessive rising slide, the moderate inflection of suspended sense, which rises but little above the current level of the voice; as may be observed by contrasting the artificial slides of what is sometime stigmatized as a 'reading' tone, with the natural and easy turns of conversation.

5. A fault still more objectionable than any that has been mentioned, is that of using the circumflex instead of the simple inflecions, especially in con

trasts.

This error is exemplified in the peculiar local accent

of New England; thus, Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Căin was a tiller of the ground."

This faulty tone substitutes double for single inflections. The true reading would be marked thus; Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cáin was a tiller of the ground.

[ocr errors]

The effect of the erroneous inflection, is peculiarly unhappy; as it forms a tone properly associated with irony, sarcasm, burlesque, punning, and all other forms of 'equivoque,' or with the intention of imparting an unusual significance to a particular word or phrase, as when the speaker or reader is peculiarly anxious to be correctly understood in a nice distinction of sense. The morbid jerk of voice with which emphasis is thus imparted, disturbs the natural current of utterance, by a multiplicity of unnecessary and unnatural angular turnings. The true melody of speech is thus lost in a false and arbitrary intonation, which has no sanction but the accidental prevalence of a local custom.

The source of the above error being an undue anxiety about emphasis, the fault in accent would be cured by adhering strictly to simplicity and directness in emphatic expression, and using the single rising and falling inflections in all cases of ordinary antithesis or simple force of utterance.

SUGGESTIONS FOR PRACTICE.*

It is not unusual with learners to experience a difficulty in discriminating between the rising and the falling inflection in certain passages. The pupil may, in such cases, be required to throw the given clause into the form of a question, so as to catch more readily the distinction to be made in correct reading.

In the sentence, "Life is short, and art is long," the question would run thus, "Must I say, Life is short? or Life is short?"-the slide which is wanted, occurs not in the latter, but in the former tone.--If the pupil still finds it difficult to apply the true inflection,

*The remarks under this head, though primarily designed for the assistance of teachers of young pupils, may prove useful as aids to the correction of personal faults in adults.

he may repeat the former question, "Must I say, Life is short?" and immediately say, in the same tone of voice, "Life is short." (?)

When the learner is in doubt as to which inflection he has actually used in practice, the question may be, "Did I say, Life is short? or Life is shòrt?"-If the slide which was adopted, echoes to the latter of these questions, the wrong inflection was given; and the example should be repeated with nearly the tone which would be employed in asking the question, "Must I say, Life is short?"-the interrogatory part of which the pupil may put to himself mentally, reading aloud only the words, "Life is short."

This point of discrimination is very important; and the table of contrasted inflections should be diligently practised, till every example can be readily and correctly given.

The fault of using one inflection uniformly, and that of overdoing both inflections, enumerated on a preceding page, as the 1st, 2d, and 4th errors of common usage, may be removed by selecting a passage of familiar narrative, and requiring the pupil to shut the book occasionally, and address the language to the teacher, as using it in conversation with him.

Exercises such as this become doubly important, in consequence of the mechanical methods usually adopted in teaching the elements of reading, and the utter want of adaptation to their purposes, in the books commonly employed in this department of education. Reading books, it is true, have, within a few years, undergone great improvements in this respect. But most are still quite defective in this particular, that they contain what adults wish to inculcate on children, and not what children naturally incline to express.

Many current books of this description, are too formal and artificial; and many, if not most of the pieces which they contain, actually require those forced and didactic tones which prematurely ruin the elocution of boys, and prevent the possibility of a natural eloquence in men.

Similar results follow the equally absurd practice of making young boys 'declaim' from political ha

« AnteriorContinuar »