. We are
therefore authorized to represent, advise, and remonstrate; and your
reason must tell you that you ought to attend to and believe us.

I am credibly informed, that there is still a considerable hitch or
hobble in your enunciation; and that when you speak fast you sometimes
speak unintelligibly. I have formerly and frequently laid my thoughts
before you so fully upon this subject, that I can say nothing new upon it
now. I must therefore only repeat, that your whole depends upon it. Your
trade is to speak well, both in public and in private. The manner of your
speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to
be tickled, than understandings to judge. Be your productions ever so
good, they will be of no use, if you stifle and strangle them in their
birth. The best compositions of Corelli, if ill executed and played out
of tune, instead of touching, as they do when well performed, would only
excite the indignation of the hearer's, when murdered by an unskillful
performer. But to murder your own productions, and that 'coram Populo',
is a MEDEAN CRUELTY, which Horace absolutely forbids. Remember of what
importance Demosthenes, and one of the Gracchi, thought ENUNCIATION; and
read what stress Cicero and Quintilian lay upon it; even the herb-women
at Athens were correct judges of it. Oratory, with all its graces, that
of enunciation in particular, is full as necessary in our government as
it ever was in Greece or Rome. No man can make a fortune or a figure in
this country, without speaking, and speaking well in public. If you will
persuade, you must first please; and if you will please, you must tune
your voice to harmony, you must articulate every syllable distinctly,
your emphasis and cadences must be strongly and properly marked; and the
whole together must be graceful and engaging: If you do not speak in that
manner, you had much better not speak at all. All the learning you have,
or ever can have, is not worth one groat without it. It may be a comfort
and an amusement to you in your closet, but can be of no use to you in
the world. Let me conjure you, therefore, to make this your only object,
till you have absolutely conquered it, for that is in your power; think
of nothing else, read and speak for nothing else. Read aloud, though
alone, and read articulately and distinctly, as if you were reading in
public, and on the most important occasion. Recite pieces of eloquence,
declaim scenes of tra