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Chapter 7 Let us go back to the. . .in the last chapter. It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you in petto, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pinkd doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot- ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle potbut above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.Tho if it was too young, and the oration as long as Tullys second Philippickit must certainly have beshit the orators mantle.And then again, if too old,it must have been unwieldly and incommodious to his actionso as to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a minutehid his Bambino in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell itand produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shouldersOh Sirs! it has done wondersIt has opend the sluices, and turnd the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation. These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantlesand pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, superfine, marketable cloth in themwith large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great style of design.All which plainly shews, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose.We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing. |
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