Never was the chief of a party, sect or government, even at critical
moments, such an incurable, insignificant rhetorician, so formal, so
pompous, and so dull. - On the eve of the 9th of Thermidor, when it
was a question of life or death, he enters the tribune with a set
speech, written and re-written, polished and re-polished,[92]
overloaded with studied ornaments and bits for effect,[93] coated by
dint of time and labor, with the academic varnish, the glitter of
symmetrical antitheses, rounded periods, exclamations, omissions,
apostrophes and other tricks of the pen.[94] - In the most famous and
important of his reports,[95] I have counted eighty-four instances of
personifications[96] imitated from Rousseau and the antique, many of
them largely expanded, some addressed to the dead, to Brutus, to young
Barra, and others to absentees, priests, and aristocrats, to the
unfortunate, to French women, and finally to abstract substantives
like Liberty and Friendship. With unshaken conviction and intense
satisfaction, he deems himself an orator because he harps on the same
old tune. There is not one true tone in his elaborate eloquence,
nothing but recipes and only those of a worn-out art, Greek and Roman
common-places, Socrates and the hemlock, Brutus and his dagger,
classic metaphors like "the flambeaux of discord," and "the vessel of
State,"[97]s coupled together and beauties of style which a pupil in
rhetoric aims at on the college bench;[98]times a grand bravura air,
so essential for parade in public;[99] centimes a delicate strain of
the flute, for, in those days, one must have a tender heart;[100] in
short, Marmontel's method in " Belisarius," or that of Thomas in his
"Eloges," all borrowed from Rousseau, but of inferior quality, like a
sharp, thin voice strained to imitate a rich, powerful voice.
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