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 hearers, when murdered by an unskilful 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; 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. [July 9, 1750.]
Speak Well.—Recite pieces of eloquence, declaim
scenes of tragedies to Mr. Harte, as if he were
a numerous audience. If there is any particular
consonant which you have a difficulty in articulating,
as I think you had with the R, utter it millions and
millions of times, till you have uttered it right.
