DIALOGUES

CONCERNING

ELOQUENCE IN GENERAL;

AND,

PARTICULARLY THAT KIND WHICH IS PROPER FOR
THE PULPIT.

BY M. DE FENELON,
Archbishop of Cambray.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, AND ILLUSTRATED
WITH NOTES AND QUOTATIONS.

BY WILLIAM STEVENSON, M. A.

Rector of Morningthorp in Norfolk.

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION.

PUBLISHED BY

Farrand, Mallory, & Co. Boston, Lyman, Mallory, & Co.
Portland, B. B. Hopkins & Co. Philadelphia, P. H.
Nicklin & Co. Baltimore, D. Farrand and Green,
Albany, & Williams & Whiting, New York.
1810.

PREFACE.

BY THE CHEVALIER RAMSAY.

BOTH the ancients and the moderns have treated of eloquence, with different views, and in different ways; as logicians, as grammarians, and as critics: but we still wanted an author who should handle this delicate subject as a philosopher, and a christian: and this the late Archbishop of Cambray has done in the following dialogues.

In the ancient writers we find many solid precepts of rhetoric, and very just rules laid down with great exactness: but they are ofttimes too numerous, too dry; and, in fine, rather curious than useful. Our author reduces the essential rules of this wonderful art, to these three points; proving, painting, and moving the passions.

To qualify his orator for proving, or establishing any truth, he would have him a philosopher; who knows how to enlighten the understanding, while he moves the passions;