The Rhetorical Reader Consisting of Instructions for Regulating the Voice with a Rhetorical Notion, Illustrating Inflection, Emphasis and Modulation, and a Course of Rhetorical Exercises Designed for the Use of Academies and High-Schools.

Octavo, leather (hardcover), gilt lettering and banding to spine, xii, 304 pp. Very Good, with light edgewear and scuffing to leather covers, former-owner signature to ffep., darkening to page edges. From Preface: Though for many years after I began to investigate the principles of rhetorical delivery I h ad no intention of writing any thing on the subject for publication, I was at last drawn into this measure, gradually and almost unavoidably. The bad habits in elocution, acquired by many educated young men, and confirmed, with little regard to consequences, as they passed from one stage of education to another, it was easy to see must become at once equally conspicuous and injurious, so soon as they should pass from academical life into a public profession in which good speaking is a prime instrument of usefulness. The last Seminary too which had them in charge, would, by a misapprehension not very unnatural, be made responsible, not merely for its own proportion, but for the whole of these defects. The only remedy for habits thus firmly established, obviously must lie in a patient, elementary process, adapted to form new habits. After a sufficient experiment to satisfy me that Walker's elements, as a text book, could not answer this purpose, I prepared a course of Lectures on the subjects. Performing Arts, Elocution, Voice, Vocal, Theater, Theatre, Performance mslic.…