Impure quality,' or aspirated, should be used to express all impure ideas; that is, all bad or disagreeable ideas. Painful earnestness or anxiety demands this aspirated quality' with abrupt vanishing stress.' 6 1. "Take care! your very life is endangered !" 2. "Oh! 't was a fearsome sight! Ah me! 3. "While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering with white lips, "The foe! they come, they come !" 4. "He springs from his hammock, he flies to the deck, Wild winds and mad waves drive the vessel a wreck: "Like mountains the billows tremendously swell: In vain the lost wretch calls on mercy to save ; And the death-angel flaps his broad wing o'er the Extreme aspiration should mark the fear and horror in the following words of Macbeth. 5. "I'll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done ; Look on 't again I dare not." Strong aspiration and abrupt radical stress.' 6. "I am astonished, shocked, to hear such principles confessed, to hear them avowed in this house, or in this country; principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian!" 'Bold' and 'impassioned' examples for very abrupt stress' and aspirated quality' on the emphatic words. 6 7.“It was the act of a coward, who raises his arm to strike, but has not the courage to give the blow! I will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he is a privy councillor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to be chancellor of the exchequer. But I say he is one who has abused the privilege of parliament and freedom of debate, to the uttering of language which, if spoken out of the house, I should answer only with a blow! I care not how high his situation, how low his character, or how contemptible his speech; whether a privy councillor or a parasite, my answer would be a blow!" 8. "The wretch, who, after having seen the consequences of a thousand errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his gray hairs should secure him from insult." 9. "If ye are beasts, then stand here like fat oxen waiting for the butcher's knife." This quality of voice demands that the aspirates and the less resonant consonants be made very prominent in the enunciation, while the purer vowels and the liquid, pleasant consonants reserve their prominence till pure tone is required. All examples of aspirated quality' require abrupt stress. 'Contemptuous and ironical' example. 10. "But base ignoble slaves, slaves to a horde Of petty tyrants, feudal despots, lords Rich in some dozen paltry villages, Strong in some hundred spearmen, — only great • Compound' abrupt stress, with the circumflex slide.' 11. But ere we could arrive the point proposed, Cæsar cried, Hèlp me, Càssius, or I sìnk!' "And this man Is now become a gôd; and Cassius is A wrêtched creature, and must bend his bôdy, He had a fever when he was in Spáin, And, when the fit was on him, I did mark How he did shâke: 't is true, this gôd did shâke: So get the start of the majestic world "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stárs, But in ourselves, that we are ûnderlings." The malignant feelings of Catiline in the following example call for the most abrupt,' vanishing,' and 'compound stress,' with intensely aspirated quality.' 12. "What is Rome now? Degenerate, gross, defiled, The tainted haunt, the gorged receptacle, Of every slave and vagabond of earth: To rid the other realms of pestilence! "I had no chance; wherefore should I be consul? f Why not? He's made for them, and they for him ; "But here I stand and scoff you! here, I fling Your consul's merciful: -for this, all thanks. But when fear and secresy are blended with malignity, the impure quality' is so marked as to be all but a whisper on the emphatic words. Example from "King John." "KING JOHN. Good Hubert! Hubert! Hubert! throw thine eye On yon young boy. I'll tell thee what, my friend, He is a very serpent in my way; And wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, Well, I'll not say what I intend for thee: 1. "That which befits us, imbosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations.' Example of pure tone,' with lively, median stress. 2. “It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles, and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. "I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendor, and joy." 'Lower pitch' and 'slower time.' 'Long quantity,' and prolonged median stress. 3. “O! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion, that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a Nation of gallant men, in a Nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. 66 But the age of chivalry is gone, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever." The following selection from Shelley's "To a Skylark," is full of rapturous beauty, and requires the 'purest tone' and the smoothest and happiest median stress,' prolonged with swelling fulness on the emphatic words: 6 Bird thou never wert, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. |