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GRAMMAR OF ELOCUTION.

RECITATION FIRST.

ARTICULATION.

A PERFECTLY accurate and distinct ARTICULATION, must form the basis of a good delivery. Speaking and reading cannot be impressive if the utterance is indistinct. Students of Elocution should therefore always attend to articulation, as the primary object; and in the first instance, it should be prosecuted alone, as a distinct branch of the art, and prosecuted until perfection in it is attained.

Indeed the secret of success in learning the art of delivery, consists in attending to one thing at once. Failures will always be frequent, as they ever have been, whilst it is attempted in the gross; by the usual method of going at once to reading and declamation, and endeavoring to enforce articulation, emphasis, inflection, and many other things, altogether.

The object of this first recitation is to lay down the elements of a distinct ARTICULATION: to present this branch of the art to the view of the learner and teacher by itself; and, in such a simple form, that the one may have a scheme of teaching, and the other a definite mode of acquiring, this preparatory and indispensable requisite of all good reading and speaking.

A slight attention to public speaking, or to reading, will show that a good articulation is very uncommon. The attentive listener has to complain, that letters, words, and

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