"Hither, as to a fountain, Other suns repair, and in their urns Draw golden light."
Lord Chatham read and reread Dr. Barrows' sermons until he knew many of them by heart, "for the purpose," as he himself said, "of acquiring copiousness of diction and an exact choice of words." William Pitt, his son, obtained his remarkable command of the English tongue from the same source, in connection with Shakespeare and the Bible; the latter he studied not only as a guide of life, but as the true "_well_ of English undefiled." No wonder that his contemporary, Fox, should have said of him, "He always has the right word in the right place."
William Pinckney has himself unlocked the secret of his intellectual affluence and elegant diction. He says that he made it a rule from his youth never to see a fine idea without committing it to memory. Rufus Choate, in speaking of this fact, said "the result was the most splendid and powerful English spoken style I ever heard." Choate pursued a plan equally commendable. During the greater portion of his life he made it a practise to read aloud every day a page or more from some fine English author. This he did for the improvement of his expression. He was a most indefatigable student of _words_, and made the whole round of literature tributary to his vocabulary.
The following extract from the address of Lord Brougham to the University of Glasgow will be a sufficient guide, with what has been already said, to the selection of those authors that will tend most to improve the style and diction: "The English writers who really unlock the rich sources of the language are those who flourish from the end of Elizabeth's to the end of Queen Anne's reign; who used a good Saxon dialect with ease, but correctness and perspicuity--learned in the ancient classics, but only enriching their mother tongue where the Attic could supply its defects--not overlaying it with a profuse pedantic coinage of words."
The great masters of oratory should be studied most carefully and diligently; Erskine, Burke, Pinckney, Webster, and, above all, the legal orations of Cicero are the best models for a young lawyer. Read Bolingbroke for specimens of the splendid and ornate; Fox and Pitt for the classical and argumentative; advantage may likewise be derived from the letters of Junius.