or elocutionary phrase that is to follow the breath-taking, not long enough to fatigue the lung tissue or the inspiratory muscles.' Yes, truly fatigue; as, though the strain is but short-lived, yet, if continued, it leads to this condition.

"The expiration should also be easy and without effort. When the air leaves the lungs to be converted into sound, there should still be no strain, no visible effort; but the sound should flow out evenly, and without any consciousness on the artist's part of his possessing a larynx to warble through, or a pair of bellows to propel the sound. There should be even less effort in breathing out sound than there is in breathing in air. The artist may be, and must be, conscious of purity and intensity of sound, but this must be produced without visible muscular effort. All swelling of the veins of the neck and of the forehead, and all getting red in the face, point at once to the use of clavicular breathing and lack of art in voice production." *

We can hardly bestow too much attention, or devote too much time, to a full investigation and thorough comprehension of this most important branch of our subject; for, as Mr. Charles Lunn says in the fourth edition of his very interesting and suggestive little work on "The Philosophy of Voice "+ (which I strongly recommend to every student of the art of singing or speaking): "Voice production affects the pulpit, the platform, the forum, and the stage; and the principles of restoration should be known to every national school teacher throughout the kingdom, and especially should they be known to every medical practitioner; for voice production embraces a far wider sphere than music, and penetrates where the latter never enters. It is said that 'prevention is better than cure;' by true use of voice, chest disease in many who have its tendency could be successfully warded off; and this because a greater consumption of carbon takes place, quickening circulation, and hastening digestion; so that true speakers and singers feel only hunger after work. Surely, as a question of health, the voice should be cultivated collaterally with the culture of words; both spoken words and vocal tone should grow up together, but each power should be taught in its specific mode. While medical men have often recommended the healthful exercise of song, they have not (with rare exceptions, I would remark), made their word of the worth it might be made, by troubling to go deeper into the question and deciding what work is right work; this they should now do. We know how important it is to change the air we breathe, so that what we take in be not vitiated; how much more important, then, that the air within us be pure, and not potable poison; yet all cannot be thoroughly vitalised within us, unless we take violent bodily exercise or obtain true use of voice." Further on, Mr. Lunn states that, in his opinion, "the whole gist of study may be summed up thus: Hold the breath on deep inflations; by ceasing to will to hold, Nature sets the instrument in accurate action; let the involuntary pressure continue the sound; and by repeated use in such manner, the instrument will, in time, become habituated to right action, * Dr. Shuldham, pp. 47, 48.

† Baillière, Tindal, & Cox, King William Street, Strand, London. Price Is. 6d.

-a servant to our wills, instead of a tyrant crippling and frustrating our desires. It is strange that exactly at the same time German assumption was doing its utmost to destroy the little known in voice training, a medical man should be making experiments in Edinburgh, which ultimately resulted in the greatest scientific discovery affecting the science of voice production that has ever been put before the public, and which discovery conclusively supports, from a scientific point of view, the teaching of the ancient school of song. Dr. Wyllie's explanation of the use of the false cords and the ventricles gives the true solution to the right use of voice, the air in the ventricles acting somewhat analogously to the air which a trumpet-player imprisons in his cheeks; the greater reservoir of air keeps the lesser one always full, and the control of measured force from the greater is dependent upon the fulness of the less, this simply owing to the distribution of nerves. Now, no man can speak or sing with perfect self-possession and accurate response to will, unless he has masterful control over the respiratory apparatus; and no man can have this control, unless his organs of voice be rightly used-a corroborative proof, being the connecting link between Dr. Wyllie on the one side and Senor Garcia on the other, is found in the fact that sound can be whispered at the false cords, the air escaping in an elongated hiss, while the true cords, being open, do not vibrate. The breath under these conditions is held back in sustained escape, and is consumed in about the same time as it would be consumed were a vocal tone accompanying it." *

Dr. Shuldham's remarks on this subject are well worthy of being quoted. He says: "When the breath-taker wishes to convert the air stored within his lungs into musical sound or intelligent speech, then comes the tug of war;' the expiratory muscles are engaged in driving out musical air, whilst the inspiratory muscles are busy in making the expulsion as slow as possible; there is a muscular antagonism going on, and this Dr. Mandl in his interesting work, 'L'Hygiène de la Voix,' calls the 'lutte vocalle,' or vocal contest. We can see, therefore, that to

make the contest as even as possible, and as little fatiguing as possible, in speech or song, the abdominal breathing should be adopted, for this allows the lungs to be fully expanded without laying extra stress on the intercostal muscles, and lets the shock of this vocal contest' fall on the soft parts of the abdomen, which yield to pressure, rather than letting all the violence of the 'lutte vocale' fall on the hard and less yielding structures of the bony thorax. If the pressure is taken off the chest-structures, other parts concerned in voice production will suffer less, as, for instance, the larynx and pharynx; there will be consequently less fatigue of voice complained of by the use of abdominal breathing, and Clergyman's Sore Throat' may be written about but not prescribed for.

"In the exclusive use of the lateral method of breathing by the help of rib movements, or of the clavicular method, i.e., by the help of the collar-bones, we shall find that the 'vocal contest' will make itself severely felt, and the evil consequences of these methods of breath

Lunn's Philosophy of Voice, pp. 67, 68.

taking will be fatigue of voice, irritation of pharynx, aching of chest-walls, and oppression of breathing; and these several symptoms will eventually lead, if the vicious method is persevered in, to hoarseness, congestion of pharyngeal mucous membrane, glandular inflammation in the whole vocal tract, partial lung congestion, asthma, and even heart disease.

"Here is a sufficiently long train of ills which follow the use of badlymanaged respiration. With the knowledge of these facts before us, is it not wise to use this knowledge and avert the disastrous results? An incident in the life of Talma, the great French tragedian, is worth relating it points a moral on the art of taking breath. It is quoted from M. Legouvé's 'L'Art de la Lecture,' a little book full of interest and instruction to all who value the reader's art. It is as follows: 'When Talma was still a young man, he was acting in Diderot's Père de Famille. After the delivery of the celebrated passage, "An income of fifteen hundred a year, and my Sophie," he left the stage and went behind the scenes, exhausted, out of breath, and leaned against a side scene, panting like an ox. "Idiot!" said Molé, looking at him, "and you want to play tragedy! Come and see me to-morrow morning, and I will teach you how to personate passion without getting out of breath." Talma called on him, but whether the master failed in patience, or the pupil in docility, we cannot tell; at any rate he only half profited by the lesson. About the same time there was an actor of the name of Dorival, a spare, weakly fellow, without any power of voice, yet nevertheless he played tragedy with a certain amount of success. "How can the wretch do it?" said Talma; "I am ten times as strong as he is, and yet he tries himself ten times as little as I do. I will ask him his secret." Dorival put off the question with the gently sarcastic reply, which, by the way, smacked somewhat of jealousy: "You are so successful, M. Talma, that you do not require any lessons." "I will make you give me some, for all that," whispered Talma to himself.

"One day, as Dorival was playing Châtillon in Zaïre, the young man (Talma) hid himself-where do you think?-in the prompter's box, so as to see and hear unobserved. There, crouched in obscurity like a beast of prey in its den, he watched every movement, took note of it, looked, listened, and after the famous declamatory speech in the second act, left the box, exclaiming, "I have it, I have nailed him" ( je l'ai pincé). What had he discovered? That Dorival's whole art consisted in a certain talent for taking breath before the lungs are completely emptied of air (I copy one of Talma's own notes); and to prevent the public from noticing these frequent inspirations, which would have marred the even tenor of his speech, and arrested the current of his emotions, he made use of them especially before the A, the E, and the O sounds, that is to say, at the time when his mouth being open, he was able to breathe lightly without the audience perceiving it.'

"Talma might, it is true, fill his lungs completely and control the management of his breath, but it is clear that he had by his observations only discovered part of the secret and the golden rule of all, the disclosure of which we owe to a great English tragedian, as we shall shortly see, and without which the right art of managing the

breath is only partially acquired, appears to have been unknown to the French tragedian."

Dr. Shuldham's closing remarks in this chapter are well worthy of being quoted. "We see," he observes, "what an important part respiration plays in the art of speaking. Its rules are the only ones which should never be violated. The actor once launched forth in a passage full of movement, carried away by emotion, by anger, by tears, may forget the laws of punctuation, set aside full stops and commas, but he must always be master of his breath, even at the very time when he seems to lose it. A good actor has no right to be out of breath, except for dramatic effect. Talma had reduced all these rules to one emphatic maxim: The artist who fatigues himself is but an indifferent artist.'"* * Dr. Shuldham, pp. 50-53.

LECTURE VI

Testimony of the late Rev. A. S. Thelwall-Quotation from the Rev. J. Howlett's Work on Reading the Liturgy "-"The Great Secret" of Respiration, and the history of its transmission-Extracts from the recent Works of Mr. Sergeant Cox and Professor Frobisher-Sanitary advantages resulting from the Mode of Respiration here described-Testimony of George Catlin, the North American travellerEmmanuel Kant and De Quincey-Causes and cure of "Clerical Sore Throat"Dr. Shuldham-Dr. Abbotts-Control of the Breath in Expiration-Opinions of Professor Hullah and Mr. Kingsbury-Summary rules for the management of respiration in Public Reading, Speaking, and Singing.

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OW, then, I come to a subject of paramount importance in every way, the right mode of managing the breath in speaking or reading. Nothing can be more hurtful to the pure quality of the voice, and nothing scarcely more injurious to the larynx and the lungs, than the habit of gasping in the air without any system or method by the open mouth. Take this as a golden rule, that the breath should, not merely when reading or speaking, though then I hold it indispensable, but at all times, and under all circumstances, be taken into the lungs only through the nostrils. I assure you most carnestly that if there be any tendency to disease or weakness of the lungs or of the larynx, trachea, or bronchial tubes, the observance of this rule is of vital importance to health—nay, I am sure I am not going too far when I say it is in some extreme cases a matter almost of life or death. Believe me, that almost all the injury which clergymen and public speakers do themselves in the discharge of their duties in the church or on the platform, arises from this very common, but most erroneous, habit of gasping or pumping in the air through the open mouth.

This habit of taking in the air only through the nostrils has very great and very many advantages, and I have also reason to know, that this great but simple rule in respiration has not only been regarded in the light of a grand secret, but actually sold as such by some teachers of elocution under a promise-nay, in some cases under an oath of secrecy, as if it were peculiar to themselves. I cannot do better here than read you a letter on the subject in my possession, written in the year 1861, by my late friend, the Rev. A. S. Thelwall, who was the first appointed Lecturer on Public Reading and Speaking in this College, and who ful