Mr. Emerson's love of eloquence from boyhood up, his eagerness to avail himself of any chance that offered to hear a master of speech, and his love of anecdotes of orators have been mentioned in the notes to the essay on Eloquence in the volume called Society and Solitude.
Concerning his own delivery, though it was original and admirable, and his voice was an instrument of unexpected and varied power, he was modest, and he always read his discourses and could not trust himself to extempore speech. So what he wrote in his journal of his ability in practical affairs he would perhaps have accepted as applicable to himself as an orator: "I am probably all the better spectator that I am so indifferent an actor. Some who have heard or read my reports misjudged me as being a good actor in the scene which I could so well describe.… In this both they and I must be acquiescent and take our fortune."
This essay appears first as a lecture read at Chicago in 1867. On later occasions when it was read in Boston and elsewhere, Mr. Emerson introduced several examples of eloquence, among them: I. The opening words of the speech of Lafayette in the Representative Chamber at Paris when he learned that, in two hours, Napoleon, returning defeated from Waterloo, planned to abolish it; a speech which would have been Lafayette's death-warrant had the Representatives not supported him. II. The conclusion of Hon. Samuel Dexter's defence of Selfridge, charged with murder for shooting young Austin, who undertook to horsewhip him in State Street, Boston, because of aspersions on his father's character printed by Selfridge, during a political controversy. III. The Earl of Caernarvon's speech
