ABSTRACT
‘Metamorphose’ is Thelwall’s own word to describe his transformation at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Elocution and Oratory was published in Manchester in 1803, but true to Thelwall's aim of ‘flying’ as opposed to ‘creeping’, this explicit advertisement for his lectures also appears as an appendix to his ‘Letter to Francis Jeffray’. Thelwall may have transformed himself to ‘aspire to the reputation of every aristocratical accomplishment’ but there is still something of the fighting political spirit of the 1790s. Even in the few neighbourhoods whose Science and Population may demand and encourage the Complete Series, deviations may be found expedient from the succession of materials; and the Oratorical parts, in particular, may be arbitrarily disposed, or materially altered, as fresh subjects of illucidation are presented.
