This method has often proved successful when all the others have been made use of to no purpose. A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince the antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. - ADDISON: Spectator, No. 239.

Epigram. According to Professor Bain, an epigram is "an apparent contradiction in language, which, by causing a temporary shock, rouses our attention to some important meaning underneath." This definition may be supplemented by the statement that the epigram usually takes the form of a brief, pointed, antithetical

sentence.

Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come. - LOWELL: Democracy.

There is nothing new, except what is forgotten.

Hyperbole. This is a kind of a metaphor in which the object spoken of is greatly exaggerated in size or importance for purposes of emphasis or humor.

Falstaff sweats to death,

And lards the lean earth as he walks along.

- SHAKESPEARE: Henry IV.

And panting Time toiled after him in vain. -JOHNSON: Prologue on the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre.

Interrogation. Attention is sometimes called to an important assertion or denial by throwing it into the form of a question or challenge to which no answer is

expected. This figure is known as interrogation, or the rhetorical question. It resembles irony in that the form of the question is the opposite of the meaning it is intended to convey.

Much depends on when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queene for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes's sermons?

-LAMB: Thoughts on Books and Reading.

As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return, I paused to contemplate the distant church in which the poet lies buried, and could not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude? - IRVING: Sketch-Book, Stratford-on-Avon.

(a) Examine one of your old essays. How many figures did What kinds of figures were they? you use?

(b) Read Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration and take note of each figure used. What do you conclude is Webster's favorite figure of speech?

(c) Read a page of one of Shakespeare's plays and select three of the most striking figures. To what class or classes do they belong? (d) What figures do you find in the following passages? Are they good figures? What pictures do they bring up in your mind?

...

Michel de Bourges seriously objected. My instinct was to begin at once, his advice was to wait and see. .. We should not carry the people with us in the first moment. Let us leave the indignation to increase little by little in their hearts. If it were begun prematurely, our manifesta

tion would miscarry. These were the sentiments of all. For myself, while listening to them, I felt shaken. Perhaps they were right. It would be a mistake to give the signal for the combat in vain. Of what use is the lightning that is not followed by the thunderbolt?

Louis Bonaparte is a rebel, he has steeped himself to-day in every crime. We, representatives of the people, declare him an outlaw; but there is no need for our declaration, since he is an outlaw by the mere fact of his treason. Citizens, you have two hands; take in one your Right, and in the other your gun, and fall upon Napoleon.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FORMS OF PROSE DISCOURSE.

47. Kinds of Writing.—If after reading and studying about some subject - Julius Cæsar, for example — a person should want to write about it, he would doubtless be perplexed at first by the large number of ways in which the subject might be treated, and by the need of choosing the way best suited to his purpose. Different people, he is sure, would write in different ways about this subject. One person who had become very much interested in what Cassius, in Shakespeare's play, says of Cæsar's physical weakness, and who had read all that he could find about Cæsar's personal appearance, might choose to write a portrait sketch in which he would try to give his reader a picture of Cæsar the man. Another, more interested in Cæsar's deeds, in the events connected with his name, would probably choose to write the story of Cæsar's life. A third might have become curious to know how it was that one man like Cæsar should gain the immense power that Cæsar wielded, and having found the explanation in Cæsar's character and in the conditions prevailing in Rome, as these are detailed by Plutarch, might proceed to write out the explanation so that others might understand how it was. A fourth, believing that the assassination of Cæsar was a fatal blunder, might write out his reasons for so thinking, in order to convince

of their error those who think otherwise, and to make them believe as he believes.

The writing of these four people would differ on account of their different aims and purposes in writing. The aim of the first is to give his reader a good mental picture of Cæsar; of the second, to make his reader realize a series of events in which Cæsar was chiefly concerned; of the third, to make his reader understand a certain theory about Cæsar; of the fourth, to bring his reader to a certain belief about Cæsar. The four kinds of writing thus illustrated are:

1. Description, in which the writer aims to make people see images of objects.

2. Narration, in which the writer aims to make people realize events and processes of growth.

3. Exposition, in which the writer aims to make people understand ideas.

4. Argument, in which the writer aims to make people believe truths.

The very same subject-matter changes from one kind. of writing to another kind, according to the change in the aim of the writer. In the first selection following, the evident purpose is simply to tell a story. In the version succeeding, it is the looks of the squirrel and of the weasel that enlist our interest and that constitute the purpose of the writer. In the next version our attention is directed, not to a story of a particular squirrel and a particular weasel, nor to a description of either or both of these animals, but to the idea of the enmity which every weasel shows for every red squirrel. This idea is explained or expounded by telling us what any weasel will do to show his hatred for the squirrel kind.