ty and elegance of manner. Much reading, much reflection, much practice, and much irksome criticism, must be employed before this important end can be attained. Authors who possess, perhaps, some genius, seem to wish to take a shorter path to fame; and to compensate for the slightness of their matter, they endeavour to dazzle by the Amartness of their style; and if we may judge from the history of ancient literature, an attachment to ornaments of this sort, forms the irst stage toward the corruption of taste.

CHAPTER X.

INTERROGATION, REPETITION, EXCLAMATION, IRONY,
AND VISION.

336. INTERROGATION. The unfigured and literal use of interrogation is to ask a question; but when men are strongly moved, whatever they would affirm or deny, with great earnestness, they naturally put in the form of a question. The strongest confidence is thereby expressed of their own sentiment, by appealing to their hearers for the. impossibility of the contrary.

Example. Thus Balaam expressed himself to Balak.

"The Lord

is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said it? and shall he not do it? Hath he spoken it? and shall he not make it good?"

337. Interrogation gives life and spirit to discourse.

Example. We have an illustration of this position in the animated introductory speech of Cicero against Catiline. "How long will you, Catiline, abuse our patience? Do you not perceive that your designs are discovered?"

Analysis. He might have said, "You abuse our patience a long while. You must be sensible that your designs are discovered." But it is easy to perceive how much this latter mode of expression falls short of the force and vehemence of the former.

338. Interrogation may be used to rouse and awaken the hearers.

Example. Demosthenes, addressing himself to the Athenians, asks them: "Tell me, will you still go about, and ask one another what news? What can be more astonishing news than this, that the man of Macedon makes war upon the Athenians, and disposes of the affairs of Greece? Is Philip dead? No; but he is sick. What signifies it to you whether he be dead or alive? For, if any thing happens to this Philip, you will immediately raise up another."

Analysis. All this, delivered without interrogation, had been faint and ineffectual; but the warmth and eagerness which this questioning method expresses, were calculated to awaken the Athenians to a sense of their supineness, and strike them with much greater force on the

folly of disunion immediately raising up another Philip. Again, their simplicity about the news of Philip's health is excellently exposed in the question, “ Is he dead?” And the hope of safety expressed by the person to whom such a question was put by his neighbour, is most humorously satirized in the answer: "No; but he is sick."

339. Interrogation sometimes commands with great emphasis.

Example. Thus Dido, enjoining the departure of Æneas to be stopped: "Non arma expedient, totaque ex urbe sequentur ? Deripientque rates alii, navalibus?"

340. Interrogation sometimes denotes plaintive passion. Example. Thus Almeria, in the Mourning Bride:

"Alphonso! O Alphonso!

Thou too art quiet, long hast thou been at rest!
Both, father and son, are now no more.
Then why am I? O when shall I have rest?
Why do I live to say you are no more?

Is it of moment to the peace of heaven,
That I should be afflicted thus ?"

341. REPETITION seizes some emphatical word or phrase, and, to mark its importance, makes it recur frequently in the same sentence. It is significant of contrast and energy.

Example 1. It also marks passion, which wishes to dwell on the object by which it is excited. Virgil pathetically describes the grief of Orpheus for the loss of Eurydice, in the fourth Georgic:

"Te dulcis conjux, te, solo in littore secum,

Te, veniente die, te, decedente canebat."

So also Catullus, de Passere mortuo Lesbiæ:

"Passer mortuus est meæ Puellæ,

Passer deliciæ meæ puellæ.

Quem plus illa oculis suis amabat."

2. Pope, to heighten compassion for the fate of an unfortunate lady, reiterates the circumstance of her being deprived in her distress of the sympathy of her friends:

"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed;
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,

By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned."

3. Dryden, in Alexander's Feast, supplies one of the most beautiful examples of this figure. He thus paints the sad reverse of fortune suffered by Darius:

"Deserted, at his greatest need,

By those his former bounty fed,
He sung Darius, great and good,
By too severe a fate,

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,

Fallen from his high estate, and weltering in his blood."

342. EXCLAMATIONS are the effect of strong emotions of the mind; such as surprise, admiration, joy, grief, and the like.

Illus. 1. Exclamation, like interrogation, is often prompted by sympathy. Sympathy is a very powerful and extensive principle in our nature, disposing us to enter into every feeling and passion, which we behold expressed by others. Hence a single person coming into company with strong marks, either of melancholy or joy, upon his countenance, will diffuse that passion in a moment through the whole circle. Hence, in a great crowd, in an assembly of people on some public and pressing emergency, passions are so easily caught, and so rapidly spread, by that powerful contagion which the animated looks, and cries, and gestures of a multitude never fail to impart.

2. I shall take the liberty to give one instance, which is known to all, and well calculated to illustrate the figure now under consideration. Turn with me, reader, turn thy mind back to the morning on which we heard it announced that her royal highness princess Charlotte of Saxe Cobourg was no more! Have you heard the news? said every Briton to his friend. News? what news? The princess Charlotte's dead! Dead! the princess Charlotte dead! did ye say? Yes! and her infant son too. Good God! both mother and son! Such was the language of our heart-such the species of interrogation, repetition, exclamation, which we used that doleful morn.

Scholium. Though interrogations may be introduced into close and earnest reasonings, exclamations only belong to strong emotions of mind. When judiciously employed, they agitate the hearer or the reader with similar passions; but it is extremely improper, and sometimes ridiculous, to use them on trivial occasions, and on mean and low subjects. The unexperienced writer often attempts to elevate his language, by the copious display of this figure; but it is seldom that he succeeds. He frequently renders his composition frigid to excess, or absolutely ludicrous, by calling on us to enter into his transports, when nothing is said or done to demand emotion.

343. VISION, another figure of speech, proper only in animated and warm compositions, is produced when, instead of relating something that is past, we use the present tense of the verb, and describe an action or event as actually passing before our eyes.

Example. Thus Cicero, in his fourth oration against Catiline, pictures to his mind the execution of the conspiracy: "I seem to myself to behold this city, the ornament of the earth, and the capital of all nations, suddenly involved in one conflagration. I see before me the slaughtered heaps of citizens, lying unburied in the midst of their ruined country. The furious countenance of Cethegus rises to my view, while, with a savage joy, he is triumphing in your miseries." ""*

Scholium. This manner of description supposes a sort of enthusiasm, which carries the person who describes, in some measure, out of himself; and when well executed, must needs, by the force of sympathy, impress the reader or hearer very strongly. But in order to be successful, it requires an uncommonly warm imagination, and such a happy selection of circumstances, which shall make us think that we see before our eyes the scene that is described.

"Videor enim mihi hanc urbem videre, lucem orbis terrarum atque arcem omnium gentium, subito uno incendio concidentem; cerno animo sepulta in patria miseros atque insepultos aspectus Cethegi, et furor, in vestra code bacchantis."

344. In tragedy, vision is the language of the most violent passion, which conjures up spectres, and approaches to insanity.

Example 1. The author of Phædra and Hyppolitus makes the former address the latter in the following strain:

"Then why this strain? Come, let us plunge together.

See, Hell sets wide its adamantine gates

See, through the sable gates, the black Cocytus,
In smoky whirls, rolls its fiery waves!

How huge Megara stalks!

Now, now, she drags me to the bar of Minos."

2. The horrors of the mind of Macbeth, after murdering the king and Banquo, are artfully and forcibly painted by the same figure:

"Methought I heard a voice

Cry, Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep."

3. He is still more violently distracted, and fancies he sees the ghost of the murdered king:

"Avaunt, and quit my sight!

Let the earth hide thee; thy bones are marrowless,
Thy blood is cold; thou hast no speculation

In those eyes which thou dost stare with.

Hence, horrible shadow; unreal mockery, hence."

345. IRONY. When we express ourselves in a manner contrary to our thoughts, not with a view to deceive, but to add force to our observations, we are then said to speak ironically.

Illus. Irony turns things into ridicule, in a peculiar manner; it consists in laughing at a man, under the disguise of appearing to praise or speak well of him.

Example. "By these methods, in a few weeks, there starts up many a writer, capable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For what though his head be empty, provided his commonplace book be full? And if you will bate him but the circumstances of method, and style, and grammar, and invention; allow him but the common privileges of transcribing from others, and digressing from himself, as often as he shall see occasion, he will desire no more ingredients towards fitting up a treatise, that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller's shelf, there to be preserved neat and clean, for a long eternity, adorned with the heraldry of its title, fairly described on the label; never thumbed or greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains of darkness in a library; but when the fulness of time is come, shall happily undergo the trial of purgatory, in order to ascend the sky.'

346. The subjects of irony, are vices and follies of all kinds; and this mode of exposing them is often more ef fectual than serious reasoning.

Illus. The gravest persons have not disdained to use this figure on proper occasions.

Example 1. Thus Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to prove the

* Tale of a Tub, Sect. 7.

66

truth of their deity. Cry aloud, for he is a god: either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened."

2. To reprove a person for his negligence, one might say, "You have taken great care indeed."

347. Exclamations and irony are sometimes united.

Example. Thus both are united in Cicero's oration for Balbus, where the orator derides his accuser, by saying, "O excellent interpreter of the law! master of antiquity! correcter and amender of our constitution!"

Scholium. Besides these, there are several other figures, partly grammatical and partly rhetorical; but as an account of them would be attended with little instruction, and less amusement, we shall refer those who may be led farther into this field, to the writings of the ancient critics, where they will find them explained. It only remains to point out the general principles which should guide our practice in the use of figures; and this is a matter of greater importance, as errors in this article are very common, and as young writers particularly are apt to entertain improper notions of such ornaments.

348. Remember that the first law of good writing, is to attend principally and closely to the matter; and that even the highest ornament is of much inferior consideration.

Illus. Good sense, dressed in plain language, will always gain approbation; though ornament may add to its impression, it can never supply its place. A figurative style, without important matter, may dazzle and captivate the untutored mind, and procure a temporary reputation; but reason and truth will, in time, triumph over prejudice and show, and consign to oblivion such ill-supported claims to fame. "Sunt qui neglecto rerum pondere," says Quinctilian," et viribus sententiarum, si vel inania verba in figuras depravarint, summos se judicent artifices; ideoque non desinunt eas nectere; quas sine sententia sectari, tam est ridiculum, quam quærere habitum gestumque sine corpore."

349. Figures should never have the appearance of being anxiously sought, or of being forced into the service of a writer.

Illus. Affectation is the bane of beauty on all occasions, but particularly in composition. If attention to ornament cannot be concealed, it had better be relinquished. The appearance of art will injure reputation more with every reader of taste, than that reputation could be promoted by the most successful use of figures.

350. As figures should not be anxiously sought, so neither should they be lavishly employed. Ornaments of all sorts interfere with elegance, unless applied with taste. In literary compositions they may serve to display a richness of mind, they may impart a gaudy semblance, and may evidence a bold imagination, but they will never strike with the charms of genuine beauty. If, on the other hand, discernment be discovered in the use of them, if they are intro