potyposis, add considerable force to impassioned language, when, as LONGINUS suggests, the imagination is fo warmed and affected, that you seem to behold yourself the very things you are describing, and to display them to the life before the eyes of an audience. The dagger scene in MACBETH is a masterpiece of this kind. At the instant that MACBETH is preparing for a bloody act, the horror of the deed disorders his senses; and he starts at frightful images that have no reality. He thinks he sees before him the murderous dagger, and calls reason to his aid for the purpose of convincing himself that it is mere fancy-but in vain-his mind is still haunted by the false creation; and his emotions are so strongly expressed, that the hearers and spectators are seized with the like visionary terror. "Is this a dagger which I see before me, "The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee, "Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going; "Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses, "Thus to mine eyes.-Now o'er one half the world Pale HECATE's offerings; and wither'd murder, "Alarum'd "Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, "Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, (A bell rings.) "I go, and it is done: the bell invites me. Sir GEORGE SAVILLE, in his speech against Mr. WEDDERBURNE'S motion for impressing seamen from every protection in the year 1779, exclaims, "Would the learned Gentleman not let one father, one husband, one brother, or one child escape, in this general scene of oppression and injustice! Methinks I hear the heart-felt shrieks of the miserable wife this instant piercing my ears, and intreating, in accents of rage and despair, the midnight ruffian not to drag from her side her tender and affectionate husband, the father of her children and her only support! I think I hear the aged and helpless parent, in accents of sinking woe, misery, and distress bewailing the loss of his dutiful and beloved son! I confess I am filled with horror at the various ills and miseries this instant inflicting in every part of these kingdoms, contrary to every principle of law, justice, and humanity!" One of those striking images, when blended with an argument, gives it almost irresistible force. "It was not I," said the Earl of SHELBURNE in his defence of the peace in 1783," It was not I, who voluntarily yielded up the independence of America :-it was the evil star of Britain it was the blunders of a former administration: it was the power of revolted subjects, and the mighty arms of the House of Bourbon," Among Among the most brilliant figures of eloquence, we may also place Prosopopæia, or personification, which attributes life, sensibility, action, and speech to the brute creation; and even to inanimate objects; and Apostrophe, which is an address to the absent, or to the dead, as if they were present and listening to us. When CICERO introduced MILO speaking to the citizens of Rome, Prosopopeia is beautifully delineated: "Should he, holding up his bloody sword, cry out, "Attend, I pray, hearken, O Citizens! I have killed CLODIUS; by this sword, and by this right hand, I have kept off his rage from your throats, which no laws no courts of judicature could restrain: it is by my means that justice, equity, laws, liberty, shame, and modesty, remain in the city."-Is it to be feared how the city should bear this declaration? Is there any one who in such a case would not approve and commend it ?" The Personification of Pride in POPE'S Essay on Man admits of a certain splendor expressive of the ostentation of the speaker, and the riches and grandeur of the objects introduced. "Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, "Earth for whose use:" Pride answers, ""Tis for mine, "For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, "Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; "Annual for me the grape, the rose renew "The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; "For me the mine a thousand treasures brings, "For me health gushes from a thousand springs, "Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise, "My footstool earth, my canopy the skies." Poets have been prodigal of this figure, but Orators more sparing. As an example of the Apostrophe we shall cite the following beautiful one of CICERO in his Oration for MILO, when when speaking of the death of CLODIUS. "O ye judges! it was not by human counsel, nor by any thing less than the immediate care of the immortal gods, that this event has taken place. The very divinities themselves, who beheld that monster fall, seemed to be moved, and to have inflicted their vengeance upon him. I appeal to, I call to witness, you, O ye hills and groves of Alba! you, the demolished Alban altars! ever accounted holy by the Romans, and coëval with our religion, but which CLODIUS, in his mad fury, having first cut down, and levelled the most sacred groves, had sunk under heaps of common buildings; I appeal to you, I call you to witnefs, whether your altars, your divinities, your powers, which he had polluted with all kinds of wickedness, did not avenge themselves when this wretch was extirpated? And thou, O holy Jupiter! from the height of thy facred mount, whose lakes, groves, and boundaries, he had so often. contaminated with his detestable impurities; and you, the other deities, whom he had infulted, at length opened your eyes to punish this enormous offender. By you, by you, and in your sight was the slow, but the righteous and merited vengeance executed upon him." Both Prosopopia and Apostrophe were carried by ancient Orators to a greater degree of boldness than would be allowed in modern composition. Examples of the other figures will be found, as before intimated, in our selection of speeches; but we cannot too strongly impress on the mind of the young orator the remarks of CICERO, QUINTILIAN, and LONGINUS on the difcreet use of those ornaments. CICERO Considers figures as the chief sources of light, of lustre, of energy, of beauty in language: he calls them the eyes of Eloquence; but, he adds, "I would not have eyes, eyes scattered over the whole body, lest the other members should lose their respective functions *." QUINTILIAN'S observation is exactly in the same spirit. "As figures, he says, when made use of seasonably, beautify language, so, when immoderately sought after, they become the greatest blemishes. It is ridiculous to introduce them without any regard to the force of the sentiment, or weight of matter; but even when proper, they must not be too crowded. We should first consider how far they may be suited to the occasion, the person, the As the object of the greater part of them is to please the fancy, who could endure an orator attempting to excite the strongest emotions of passion in nicely balanced phrases and with harmonious cadence? A man, so solicitous about words cannot be very ftrongly affected; and where art is so pompously displayed, we cannot suppose that there is much truth or sincerity +." moment. The best method of concealing any appearance of art in figurative language is explained by LONGINUS with his usual sagacity and precision. "A figure," he observes, “is most dexterously applied, when it cannot be discerned that it is a figure. This can only be effected by a due mixture of the sublime and the pathetic, which increases the force and removes the suspicion that commonly attends on the use of figures. For, veiled as it were, and wrapt up in such beauty and grandeur, they seem to disappear, and securely to defy discovery. As the stars are quite dimmed and obscured, when the sun breaks out in all his blazing rays, so the artifices of rhetoric are en * Ego hæc lumina orationis velut oculos quosdam eloquentiæ credo; sed neque oculos esse toto corpore velim, ne cætera membra cum officium perdant. † Cum in his rebus, cura verborum deroget affectibus fidem ; et ubicunque ars ostentatur, veritas abesse videatur. tirely |