English Composition and Rhetoric

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ... never fancied such a thing As answer possible to give. What says the body when they spring Some monstrous torture-engine's whole Strength on it? No more says the soul. The mental state referred to, is sufficiently subtle to need considerable aid for its comprehension--the paralyzing power, on a sensitive nature, of an accusation of gross wickedness, entirely unexpected and entirely undeserved. The effect of the torture-engine is easily grasped, and the resemblance to the mental state in question is close enough to aid our conception of that state, while it bas the advantage of objectivity to make it more intelligible. The similitude in the following stanza of Wordsworth, describing ' a host of golden daffodils, ' has considerable Impressiveness--Continuous as the stars thai shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay; Ten thousand saw 1 at a glance Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The idea to be impressed is that of vast number producing unity of effect; and no example of this is better known or more impressive than the Milky Way. Emotional Similitudes. 9. In compositions addressed to the Feelings, --Poetry and Oratory, --similitudes are employed to heighten the emotional effect. This is an end totally different from the end of Intellectual Similitudes, and works by different means. If an object, in itself, does not affect the feelings so strongly as we wish, we can adduce a comparison to something stronger. Aristotle, wishing to evoke a sentiment of profound respect and veneration for the virtue of Justice, calls it 'more glorious than the Eastern Star, or the Western Star'. To enumerate and classify the feelings that are stimulated by figurative and other rhetorical arts,