I impeach him by the name and by the best rights of human nature, which he has stabbed to the heart (5)." The third sentence should have been second; between the third and fourth there would then have been a natural connection. The fourth derives its strength from speciality, while the fifth can merit the highest place only by the width of its comprehension, which redeems the abstractness of the subject, "the rights of human nature."

Any great departure from the order of ascending strength is called an Anti-climax.

INTERROGATION.

50. The INTERROGATION aims at conveying an opinion more strongly by giving it the form of a question. "Hath he said it, and shall he not do it?" affirms strongly that what is said will be done.

We may be listless while one is merely making declarations, but on being appealed to by a question we are obliged to attend.

The commencement of Cicero's First Oration against Catiline is considered a striking and well-timed employment of this figure. Demosthenes exemplifies it in his passages of denunciation in the Philippics, and in the Speech on the Crown. 66 Will you continue to go about to each other and ask, What's the news? Can anything be more new than that a man from Macedonia should subjugate Greece? Is Philip dead? No indeed; but he is ill. What matters it to you? To you, who, if he were to come to grief, would quickly get yourselves another Philip?"

Chatham, in his grandest outburst, demands, "Who is the man that has dared to authorize and associate to. our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage?" Pope concludes his passage in Addison :—

"Who would not laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?"

It will be seen from these examples that the negative interrogation affirms, and the positive denies.

A certain pitch of excitement is requisite to justify the boldness of this figure.

EXCLAMATION.

51. When from sudden and intense emotion, we give utterance to some abrupt, inverted, or elliptical expression, we are said to use an EXCLAMATION; as "bravo," "dreadful," "the fellow," "what a pity!"

To comply with the full forms of ordinary speech demands a certain coolness and deliberation, the opposite of a state of sudden excitement.

The Interjection is a species of exclamation. Most interjections have no meaning except as indicating sudden emotion; oh, bah, hurrah. The cheers, hisses, and groans called forth by a public speaker are of this nature.

The Exclamation proper usually consists of words with meaning. Sometimes a part of the complete sentence is dropped: "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" Oh, the riches both of the goodness and the mercy of God!" other times, it is the strong expression of a wish, as in Cowper's lines:

"Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness," &c.

At

APOSTROPHE.

52. APOSTROPHE consists in addressing something absent, as if present; as when an orator invokes some hero of other times, or a preacher appeals to angels and departed saints. It supposes great intensity of emotion.

This figure is often combined with personification. "O death, where is thy sting!" "O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet!"

So in Campbell's apostrophe:

"Eternal Hope, when yonder spheres began," &c.

This figure is frequently employed for comic effect; as in Burns's "Tam o' Shanter":—

"Ah, Tam! Ah, Tam! thou'll get thy fairin'!"

It is a liberty taken with exalted objects and persons to address them with familiarity, and the result is degrading and thence ludicrous. The writings of Carlyle abound with this figure thus employed.

53. The figure called VISION is allied to Apostrophe, and consists in bringing the absent before the mind with the force of present reality.

Something approaching this occurs in Chatham: "From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country."

Byron's Gladiator is supposed to be seen in the body, on the mere suggestion of the statue.

A striking apostrophe, raised to Vision, occurs in the peroration of Robert Hall's Sermon on the Threatened Invasion of 1803.

INNUENDO, OR INSINUATION.

54. When a thing, instead of being plainly stated, is suggested or implied merely, the effect is sometimes much greater. This is Innuendo.

When it was said of a member of Parliament that "he did his party all the harm in his power, he spoke for it and voted against it "—his unskilful oratory is denounced with a peculiar force. The omission of the direct statement makes the fact seem so notorious, that it can be assumed and proceeded on without that formality.

A compliment is rendered more forcible by being merely insinuated. The recipient of direct praise dreads the jealousy of others, and is laid under the necessity of professing gratitude and humility; all which is saved by the indirect compli ment.

When the Innuendo is employed in vituperation, it has an advantage belonging in a still greater measure to the next figure; it baffles reply. The thing is said, and yet said so that the person reflected upon cannot lay hold of it in the way of refutation or retort.

A good example is furnished in Pope's lines on the Lord Mayor's pageant:

"Now night descending, the gay scene is o'er;

But lives in Settle's numbers one day more."

Fuller's saying on Camden, the antiquarian, is a witty innuendo: "He had a number of coins of the Roman Emperors, and a good many more of the later English Kings.”

In the progress of refinement, innuendo takes the place of open vituperation.

The device of suggesting, instead of openly expressing, is made to ramify widely in literature and the fine arts. The full illustration of it does not belong to this place. The moral tale evades our usual repugnance to a moral lecture, by conveying its lesson under the guise of an amusing story. But the painter and the poet have other intentions besides this. They introduce particulars that imply a great deal more than they express, and thus give a starting-point to the thoughts. This is always a source of pleasure to the mind, which likes to have a certain scope for desire and imagination.

Suggestion may be employed with advantage when a full or direct statement would involve what is harsh or offensive, as in depicting violent anguish or horror, and even in such extreme manifestations of pleasure as the observer cannot sympathize with.

IRONY.

55. IRONY expresses the contrary of what is meant, there being something in the tone or manner to show the real drift of the speaker; as in Job's address to his friends, "No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom will die with you."

The ironical address gives an opponent no handle, and is thus an embarrassing instrument of vituperation.

Carlyle, speaking of the much abused Cromwellian Puritans, says, "yet they were not altogether imbeciles, these men." The cloak of Irony was put on by Swift in his masterpieces of allegory-Gulliver, the Tale of a Tub, and the Battle of the Books.

There is a delicate stroke of irony in Sir G. C. Lewis's remark on the pretended antiquity of the Babylonian Astronomy. "The story of the astronomical observations, extending over 31,000 years, sent from Babylon to Aristotle, would be a conclusive proof of the antiquity of the Chaldæan Astronomy, if it were true." The irony consists in seeming to accept the enormous allegation, with merely the slight reservation, if it were true.

SARCASM is vituperation softened in the outward expression by the arts and figures of disguise-epigram, innuendo, irony --and embellished with the figures of illustration. The Letters of Junius come under this description.

Pope's Atticus is a mixture of direct vituperation, epigram, innuendo, and irony.

There is irony amounting to sarcasm in Locke's remark upon the Aristotelian Logic: "God did not make man, and leave it to Aristotle to make him rational."

56. Of the figures of the old rhetoricians only a small number have been selected in the foregoing exposition. Many are mere varieties of those now given; some will appear in other connections; while a considerable number are so minute or trivial that they are scarce worth attending to.

Ellipsis, or the omission of a word or words essential to the construction but not to the sense, is a figure of both grammar and rhetoric. It conduces to brevity, and is sometimes a sign of strong feeling. It is also a suggestive figure; what is unexpressed being left to the imagination to fill up.

The single word "Impossible" is more expressive than a complete sentence affirming impossibility.