Yet tills was not burlesque ; it was intended 
for a serious and heroic poem. In some in- 
stances it would appear as if writers were at 
pains to study the art of sinking. Mr. Lane 
Macgregor Buchannan meaning to do great 
honour, and to extol the isle of Skye, says, 
that “ some of the vassals (of the great families 
there) are colonels, majors, captains, and 
lieutenants.” Macgregor Buchannan’s De- 
fence of the Highlanders, page 86. 
Dr. Swift observed the just order in com- 
position when he makes one tell the ladies 
who entertained him in a tavern, 
“ Had ye been cunning stagers. 
Yourselves might have been treated 
By captains and by majors.” 
But it is not only in writers of the very lowest 
class that we find the anticlimax. We have 
an example of this in Dr. Reid, where he says 
“ the emotion raised by grand objects is awful, 
solemn, and serious.” The order of these 
epithets should just have been inverted. 
Inversion is a figure in speech in which the 
usual arrangement of words in a sentence, or 
of sentences in a compound sentence or pe- 
riod, is inverted. For an example of the first 
kind, see Nisus in the iEneid, exclaiming^: 
“ Me, me : adsuni qui feci ; in me convertite 
ferrum.” 
JEn. lib. ix. 
“ Me, me: here I am who have done the 
deed ; on me turn your steel.” 
Under extreme agitation the usual process 
both of thought and speech is interrupted. 
The language of passion is broken and inco- 
herent. The impassioned mind rushes directly 
to the principal figure or object; from the 
action to the agent; from the attribute to the 
substance. Of the second kind, wiiere the 
mind, though unruffled and discomposed, and 
thinking in a regular train, is animated to 
great conceptions, we have an instance in the 
first sentence of the Paradise Lost. 
Antithesis is the illustration of one thing by 
another, and is, we presume, universally un- 
derstood. If an explanation or illustration of 
it by an example is. wanted, the reader is re- 
ferred to the three last verses of the fourth 
chapter of St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the 
Corinthians. Tbere cannot be a happier ex- 
ample, and the book referred to is in every 
hand. Neither is it necessary to explain in- 
terrogation or exclamation. The meaning of 
these figures is obvious from the very names 
to even one, and examples occur at every 
turn in all kinds of composition and discourse, 
written or spoken. 
In an apostrophe, (he speaker breaks off 
from the series of his discourse, and addresses 
himself to some particular person, present or 
absent, living or dead, or even to inanimate 
objects. A line example of apostrophe oc- 
cms in the second book of Paradise Lost, line 
68 1 — 7 : 
a Whence, and what art thou, execrable 
shape?” 
And a still finer in the fourth book, line 720 — 
35 : 
« Thus at their shady lodge arrived, both 
stood. 
Both turn’d, and under open sky ador’d 
The God that made both sky, and earth, and 
heaven. 
RHETORIC. 
Which they beheld; the moon’s resplendent 
globe, 
And starry pole : ‘Thou also mad’st the night. 
Maker omnipotent, and thou the day,” &c. 
See also the much admired apostrophe of 
/Eneas to his departed father Anchises : 
“ Heu ! genitorem, omnis curs casusque 
levamen, 
Amitto Anchisem ; hie me, pater optime, fes- 
sum 
Desens, heu !” 
iEneid, lib. iii. line 710. 
“ Here, alas ! I lose my father Anchises, 
the soother of all my cares, my relief in every 
misfortune. Here, O thou best of parents ! 
you left me overcome with fatigue,” &c. 
Prosopopeia, or personification, either in- 
troduces an absent person as speaking, or one 
who is dead as if he was alive and present, or 
speech is attributed to some inanimate being. 
The sublimest example of the prosopopeia 
that ever was, or can possibly be exhibited, 
is found in the book of Job. Job, on a re- 
view of his own actions, appeals from the 
criticisms of men to the judgment of God. 
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the 
whirlwind and said,” &c. as in the Book of 
Job, chap, xxxviii — xli. 7, 
There is not any figure better adapted to 
the purposes of the higher species of elo- 
quence, that is, the pathetic and sublime, than 
the prosopopeia, by which the poet or orator 
may call all nature to his aid ; but if it was 
introduced in any other than a highly im- 
passioned strain, it would lose its effect, and 
even appear ridiculous. In all things the 
speaker is to consider well for what helms 
prepared the hearer. 
Did our limits admit, most of our readers, 
and among these the most cultivated and in- 
telligent, would excuse us from following the 
antient rhetoricians, and those who tread in 
their footsteps, through all the tropes and 
figures to which the subtle genius of Greece, 
wielding the most copious and pliant language 
that ever was known amongst men, has given 
a kind of nominal existence: synecdoche, 
antonomasia, litotes, euphemismus, catachre- 
sis, metalepsis, asyndeton, pleonasmus, poly- 
syndeton, antanaclasis, pioce, epizeuxis, &c. 
&c. &c. 
On looking over this long catalogue of 
words, of so little practical use, we are almost 
inclined to say with Butler, — 
“ For all a rhetorician’s rules 
But teach him now to name his tools.” 
All tropes and figures rise naturally out of a 
well stored and brilliant imagination, an 
earnestness to establish the truth, and the' 
diffusive influence of the passions. The poet, 
the orator, animated himself, extends anima- 
tion, life, and action to every object that 
comes in his way. To return now to vigour 
or energy of style. 
How much this is promoted by figurative 
language will appear from this, that in pro- 
portion as the mind labours with any vivid 
emotion or conception it is prone to give it 
a substantial form, to clothe it in metaphori- 
cal language. Now, a lively trope conveys 
not only a livelier, but often a juster idea of 
an object, than can be communicated by 
proper words in the most copious periphrasis. 
Thus, when Virgil calls the two Scipios two 
551 
thunderbolts of war, he exhibits a more 
lively image of the rapid force and success of 
their arms, than could have been given in plain, 
words. The next-mentioned great quality 
of style, was 
Harmony. As in music we require sound, 
uniformity, variety, and proportion, so we 
also require them, not only in compositions 
addressed to the ear, but also in written com- 
positions ; for the reader conceives of what 
he reads as if it was spoken by himself or by 
others. His ear, in some measure, runs over 
the page as well as his eye. Numbers are 
not confined to poetry : there is a rytlimus, 
though of a more slow and sober kind, in 
prose. Here too we require sonorousness, 
uniformity, and variety of cadence. For these 
purposes there must be an intermixture of 
long and short words, and long and short sen- 
tences. As to the modulation of the voice in. 
speaking, as well as of pronunciation, looks, 
and gesture, these belong to elocution, of 
which we have many professors. The sum 
and substance of elocution is, to speak from 
feeling. — Si vis me Here, &c. 
. The harmony of style is very much pro- 
moted by the use and invention of compound 
words, which anyone is at liberty to contrive 
at pleasure, if he adheres to the analogy of 
language. As an example of all this, we 
produce a beautiful passage, which is a rural 
and domestic scene in Thomson’s Seasons : 
“ In the pond 
The finely-chequered duck before her train 
Rows garrulous. The stately-sailing swan 
Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale. 
And arching proud his neck, with oary feet 
Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier-isle 
Protective of his young. The turkey nigh, 
Loud-threatening reddens ; while the pea- 
cock spreads 
His every-coloured glory to the sun. 
And swims in radiant majesty along.” 
Spring, line 773 — 32. 
Nothing can be more harmonious. 
Sublimity of style consists in language suit- 
able to sublime emotions. Nay, the more 
plain and simple the images appear, the 
greater the surprise, wonder, and astonish- 
ment. It sometimes darts forthwith rapidity 
and vehemence, and sometimes reposes on 
the tranquillity of general views, exhibited in 
general terms. 
As an instance of the power of simplicity 
in every species of composition that aims at 
the sublime and beautiful, we may contrast the 
style and manner of Michael Angelo and 
Zuccero in painting. Michael Angelo painted 
his figures naked; Frederico Zuccero, who 
painted the cupola of Florence, peopled it 
with a multitude of both sexes, extremely 
well dressed in the fashion of the times. The 
style of Michael Angelo was sublime and 
beautiful ; that of Zuccero little, and in pro- 
cess of time ridiculous. 
Instances of the sublime are so abundant in 
poetry both sacred and profane, and in ora- 
tory, at least by that of the antients, that we 
leave the task of illustration on these two 
heads to our readers; but description and 
narration too, in prose, also admit of the sub- 
lime; and here it will be found to consist 
chiefly in the selection of the grandest objects 
and most striking circumstances, figurative 
language, brevity, - and, what is very closelv 
connected with brevity, the use of general 
