XLVIII. APOSTROPHE. Apostrophe is the turning off from the regular course of the subject, to address some person or thing, real or imagin ary, living or dead. Apostrophe is generally used to address living objects that are absent, or dead objects with which we were familiar while they were in life. Some of its boldest efforts, however, exhaust the essence of personification, and call up and address the inanimate objects of nature. Apostrophes addressed to the imagination are frequently extended to a considerable length; while those addressed to the passions must be short to correspond with the frame of the mind in which they are made. Example 1st APOSTROPHE OF PASSION. Oh pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth, Example 2d. APOSTROPHE OF IMAGINATION. * ( thou Parnassus! whom I now survey, But soaring, snow-clad, through thy native sky The humblest of thy pilgrims, passing by, Though from thy heights no more one Muse shall wave her wing. * This Apostrophe is the production of Lord Byron, who has also presented another splendid example of the same kind, in his Apostrophe to the Ocean. Our own Percival, in his Apostrophe to the Sun, affords another example. which would do honor to the literature of any age or nation. It may be remarked, that apostrophe is, on the whole, a figure too passionate to gain much admittance into any species of composition, except poetry and oratory. XLIX. INTERROGATION. The unfigured and literal use of interrogation is to ask a question; but when men are strongly moved, they naturally put into the form of a question whatever they would affirm or deny with great earnestness. Thus: Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord that thou lettest down.* He that planted the ear, shall he not hear. Interrogation gives life and spirit to discourse. It may be used to rouse and waken the hearers- sometimes to command with great emphasis, and sometimes to denote plaintive passion. Cicero uses it with great effect in his oration against Cataline, which he thus commences: "How long Cataline will you abuse our patience? Do you not perceive that your designs are discovered?" &c. Example. Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? L. REPETITION. Repetition seizes some emphatical word, or phrase, and, to mark its importance, makes it recur frequently in the same * The book of Job abounds in beautiful instances of this figure. sentence. It is significant of contrast and energy. It also marks passion, which wishes to dwell on the object by which it is excited. Example 1st. "Weep not, oh Love!" she cries, "to see me bleed Thee, Gertrude's sad survivor, thee alone Heaven's peace commiserate; for scarce I heed These wounds; —yet thee to leave is death, is death indeed Example 2d. By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, Example 3d. 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. LI. EXCLAMATION. Exclamations are the effect of strong emotions of the mind; such as surprise, admiration, joy, grief, and the like. Example 1st. Oh Liberty! oh sound once delightful to every Roman ear Oh sacred privilege of Roman citizenship!-once sacred, now trampled upon. Example 2d. Oh time! time! it is fit thou shouldst thus strike thy mur derer to the heart! How art thou fled forever! A month Oh for a single week! I ask not for years! though an age were too little for the much I have to do! LII. VISION. 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 the action or event as actually now in sight. In tragedy, vision is the language of the most violent passion which conjures up spectres, and approaches to insanity. Example 1st. [Cicero, in his fourth oration against Cataline, pictures to his mind the consummation of the conspiracy, as follows :] 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. Example 2d. Methought I heard a a voice Cry, Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep. Example 3d. 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! LIII. CLIMAX. Climax consists in an artful exaggeration of all the circumstances of some object or action, which we wish to place in a strong light. It operates by a gradual rise of one circumstance above another, till our idea is raised to the highest pitch. A speaker makes an assertion which he feels is not strong enough for his thought; he adds another, and another, until he reaches that point which his mind contemplates to be sufficiently expressive; and then the elimax (or climbing) ends. Example 1st. Boisterous in speech, in action prompt and bold, Example 2d. [The following is part of an address, in the case of a woman who was accused of murdering her own child.] Gentlemen, if one man had any how slain another; if an adversary had killed his opposer; or a woman occasioned the death of her enemy; even these criminals would have been capitally punished by the Cornelian law. But, if this guiltless infant, who could make no enemy, had been murdered by its own nurse; what punishment would not the mother have demanded? With what cries and exclamations would she have stunned your ears? What shall we say, then, when a woman, guilty of homicide; a mother, of the murder of her innocent child, hath comprised all those misdeeds in one single crime; a crime, in its own nature detestable; in a woman prodigious; in a mother incredible; and perpetrated against one, whose age called for compassion; whose near relation claimed affection and whose innocence deserved the highest favor? * * Such regular Climaxes, however, though they have great beauty, vet |