The parenthesis requires a moderate depression of the voice at its commencement, which should be continued in a quickened pace till it terminates; when the same tone should be resumed which you observed before its commencement. As the words contained in a parenthesis occasion an interruption in the current of the sentiment they are always justly considered as blemishes in composition. In the following sentence of Mr. Addison, the parenthesis is striking:

"Notwithstanding all this care of Cicero, history informs us that Marcus proved a mere blockhead; that nature (who it seems was even with the son for her prodigality to the father) rendered him incapable of improving, by all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavours, and the most refined conversation of Athens."

Such are the sentential pauses.

An emphatical pause is made after something has been said, or is just about to be said, to which we desire particularly to call the hearer's attention. This pause produces the same effect as a strong. emphasis, and is subject to the same rules. The same caution is necessary also in the use of it, viz. not to repeat it too frequently. For as it excites uncommon attention, and of course raises expectation; if the importance of the matter be not fully answerable to such expectation, it occasions disappointment and disgust.

When properly applied, the emphatical pause gives great energy to the expression. In the fourth commandment of the decalogue, an emphatical pause after the first word, "Remember," gives great force and expression to the precept; "Remember-that thou keep holy the sabbath day," &c. In the soliloquy of cardinal Wolsey, an emphatical pause is properly introduced into the first metaphor.

So in the address of Sempronius to the Roman senate

"Rise, and revenge her slaughter'd citizens,
"Or-slrare their fate."

Such are the pauses proper to be observed in the reading of prose: in addition to all which, verse, whether blank verse or rhyme, requires the strict observance of what are called the harmonic pauses, viz. the cesural and final pauses. These sometimes coincide with the sentential pauses, and sometimes act independently of them; that is, exist where there is no stop required to designate the sense.

The final pause takes place at the end of the line, closes the verse, and marks the measure, by a certain number of feet. The cesural divides the line into equal or unequal parts. The final preserves the melody, and produces the harmony of verse, without interfering with the sense. For the pause itself perfectly marks the bound of the metre, and being made only by a suspension of the voice, not by any change of note, it can never affect the sense. This is not the only advantage gained to numbers by this final pause or stop of suspension. It also prevents that monotony, that sameness of note at the end of lines, which, however pleasing to a rude, is disgusting to a delicate ear. For, as the final pause has no peculiar note of its own, but always takes that which belongs to the preceding word, it changes continually with the matter, and is as various as the sense.

It is the final pause alone, which, on many occasions, marks the difference between prose and verse. This will be evident, if we read the following passage from Thomson, with regard only to the sentential pauses:

;

"Thus up the mount, in airy visioh rapt, I stray, regardless whither till the sound of a near fall of water, every sense wakes from the charm of thought. Swift shrinking back, I check my steps; and view the broken scene. Smooth to the shelving brink, a copious flood rolls fair and placid; where, collected all in one impetuous torrent, down the steep it thundering shoots, and shakes the country round."

A person hearing this read without regard to the poetical pauses, would not suppose it to be verse, but only what is called poetical prose, or, as Hervey's Meditations and similar productions have been sometimes called, "prose run mad." But, by properly observing the final pause, the passage appears to be, what it really is, correct and polished blank verse, having five iambic feet in each line; as thus,

"Thus, up the mount, in airy vision rapt,

"I stray, regardless whither; till the sound

"Of a near fall of water, every sense

"Wakes from the charm of thought. Swift shrinking back, "I check my steps, and view the broken scene.

"Smooth to the shelving brink, a copious flood

"Rolls fair and placid; where collected all

"In one impetuous torrent, down the steep

"It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round." Thomson's Descrip. of a Cataract.

The truth of the assertion is, I think, more strikingly evinced by the following passage from Akenside.

"For, since the course of things external acts in different ways on human apprehensions, as the band of nature temper'd to a different frame peculiar minds; so haply where the powers of fancy neither lessen nor enlarge the images of things, but paint in all their genuine hues the features which they wore in nature; there, opinion will be true, and action right.”

The true reading is thus;

"For since the course

"Of things external acts in different ways
"On human apprehensions, as the hand
"Of nature temper'd to a different frame
"Peculiar minds; so haply where the pow'rs

"Of fancy neither lessen nor enlarge

"The images of things, but paint in all

"Their genuine hues the features which they wore
"In nature; there, opinion will be true,

"And action right.”

Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination.

These examples show the necessity of reading blank verse in such a manner, as to make every line sensible to the ear: for, what is the use of melody? where can exist the harmony? or for what end has the poet composed in verse, and fetter'd himself by the laws of numbers, if in reading his lines, we suppress his numbers, by omitting the final pause, and degrade them by our pronunciation into mere prose?

But the harmony of poetic numbers is not complete without the observance of the cesural pause, which divides the line into equal or unequal parts, and is generally placed on the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable of heroic verse.

On the fourth syllable, or at the end of the second foot: a's,

"Far in a wild" unknown to public view,

"From youth to age" a rev'rend hermit grew."

On the fifth syllable, or middle of the third foot.

"The morn was wasted" in the pathless grass,
And long and lonesome" was the wild to pass."

On the sixth syllable, or at the end of the third foot.

"Some to conceit alone" their taste confine,

"And glitt'ring thoughts" struck out at ev'ry line."

A line may be divided into three portions, by two cesuras: as, "Outstretch'd he lay" on the cold ground" and oft"

"Look'd up to heav'n."

Sometimes a semi-pause, or demi-cesura is introduced: as thus,

"Rides' in the whirlwind" and directs' the storm."

"From storms' a shelter", and from heat' a shade."

Such are the stops or pauses made use of in the pronunciation of written language; and one of the most important parts of the art of reading consists in the proper application of them. The great error which prevails with respect to the use of them is, that they are more attended to and regulated according to the rules of grammar in the construction of a sentence, than to the customary modes of speaking: that is, certain parts of speech are kept together and others divided by stops, according to their grammatical construction, without reference to the pauses used in discourse. Whereas, the ear being much more accustomed to the tones and pauses of colloquial, than to those usually observed in written, language, a rigid observance of the latter, occasions a stiffness, that produces a degree of monotony which soon fatigues the ear, and consequently by continuance becomes disgusting.

Of one of the best readers ever known in England, I have heard the following anecdote.

"Mr. John Rice, who in the year 1765 published an octavo volume on the Art of Reading, obtained a very handsome income by the instruction which he gave privately to individuals. When Dr. Rush was in England, he was invited to dine at a gentleman's house, where, during the course of dinner, Mr. Rice came to instruct a young lady in the art of reading. The gentleman, thinking it might be agreeable to Dr. Rush and some other Americans who were there to hear Mr. Rice read, desired him to return when the lesson was over, and read to them. He did so; and the guests were astonished at the force of expression and elegance of manner with which he read some of the most difficult passages of that sublime author, Milton. Dr. Rush assured me he never had heard the poem of Paradise Lost read in so superior a style; and one of the company asking Mr. Rice what that peculiarity of manner was owing to, he replied: "Sir, I always make it a rule in reading, to disregard the sentential stops, and to be governed

only by those colloquial pauses and tones, which would most naturally and forcibly express the sense, were the sentiments the spontaneous effusions of my own mind. The sentential pauses in ail books, being so mechanically, and consequently so injudiciously placed, as frequently to obscure the brilliancy of the sentiment, and always to communicate a stiffness to the enunciation."

Punctuation is a modern art. The ancients were intirely unacquainted with the use of our comma, semicolon, &c. and wrote not only without any distinction of members and periods, but also without distinction of words; which custom, historians inform us, continued till the hundred and fourth olympiad. During which time, the sense alone divided the discourse. How the ancients read their works written in this manner, it is not easy to conceive. After the practice of joining words together ceased, notes of distinction were placed at the end of every word, generally a mark like our small v. This appears from many ancient manuscripts still preserved in public libraries, and in the cabinets of the curious. This was the mode while manuscripts and monumental inscriptions were the only known methods to convey knowledge. The fourteenth century, to which we are indebted for the invention of printing, did not however bestow those appendages which we call stops: whoever will be at the pains to examine the first printed books will discover no stops of any kind; but arbitrary marks here and there, according to the humour of the printer. In the fifteenth century we observe their first appearance. Nor were they all produced at the same time: the comma, parenthesis, interrogation and period, being then all. The colon was afterwards introduced, and lastly the semicolon, and note of admiration. "Pauses in discourse, says Mr. Sheridan, answer the same end that shades do in pictures; by the proper use of which, the objects stand out distinctly to the eye; and without which, were the colours to run into one another, it would be difficult to discriminate the several figures of the composition. In order to get the better of this bad habit of running sentences and their members too quickly into one another, he recommends it to every reader to make all his pauses longer than is necessary, till by degrees he brings them to their due proportion.

The use of pauses being not only to elucidate the meaning, but to give expression to the sentiments of an author, taste as well as judgment is essentially necessary in a reader; and this taste must be founded upon an active sensibility of the author's feelings, and the most natural and consequently the most forcible mode of communicating them agreeably to the nature of the subject discussed.