Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: Lecture XVII — Comparison, Antithesis, Interrogation, Exclamation, and Other Figures of Speech
We are still engaged in the consideration of figures of speech; which, as they add much to the beauty of style when properly employed, and are, at the same time, liable to be greatly abused, require a careful discussion. As it would be tedious to dwell on all the variety of figurative expressions which rhetoricians have enumerated, I choose to select the capital figures, such as occur most frequently, and make my remarks on these; the principles and rules laid down concerning them, will sufficiently direct us to the use of the rest, either in prose or poetry. Of metaphor, which is the most common of them all, I treated fully, and in the last lecture I discoursed of hyperbole, personification, and apostrophe. This lecture will nearly finish what remains on the head of figures.
Comparison, or simile, is what I am to treat of first; a figure frequently employed both by poets and prose writers, for the ornament of composition. In a former lecture, I explained fully the difference betwixt this and metaphor. A metaphor is a comparison, implied, but not expressed as such; as when I say, ‘Achilles is a lion,’ meaning, that he resembles one in courage or strength. A comparison is, when the resemblance between two objects is expressed in form, and generally pursued more fully than the nature of a metaphor admits; as when I say, ‘ the actions of princes are like those great rivers, the course of which every one beholds, but their springs have been seen by few.’ This slight instance will show, that a happy comparison is a kind of sparkling ornament, which adds not a little lustre and beauty to discourse; and hence such figures are termed, ‘ Orationis lumina.’
The pleasure we take in comparisons is just and natural. We may remark three different sources whence it arises. First, from the pleasure which nature has annexed to that act of the mind by which we compare any two objects together, trace resemblances among those that are different, and differences among those that resemble each other; a pleasure, the final cause of which is, to prompt us to remark and observe, and thereby to make us advance in useful knowledge. This operation of the mind is naturally and universally agreeable; as appears from the delight which even children have in comparing things together, as soon as they are capable of attending to the objects that surround them. Secondly, the pleasure of comparison arises from the illustration which the simile employed gives to the principal object; from the clearer view of it which it presents; or the more strong impression of it which it stamps upon the mind: and, thirdly, it arises from the introduction of a new, and commonly a splendid object, associated to the principal one of which we treat; and from the agreeable picture which that object presents to the fancy; new scenes being thereby brought into view, which, without the assistance of this figure, we could not have enjoyed.
All comparisons whatever may be reduced under two heads, explaining and embellishing comparisons. For when a writer likens the object of which he treats to any other thing, it always is, or at least always should be, with a view either to make us understand that object more distinctly, or to dress it up and adorn it. All manner of subjects admit of explaining comparisons. Let an author be reasoning ever so strictly, or treating the most abstruse point in philosophy, he may very properly introduce a comparison, merely with a view to make his subject better understood. Of this nature, is the following in Mr. Harris’s Hermes, employed to explain a very abstract point, the distinction between the powers of sense and imagination in the human mind. ‘As wax,’ says he, ‘would not be adequate to the purpose of signature, if it had not the power to retain as well as to receive the impression; the same holds of the soul, with respect to sense and imagination. Sense is its receptive pow er; imagination its retentive. Had it sense without imagination, it would not be as wax, but as water, where, though all impressions be instantly made, yet as soon as they are made, they are instantly lost.’ In comparisons of this nature, the understanding is concerned much more than the fancy; and therefore the only rules to be observed, with respect to them, are, that they be clear and that they be useful; that they tend to render our conception of the principal object more distinct; and that they do not lead our view aside, and bewilder it with any false light.
But embellishing comparisons, introduced not so much with a view to inform and instruct, as to adorn the subject of which we treat, are those with which we are chiefly concerned at present, as figures of speech; and those, indeed, which most frequently occur. Resemblance, as I before mentioned, is the foundation of this figure. We must not, however, take resemblance, in too strict a sense, for actual similitude and likeness of appearance. Two objects may sometimes be very happily compared to one another, though they resemble each other, strictly speaking, in nothing; only because they agree in the effects which they produce upon the mind; because they raise a train of similar, or what may be called, concordant ideas; so that the remembrance of the one, when recalled, serves to strengthen the impression made by the other. For example, to describe the nature of soft and melancholy music, Ossian says, ‘The music of Carryl was, like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to the soul.’ This is happy and delicate. Yet, surely, no kind of music has any resemblance to a feeling of the mind, such as the memory of past joys. Had it been compared to the voice of the nightingale, or the murmur of the stream, as it would have been by some ordinary poet, the likeness would have been more strict: but, by founding his simile upon the effect which Carryl’s music produced, the poet, while he conveys a very tender image, gives us, at the same time, a much stronger impression of the nature and strain of that music: ‘Like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to the soul.’
In general, whether comparisons be founded on the similitude of the two objects compared, or on some analogy and agreement in their effects, the fundamental requisite of a comparison is, that, it shall serve to illustrate the object, for the sake of which it is introduced, and to give us a stronger conception of it. Some little excursions of fancy may be permitted, in pursuing the simile, but they must never deviate far from the principal object. If it be a great and noble one, every circumstance in the comparison must tend to aggrandize it; if it be a beautiful one, to render it more amiable; if terrible, to fill us with more awe. But to be a little more particular: The rules to be given concerning comparisons, respect chiefly two articles; the propriety of their introduction, and the nature of the objects whence they are taken. First, the propriety of their introduction. From what has been already said of comparisons, it appears, that they are not, like the figures of which I treated in the last lecture, the language of strong passion. No; they are the language of imagination rather than of passion; of an imagination, sprightly indeed, and warmed; but undisturbed by any violent or agitating emotion. Strong passion is too severe to admit this play of fancy. It has no leisure to cast about for resembling objects; it dwells on that object which has seized and taken possession of the soul. It is too much occupied and filled by it, to turn its view aside, or to fix its attention on any other thing. An author, therefore, can scarcely commit a greater fault, than in the midst of passion, to introduce a simile. Metaphorical expression may be allowable in such a situation; though even this may be carried too far; but the pomp and solemnity of a formal comparison is altogether a stranger to passion. It changes the key in a moment; relaxes and brings down the mind; and shows us a writer perfectly at his ease, while he is personating some other, who is supposed to lie under the torment of agitation. Our writers of tragedies are very apt to err here. In some of Mr. Rowe’s plays, these flowers of have been strewed unseasonably. Mr. Addison’s Cato, too, is justly censurable in this respect; as when Portius, just after Lucia had bid him farewell for ever, and when he should naturally have been represented as in the most violent anguish, makes his reply in a studied and affected comparison:
Thus o’er the dying lamp th’ unsteady flame
Hang's quiv’ring on a point, leaps off by fits,
And falls again, as loth to quit its hold.
Thou must not go; my soul still hovers o’er thee,
And can’t get loose.
Every one must be sensible, that this is quite remote from the language of nature on such occasions.
However, as comparison is not the style of strong passion, so
neither, when employed for embellishment, is it the language of a mind wholly unmoved. It is a figure of dignity, and always requires some elevation in the subject, in order to make it proper: for it supposes the imagination to be uncommonly enlivened, though the heart be not agitated by passion. In a word, the proper place of comparisons lies in the middle region, between the highly pathetic, and the very humble style. This is a wide field, and gives ample range to the figure. But even this field we must take care not to overstock with it. For, as we before said, it is a sparkling ornament; and all things that sparkle, dazzle and fatigue, if they recur too often. Similes should, even in poetry, be used with moderation; but in prose writings, much more; otherwise the style will become disagreeably florid, and the ornament lose its virtue and effect.
I proceed, next, to the rules that relate to objects, whence comparisons should be drawn; supposing them introduced in their proper place.
In the first place, they must not be drawn from things, which have too near and obvious a resemblance to the object with which we compare them. The great pleasure of the act of comparing lies, in discovering likenesses among things of different species, where we would not, at the first glance, expect a resemblance.
There is little art or ingenuity in pointing out the resemblance of two objects, that are so much akin, or lie so near to one another in nature, that every one sees they must be alike. When Milton compares Satan’s appearance, after his fall, to that of the sun suffering an eclipse, and affrighting the nations with portentous darkness, we are struck with the happiness and the dignity of the similitude. But when he compares Eve’s bower in Paradise, to the arbour of Pomona; or Eve herself, to a driad, or wood-nymph, we receive little entertainment; as every one sees, that one arbour must, of course, in several respects, resemble another arbour, and one beautiful woman another beautiful woman.
Among similes, faulty through too great obviousness of the likeness, we must likewise rank those which are taken from objects become trite and familiar in poetical language. Such are the similes of a hero to a lion, of a person in sorrow to a flower drooping its head, of violent passion to a tempest, of chastity to snow, of virtue to the sun or the stars, and many more of this kind, with which we are sure to find modern writers, of second rate genius, abounding plentifully; handed down from one writer of verses to another, as by hereditary right. These comparisons were, at first, perhaps, very proper for the purposes to which they are applied. In the ancient original poets, who took them directly from nature, not from their predecessors, they had beauty. But they are now beaten; our ears are so accustomed to them, that they give no amusement to the fancy. There is, indeed, no mark by which we can more readily distinguish a poet of true genius, from one of a barren imagination, than by the strain of their comparisons. All who call themselves poets, affect them: but, whereas, a mere versifier copies no new image from nature, which appears, to his uninventive genius, exhausted by those who have gone before him, and, therefore, contents himself with humbly following their track; to an author of real fancy, nature seems to unlock, spontaneously, her hidden stores; and the eye, ‘quick glancing from earth to Heaven,’ discovers new shapes and forms, new likenesses between objects unobserved before, which render his similes original, expressive, and lively.
But in the second place, as comparisons ought not to be founded on likenesses too obvious, still less ought they to be founded on those which are too faint and remote. For these, in place of assisting, strain the fancy to comprehend them, and throw no light upon the subject. It is also to be observed, that a comparison, which, in the principal circumstances, carries a sufficiently near resemblance, may become unnatural and obscure, if pushed too far. Nothing is more opposite to the design of this figure, than to hunt after a great number of coincidences in minute points, merely to show how far the poet’s wit can stretch the resemblance. This is Mr Cowley’s common fault; whose comparisons generally run out so far, as to become rather a studied exercise of wit, than an illustration of the principal object. We need only open his works, his odes especially, to find instances every where.
In the third place, the object from which a comparison is drawn, should never be an unknown object, or one of which few people can form clear ideas: ‘ Ad inferendam rebus lucem,’ says Quintilian, ‘repertae sunt similitudines. Praecipue, igitur, est custodiendum ne id quod similitudinis gratia ascivimus, aut obscurum sit, aut ignotum. Debet enim id quod illustrandae alterius rei gratia assumitur, ipsum esse clarius eo quod illuminatur.’* Comparisons, therefore, founded on philosophical discoveries, or on anything with which persons of a certain trade only, or a certain profession, are conversant, attain not their proper effect. They should be taken from those illustrious, noted objects, which most of the readers either have seen, or can strongly conceive. This leads me to remark a fault of which modern poets are very apt to be guilty. The ancients took their similes from that face of nature, and that class of objects, with which they and their readers were acquainted. Hence, lions, and wolves, and serpents, were fruitful, and very proper sources of similes amongst them; and these having become a sort of consecrated, classical images, are very commonly adopted by the moderns; injudiciously, however, for the propriety of them is now in a great measure lost. It is only at second hand, and by description, that we are acquainted with many of those objects; and, to most readers of poetry, it were more to the purpose, to describe lions or serpents, by similes taken from men, than to describe men by lions. Now-a-days, we can more easily form the conception of a fierce combat between two men, than between a bull and a tiger. Every country has a scenery peculiar to itself, and the imagery of every good poet will exhibit it. The introduction of unknown objects, or of a foreign scenery, betrays a poet copying not after nature, but from other writers. I have only to observe further.
In the fourth place, that, in compositions of a serious or elevated kind, similes should never be taken from low or mean objects. These are degrading: whereas, similes are commonly intended to embellish, and to dignify: and therefore, unless in burlesque writings, or where similes are introduced purposely to vilify and diminish an object, mean ideas should never be presented to us. Some of Homer’s comparisons have been taxed, without reason, on this account. For it is to be remembered, that the meanness or dignity of objects depends, in a great degree, on the ideas and manners of the age wherein we live. Many similes, therefore, drawn from the incidents of rural life, which appear low to us, had abundance of dignity in those simpler ages of antiquity.
* ; Comparisons have been introduced into discourse, for the sake of throwing light on the subject. We must, therefore, be much on our guard, not to employ, as the ground of our simile, any object which is either obscure or unknown. That, surely, which is used for the purpose of illustrating some other thing, ought to. be more obvious and plain, than the thing intended to be illustrated.’
I have now considered such of the figures of speech as seemed most to merit a full and particular discussion: metaphor, hyperbole, personification, apostrophe, and comparison. A few more yet remain to be mentioned; the proper use and conduct of which will be easily understood from the principles already laid down.
As comparison is founded on the resemblance, so antithesis on the contrast or opposition of two objects. Contrast has always this effect, to make each of the contrasted objects appear in the stronger light. White, for instance, never appears so bright, as when it is opposed to black; and when both are viewed together. Antithesis, therefore, may, on many occasions, be employed to advantage, in order to strengthen the impression which we intend that any object should make. Thus Cicero, in his oration for Milo, representing the improbability of Milo’s forming a design to take away the life of Clodius, at a time when all circumstances were unfavourable to such a design, and after he had let other opportunities slip when he could have executed the same design, if he had formed it, with much more ease and safety, heightens our conviction of this improbability by a skilful use of this figure: ‘ Quern igitur cum omnium gratia interficere noluit, hunc voluit cum aliquorum querela? Quem jure, quem loco, quem tempore, quem impune, non est ausus, hunc injuria, iniquo loco, alieno tempore, periculo capitis, non dubitavit occidere?’* In order to render an antithesis more complete, it is always of advantage, that the words and members of the sentence, expressing the contrasted objects, be, as in this instance of Cicero’s, similarly constructed, and made to correspond to each other. This leads us to remark the contrast more, by setting the things which we oppose more clearly over against each other; in the same manner as when we contrast a black and a white object, in order to perceive the full difference of their colour, we would choose to have both objects of the same bulk, and placed in the same light. Their resemblance to each other, in certain circumstances, makes their disagreement in others more palpable.
At the same time, I must observe, that the frequent use of anti thesis, especially where the opposition in the words is nice and quaint, is apt to render style disagreeable. Such a sentence as the following, from Seneca, does very well, where it stands alone: ‘Si quem volueris esse divitem, non est quod augeas divitias, sed minuas cupiditates.’t Or this: ‘Si ad naturam vives, nunquam eris pauper; si ad opinionem, nunquam dives.’f A maxim or moral saying, properly enough receives this form; both because it is supposed
* ‘ Is it credible that, when he declined putting' Clodius to death with the consent of all, he would choose to do it with the disapprobation of many? Can you believe that the person whom he scrupled to slay, when he might have done so with full justice, in a convenient place, at a proper time, with secure impunity, he made no scruple to murder against justice, in an unfavourable place, at an unseasonable time, and at the risk of capital condemnation?’
f 1 If you seek to make one rich, study not to increase his stores, but to diminish his desires.’
X 1 If you regulate your desires according to the standard of nature, you will never be poor; if according to the standard o' opinion, you will never be rich.’
to be the fruit of medication, and because it is designed to be engraven on the memory, which recalls it more easily by the help of such contrasted expressions. But where a string of such sentences succeed each other; where this becomes an author’s favourite and prevailing manner of expressing himself, his style is faulty; and it is upon this account Seneca has been often, and justly, censured. Such a style appears too studied and laboured; it gives us the impression of an author attending more to his manner of saying things, than to the things themselves which he says. Dr. Young, though a writer of real genius, was too fond of antithesis. In his Estimate of Human Life, we find whole passages that run in such a strain as this: (The peasant complains aloud; the courtier in secret repines. In want, what distress? in affluence, what satiety? The great are under as much difficulty to expend with pleasure, as the mean to labour with success. The ignorant, through ill-grounded hope, are disappointed; the knowing, through knowledge, despond. Ignorance occasions mistake; mistake disappointment; and disappointment is misery. Knowledge, on the other hand, gives true judgment; and true judgment of human things, gives a demonstration of their insufficiency to our peace.’ There is too much glitter in such a style as this, to please long. We are fatigued, by attending to such quaint and artificial sentences often repeated.
There is another sort of antithesis, the beauty of which consists in surprising us by the unexpected contrast of things which it brings together. Much wit may be shown in this: but it belongs wholly to pieces of professed wit and humour, and can find no place in grave compositions. Mr. Pope, who is remarkably fond of antithesis, is often happy in this use of the figure. So, in his Rape of the Lock .*
Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law,
Or some frail china jar receive a flaw;
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade;
Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade;
Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball,
Or whether Heav’n has doom’d that Shock must fall.
What is called the point of an epigram, consists, for the most part, in some antithesis of this kind; surprising us with the smart and unexpected turn which it gives to the thought; and in the fewer words it is brought out, it is always the happier.
Comparisons and antitheses are figures of a cool nature; productions of imagination, not of passion. Interrogations and exclamations, of which I am next to speak, are passionate figures. They are, indeed, on so many occasions, the native language of passion, that their use is extremely frequent; and in ordinary conversation, when men are heated, they prevail as much as in the most sublime oratory. The unfigured literal use of interrogation, is to ask a question; but when men are prompted by passion, whatever they would affirm or deny, with great vehemence, they naturally put in the form of a question; expressing thereby the strongest confidence of the truth of their own sentiment, and appealing to their hearers for the impossibility of the contrary. Thus in scripture: ‘God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man, that he should repent. Hath he said it, and shall he not do it? Hath he spoken it, and shall he not make it good?’* So Demosthenes, addressing himself to the Athenians: ‘Tell me, will you still go about and ask one another, what news?' What can be more astonishing news than this, that the man of Macedon makes war upon the Athenians, and disposes of the affairs of Greece? Is Philip dead? No, but he is sick. What signifies it to you whether he be dead or alive? For, if any thing happens to this Philip, you will immediately raise up another.’ All this, delivered without interrogation, had been faint and ineffectual; but the warmth and eagerness which this questioning method expresses, awakens the hearers, and strikes them with much greater force.
Interrogation may often be applied with propriety, in the course of no higher emotions than naturally arise in pursuing some close and earnest reasoning. But exclamations belong only to stronger emotions of the mind; to surprise, admiration, anger, joy, grief, and the like:
Heu pietas! heu prisca fides! invictaque bello
Dextra!
Both interrogation and exclamation, and, indeed, all passionate figures of speech, operate upon us by means of sympathy. Sympathy is a very powerful and extensive principle in our nature, disposing us to enter into every feeling and passion, which we behold expressed by others. Hence, a single person coming into company with strong marks, either of melancholy or joy, upon his countenance, will diffuse that passion, in a moment, through the whole circle. Hence, in a great crowd, passions are so easily caught, and so fast spread, by that powerful contagion which the animated looks, cries, and gestures of a multitude, never fail to carry. Now, interrogations and exclamations, being natural signs of a moved and agitated mind, always, when they are properly used, dispose us to sympathize with the dispositions of those who use them, and to feel as they feel.
From this it follows, that the great rule with regard to the conduct of such figures is, that the writer attend to the manner in which nature dictates to us to express any emotion or passion, and that he give his language that turn, and no other; above all, that he never affect the style of a passion which he does not feel. With interrogations he may use a good deal of freedom; these, as above observed, falling in so much with the ordinary course of language and reasoning, even when no great vehemence is supposed to have place in the mind. But, with respect to exclamations, he must be more reserved. Nothing has a worse effect than the frequent and unseasonable use of them. Raw, juvenile writers, imagine, that by pouring them forth often, they render their compositions warm and animated. Whereas quite the contrary follows. They render it frigid to excess. When an author is always calling upon us to enter into transports which he has said nothing to inspire, we are both
* Numbers, chap. xxiii. v. 19.
disgusted and enraged at him. He raises no sympathy; for he gives us no passion of his own, in which we can take part. He gives us words and not passion; and of course, can raise no passion, unless that of indignation. Hence, I am inclined to think, he was not much mistaken, who said, that when, on looking into a book, he found the pages thick bespangled with the point which is called, ‘Punctum admirationis,’ he judged this to be a sufficient reason for his laying it aside. And, indeed, were it not for the help of this ‘punctum admirationis,’ with which many writers of the rapturous kind so much abound, one would be often at a loss to discover, whether or not it was exclamation which they aimed at. For, it has now become a fashion, among these writers, to subjoin points of admiration to sentences, which contain nothing but simple affirmations, or propositions; as if, by an affected method of pointing, they could transform them in the reader’s mind into high figures of eloquence. Much akin to this, is another contrivance practised by some writers, of separating almost all the members of the sentences from each other, by blank lines; as if, by setting them thus asunder, they bestowed some special importance upon them; and required us, in going along, to make a pause at every other word, and weigh it well. This, I think, may be called a typographical figure of speech. Neither, indeed, since we have been led to mention the arts of writers for increasing the importance of their words, does another custom, which prevailed very much some time ago, seem worthy of imitation; I mean that of distinguishing the significant words, in every sentence, by italic characters. On some occasions, it is very proper to use such distinctions. But when we carry them so far, as to mark with them every supposed emphatical word, these words are apt to multiply so fast in the author’s imagination, that every page is crowded with italics; which can produce no effect whatever, but to hurt the eye, and create confusion. Indeed, if the sense point not out the most emphatical expressions, a variation in the type, especially when occurring so frequently, will give small aid. And, accordingly, the most masterly writers, of late, have with good reason laid aside all those feeble props of significancy, and trusted wholly to the weight of their sentiments for commanding attention. But to return from this disgression.
Another figure of speech, proper only to animated and warm
composition, is what some critical writers call vision; when, in place of relating something that is past, we use the present tense, and describe it as actually passing before our eyes. Thus Cicero, in his fourth oration against Catiline: ‘Videor enim mihi hanc urbem videre, lucem orbis terrarum atque arcem omnium gentium, subito uno incendio concidentem; cerno animo sepulta in patria miseros atque insepultos acervos civium; versatur mihi ante oculos aspectus Cethegi, et furor, in vestra caede bacchantis.’* This manner of des-
* ‘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.
cription supposes a sort of enthusiasm which carries the person who describes it in some measure out of himself; and when well execu ted, must needs impress the reader or hearer strongly, by the force of that sympathy which I have before explained. But, in order to a successful execution, it requires an uncommonly warm imagination, and such a happy selection of circumstances, as shall make us think we see before our eyes the scene that is described. Other wise, it shares the same fate with all feeble attempts towards passionate figures; that of throwing ridicule upon the author, and leaving the reader more cool and uninterested than he was before. The same observations are to be applied to Repetition, Suspension, Correction, and many more of those figurative forms of speech, which rhetoricians have enumerated among the beauties of eloquence. They are beautiful, or not, exactly in proportion as they are native expressions of the sentiment or passion intended to be heightened. Let nature and passion always speak their own language, and they will suggest figures in abundance. But when we seek to counterfeit a warmth which we do not feel, no figures will either supply the defect, or conceal the imposture.
There is one figure (and I shall mention no more) of frequent use among all public speakers, particularly at the bar, which Quintilian insists upon considerably, and calls amplification. It consists in an artful exaggeration of all the circumstances of some object or action which we want to place in a strong light, either a good or a bad one. It is not so properly one figure, as the skilful management of several which we make to tend to one point. It may be carried on by a proper use of magnifying or extenuating terms, by a regular enumeration of particulars, or by throwing together, as into one mass, a crowd of circumstances; by suggesting comparisons also with things of a like nature. But the principal instrument by which it works, is by a climax, or a gradual rise of one circumstance above another, till our ideas be raised to the utmost. I spoke formerly of a climax in sound; a climax in sense, when well carried on, is a figure which never fails to amplify strongly. The common example of this, is that noted passage in Cicero, which every school-boy knows: ‘Facinus est vincire civem Romanum; scelus verberare, prope parricidium, necare; quid dicam in crucem tollere?’* I shall give an instance from a printed pleading of a famous Scotch lawyer, Sir George M‘Kenzie. It is in a charge to the jury, in the case of a woman 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 punishments would not then the mother have demanded? With what cries and exclamations would
* ‘It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in bonds; it is the height of guilt to scourge him; little less than parricide to put him to death. What name then shall I give to crucifying him?’
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 favour.’ I must take notice, however, that such regular climaxes as these, though they have considerable beauty, have, at the same time, no small appearance of art and study; and, therefore, though they may be admitted into formal harangues, yet they speak not the language of great earnestness and passion, which seldom proceed by steps so regular. Nor, indeed, for the purposes of effectual persuasion, are they likely to be so successful, as an arrangement of circumstances in a less artificial order. For when much art appears, we are always put on our guard against the deceits of eloquence; but when a speaker has reasoned strongly, and, by force of argument, has made good his main point, he may then, taking advantage of the favourable bent of our minds, make use of such artificial figures to confirm our belief, and to warm our minds.