From De la Rue, in his great sermon, "The Dying Sinner," hear what he utters of a death-bed repentance: "Produce me one solitary instance from Scripture. St. Bernard finds but one: that of the thief upon the cross. I confess that this is a very great sinner, but is he a hardened sinner? This moment is the last of his life; but, says Eusebius, it is the first of his calling. You blame the tardiness of his conversion. I, says St. Ambrose, admire the promptitude of it." Halleck, last of all, enables us to close with antithesis and surprisal; leading us on a trip to Alnwick Castle, a seat of the Dukes of Northumberland: "You'll ask if yet the Percy lives In the armed pomp of feudal state? Of Hotspur and his gentle Kate, And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling, Spoke Nature's aristocracy; And one, half groom, half seneschal, Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall, From donjon-keep to turret-wall, For ten and sixpence sterling!" The feeling that, in closing this chapter, ought to be left on the mind by the many various forms of excellence exemplified by so many quotations, is this—that the choicest things in literature are such as awaken a response in the common heart. The "Elegy in a Country Church-yard," by Gray, and "The Cotter's Saturday Night," by Burns, are two of such pieces. How it enheartens those who believe in the progress of man; in his emancipation from war, alcohol, and pollution, to see glorious literature and the Divine Cross manifestly forming and addressing a common and universal brotherhood; that the tendency to diversities of language is plainly past its worst; that the truths of Calvary and the loveliest thoughts of the finest thinkers are working in harmony to expand all minds into the enjoyment of a vast body of common faiths, and a vast body of intellectual products, owned in common, as a wealth in which all can exult. We close this chapter with a few figures put together in disorder, purposely, in review. George S. Hillard gives us this passage: "The poet's visions of evening are all compact of tender. and soothing images. It brings the wanderer to his home, the child to his mother's arms; the ox to his stall, and the weary laborer to his rest. But to the gentle-hearted youth who is thrown upon the rocks of a pitiless city, and stands homeless amid a thousand homes, the approach of evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation which comes down upon the spirit like darkness upon the earth. In this mood his best impulses become a snare to him, and he is led astray because he is social, affectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. If there be a young man thus circumstanced within the sound of my voice, let me say to him that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is a home of the homeless." Dr. Thomas Brown, the celebrated successor of Professor Dugald Stewart in Edinburgh, thus speaks: "The proud look down upon the earth, and see nothing that creeps upon its surface more noble than themselves. The humble look upward to their God." Thomas Randolph, the dramatist, a contemporary of Shakespeare, presents us with this: "Justice like lightnings ever should appear To few men's ruin, but to all men's fear." Mary Howitt bestows on us a very deft enallage-an adjective for a noun. His taste is still numb, to whom this little matter imparts not an exquisite thrill; he is much to be pitied, whom tiny beauties do not delight: "Little streams have flowers a many, From Robert Southwell, in Elizabeth's reign, accept of a striking ellipsis; he died on the scaffold: "I read the label underneath, That telleth me whereto I must; I see the sentence too that saith, Remember, man, thou art but dust." A teacher of Botany, a science of the beautiful, sometimes throws together a confusion of flowers, and asks the students to classify them. Let the teacher of style occasionally treat figures in the same way. He will find. intentional confusion very useful. CHAPTER XIII. FIGURES OF RHETORIC. PART EIGHTH. Intentional Discrepancy.-Nonsense.-Oxymoron, or Wise Folly.-Euphemism.-Misnomer.-Hyperbole.-Change of Usage. LV. INTENTIONAL DISCREPANCY next deserves mention on our list of figures. Thus S.: "The work we have in hand, Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible." Why is the "most" left out before fiery? With deliberate intention, to humor our love of variety; to avoid a monotonous return of the same construction. Who but derives an agreeable sensation from it? S., "Julius Cæsar," act ii., scene i., Brutus's 20th speech, last line. So when Octavius Cæsar, in "Antony and Cleopatra," says: "Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well." Again, in "Hamlet," act ii., scene ii., lines 33, 34; "Measure for Measure," act ii., scene ii., Angelo's 17th speech, line 3. Denis Florence Maccarthy thus expostulates in behalf of Ireland. Mark the last of the four lines, "And they perish," instead of " and they are perishing:" "They are dying-they are dying, where the golden corn is growing; They are dying-they are dying, where the crowded herds are lowing; They are gasping for existence where the streams of life are flowing; And they perish of the plague where the breeze of life is blowing." LVI. Nonsense; shall we dignify that with a place on our list? Assuredly will vote for doing so every one who hath at all duly noticed what admirable and wise uses it can be, and often is, put to, though never before in rhetoric has it been so highly honored. How deeply does clever or quaint nonsense abide in the memory, and for how many a decade-from earliest youth to age's most venerable years. You see how sweet and dear it is to unsophisticated human nature, in the fact that, in all nations, nurses sing nonsense verses to the babes they fondle. We had not been in Savannah, Georgia, one hour, till we heard rhymes that had been familiar to us on the banks of the Clyde; and we heard them with delight: "Zickaty, dickaty, dock, The mouse ran up the clock. Down the mouse run Zickaty, dickaty, dock." See Hood's inimitable letter to a child, quoted farther on in this chapter. Burns is not without a specimen: "Ken ye aught o' Captain Grose? If he's 'mang his freens or foes? Is he slain by Highlan' bodies? And eaten like a wether-haggis? Iram, coram, dago." An old ballad before the Reformation, attacking the Romish clergy, and such popular ballads were numerous, has for its refrain: |