CHAPTER XXII.

FIGURES OF RHETORIC.

PART SEVENTEENTH.

Self-substitution.-Retort.-Conversion.-The Prosaic.

Indirection.-Oratorical Syllepsis.-Attitude.-Epiphonema, or Oracular Summing-up.-Abbreviation.-Hendiadys, or Splitting into Two.-Antonomasia.-Alliteration, or Homeopropheron.-Poetic Forms.

CLXXII. SELF-SUBSTITUTION is the name that may be given to a figure highly valuable: the asking the hearer to place himself in the circumstances you describe; most suitable to the pulpit. De la Rue, pointing to a death-bed, cries:

"Imagine this to be your case!"

Dr. Griffin supplies a fine example:

"Place your soul in his soul's stead! Or, rather, consent for a moment to change condition with the savages on our borders. Were you posting on to the judgment of the great day, in the darkness and pollution of pagan idolatry, and were they living in wealth in this very district of the Church, how hard would it seem for your neighbors to neglect your misery. When you should open your eyes in the eternal world, and discover the ruin in which they had suffered you to remain, how would you reproach them that they did not even sell their possessions, if no other means were sufficient, to send the Gospel to you!"

CLXXIII. Retort is a mode of expression of great interest: the taking an adversary's argument or witticism

the contrary way, turning it round, showing that it proves against him. It was a favorite mode with Mr. Pitt. In his speech for the abolition of the slave-trade, April 2, 1792, he had to combat the objection that its abolition by Great Britain would do little good if it were retained by other countries, as was likely to be the case:

"Let us wait therefore, on prudential principles, till they join us, or set us an example."

He thus replied:

"But, sir, does not this argument apply a thousand times more strongly in a contrary way? How much more justly may other nations point to us, and say, 'Why should we abolish the slave-trade, when Great Britain has not abolished it? Britain, free as she is, just and honorable as she is, and deeply also involved as she is in this commerce above all nations, not only has not abolished, but has refused to abolish. She has investigated it well; she has gained the completest insight into its. nature and effects; she has collected volumes of evidence on every branch of the subject. Her Senate has deliberated—has deliberated again and again; but what is the result? She has gravely and solemnly determined to sanction the slave-trade."" Under this

CLXXIV. Conversion is of kin to retort.

figure might be placed that bold statement which Demosthenes puts in the very commencement of his First against Philip:

"First, then, O men of Athens, these our affairs must not be despaired of; no, not even though they seem altogether deplorable; for the most shocking circumstance of all our past conduct is itself the most favorable to our expectations in the future. What, then, is this? That our affairs are in ruin, merely from our utter neglect of our most urgent duties. But were we thus distressed, in spite of all vigorous efforts, then would our condition be hopeless."

You perceive from this instance that by conversion is meant the turning an objection into a proof-an argument against into an argument for. But let us beware

lest we pass from our domain of figures and rhetoric into the domain of logic. Matt. xv., 21-28.

Pass on, therefore, to a species of conversion strictly rhetorical, when some old form of words, by a change, gives us a vivid surprise. Rogers, the poet and banker, was a person of very cadaverous ugliness of face; of a portrait of him by Maclise, one said:

"It is a mortal likeness, done to the death."

Mark the change or twist perpetrated on the old expression, "Done to the life." Or suppose one in the pulpit, instead of saying, in the well-known language of Paul, "The sting of death is sin," were to convert it into this, "The sting of hell is sin," he would thus, in a lively way, express the great truth that the hell-fires the most to dread are crimes, Ætna-heavy.' It is evident that under this figure many fine flashes of feeling and of argument may be ranged. Gonsalvo turned a disaster into an omen of good, when in one of his Italian battles his powder-magazine was blown up by the enemy's first discharge. His soldiers, smitten by panic, were turning to flee; with the cry, he rallied them

"My brave men, the victory is ours! Heaven tells us, by this signal, that we shall have no farther need of our artillery." So the expressions "Good-night!" "Good-morning!" are commonplace enough; but in how elevated a sense are they used in the following instance of conversion, by Mrs. Barbauld:

"Life! we have been long together,

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather.
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear,

Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;

Then steal away, give little warning,

Choose thine own time;

Say not good-night; but in that happier clime

Bid me good-morning!"

CLXXV. The Prosaic turned to a poetical use is de

lightful, for it comes with the effect of surprise. William Robert Spencer favors you with a pleasant example:

"If the stock of our bliss is in stranger hands vested, The fund, ill-secured, oft in bankruptcy ends;

But the heart issues bills which are never protested,

When drawn on the firm of-wife, children, and friends." This gives us a surprise such as when, under the rough rind of the cocoa-nut, we find the fresh milk.

Gay, in his "Shepherd's Week," brings in, successfully, real rural manners; ridiculing Ambrose Philips, whose shepherds were merely those of the drawing-room. Gay's, "Lobbin Clout," approaches real life much more nearly; as in his first pastoral, "the Squabble:"

"Leek to the Welsh, to Dutchmen butter's dear,
Of Irish swains potato is the cheer;

Oat for their feasts the Scottish shepherds grind,
Sweet turnips are the food of Blouzelind.
While she loves turnips, butter I'll despise

Nor leeks, nor oatmeal, nor potato prize."

CLXXVI. Indirection, never before catalogued, is a form of turning aside, when the question or difficulty of the opposite party meets no direct reply, yet is replied to or removed more effectually than it could have been. by almost any direct statement. Of this fine figure our Saviour, so divinely dexterous in so many a figure, furnishes a beautiful instance in Luke xv., 21:

"The son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." The father is far beyond waiting to reply:

"Ah, my dearest, no question such as that can my heart coldly discuss, or think of it at all. Saved from shipwreck, you are a thousand times a son. now blessed of God! Bring ants, and put it on him."

See John vi., 25, 26.

Haste, every one in this house, forth the best robe, ye my serv

CLXXVII. Oratorical Syllepsis must next be enumerated: a very delicate, beautiful figure when happily used; consisting in the employing of a word in two different senses at once, the one literal, the other figurative. Lear says of one of his daughters:

"Turn all her mother's pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child."

The serpent's tooth is literally sharp; a child's ingratitude is figuratively sharp; the adjective "sharper" in this passage denotes both kinds of sharpness at oncethat which wounds the flesh, and that which tears the soul. The First Philippic gives us a fine example:

"If we send out galleys empty of munition, and empty hopes given us by some paltry orator, think ye that all will be well?" Here the empty galleys were to be sent out against Philip literally, and the empty hopes figuratively. Soon after, our prince of orators returns to this figure:

"When you send forth against the enemy a general, and an empty decree and hopes from the declaimer's platform, nothing happens to you of the things you need."

CLXXVIII. Attitude is the name that may be given to a usage of speech which, when employed in moderation, is lively and effective. What we mean is, the introduction of words expressive of attitudes of the body, other than the pointing with the finger or indication; to which it is allied; and not the same at all as outward illustration. Thus Byron writes:

"Such is the aspect of this shore;

'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!

So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start, for soul is wanting there!"

All expressions such as can not be done justice to, ex