your family, and turned them out of your house by violence, how would you have behaved?" 3. "Suppose, Piso, any one had driven you from your house with violence, how would you have done?"-CICERO. SECTION DLXXIV.-ANADIPLOSIS. ANADIPLOSIS, from the Greek àvá, and dinλóos, double, is the use of the same word or words in the termination of one clause of a sentence and at the beginning of the next. 1. "He retained his virtues amid all his misfortunes; misfortunes which no prudence could see or prevent." 2. "Can Parliament be so dead to their dignity and duty as to give their support to measures thus obtruded and forced upon them; measures, my lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to scorn and contempt ?"-Lord CHATHAM. 3. "Has he a gust for blood? Blood shall fill his cup." SECTION DLXXV.-ANAGRAM. ANAGRAM, from the Greek ává, and ypáμμa, a letter, is the transposition of the letters of a name, by which a new word is formed. 1. The words CHARLES JAMES STUART can be transposed into Claims Arthur's Seat. 2. Astronomers Moon starers. = 3. Levi vile evil. = = SECTION DLXXVI. ANAPHORA ANAPHORA, from the Greek 'Avapépw, to carry back, is the repetition of a word at the beginning of several clauses of a sentence, which impresses the idea more distinctly on the mind. 1. "My daughter! with thy name my song begun; I see thee not; I hear thee not; but none Can be so rapt in thee; thou art the Friend To whom the shadows of far years extend."-BYRON, 2. "A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe in so terse but terrific a manner as 'living without God in the world.' Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away from the purposes of his creation." 3. "Slave, do thine office! Strike as I struck the foe! Strike as I would Have struck those tyrants! Strike deep as my curse! SECTION DLXXVII.-ANTITHESIS. ANTITHESIS, Greek 'Avrileois, from ȧvrì, and rí9nu, to place, is the opposition of words and sentiments, a contrast by which each of the contrasted things is rendered more striking. 1. "True Honour, though it be a different principle from Religion, is that which produces the same effects. The lines of action, though drawn from different parts, terminate in the same point. Religion embraces virtue, as it is enjoined by the laws of God; Honour, as it is graceful and ornamental to human nature. The religious man 47 [ENG. LANG. 29.] fears, the man of honour scorns, to do an ill action. The latter considers vice as something that is beneath him; the former, as something that is offensive to the Divine Being: the one, as what is unbecoming; the other, as what is forbidden.”—Guardian. 2. "A Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late."-LACON. 3. "On parent knees, a naked, new-born child, Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled; Thou then may'st smile, while all around thee weep." 4. "Whether you look up to the top, or down to the bottom; whether you mount with the froth or sink with the sediment, no rank in this country can support a perfectly degraded name."-Sir PHILIP FRANCIS. 5. "To Adam, Paradise was a home; to the good among his descendants, Home is a Paradise."-HARE. 6. "Wit was originally a general name for all the intellectual powers, meaning the faculty which kens, perceives, knows, understands; it was gradually narrowed in its signification to express merely the resemblance between ideas; and, lastly, to note that resemblance when it occasioned ludicrous surprise. It marries ideas lying wide apart by a sudden jerk of the understanding. Humour originally meant moisture, a signification it metaphorically retains, for it is the very juice of the mind oozing from the brain, and enriching and fertilising wherever it falls. Wit exists by antipathy, Humour by sympathy. "Wit laughs at things; Humour laughs with them. Wit lashes external appearances, or cunningly exaggerates single foibles into character; Humour glides into the heart of its object, looks lovingly on the infirmities it detects, and represents the whole man. "Wit is abrupt, darting, scornful, and tosses its analogies in your face; Humour is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart. Wit is negative, analytical, destructive; Humour is creative. The couplets of Pope are witty; but Sancho Panza is a humorous creation. Wit, when earnest, has the earnestness of passion seeking to destroy; Humour has the earnestness of affection, and would lift up what is seemingly low into our charity and love. Wit, bright, rapid, and blasting as the lightning, strikes, and vanishes in an instant; Humour, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light. Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines ; Humour implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is a humane influence softening with mirth the rugged inequalities of existence, promoting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble. Old Dr. Fuller's remark, that a negro is the image of God cut in ebony,' is humorous; Horace Smith's, that the task-master is the image of the devil cut in ivory,' is witty." SECTION DLXXVIII.-ANTONOMASIA. ANTONOMASIA, from the Greek 'Avri ovopa, for a name, is a trope, by which we put a proper name for a common name, or a common name for a proper name; or an office, or profession, or science instead of the true name of a person. 1. "If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design, 2. "Galileo, the Columbus of the heavens." 3. "The Niobe of nations, there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; 4. "Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood."—Gray. SECTION DLXXIX.-APOLOGUE OR FABLE. APOLOGUE, Greek aroλóyos, is a short, fictitious story, founded frequently on supposed actions of brutes or inanimate things, and is not supported by probability. "A DOG, crossing a little rivulet with a piece of flesh in his mouth, saw his own Shadow represented in the clear mirror of the limpid stream, and believing it to be another Dog, who was carrying another piece of flesh, he could not forbear catching at it, but was so far from getting anything by his greedy design, that he dropped the piece he had in his mouth, which immediately sunk to the bottom, and was irrecoverably lost."ESOP. Application.-He that catches at more than belongs to him, justly deserves to lose what he has. SECTION DLXXX.-APOSIOPESIS. APOSIOPESIS, from the Greek aroσiornois, a retaining or suppression, is leaving a sentence unfinished, in consequence of some sudden emotion of the mind. A speaker may thus aggravate what he pretends to conceal, by uttering a part, and leaving the remainder to be understood. 1. "The statesman is the leader of a nation, the warrior is the grace of an age, the philosopher is the birth of a thousand years; but the lover-where is he not ?" 2. "No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all Loud as from numbers without number, sweet The eternal regions."-MILTON. SECTION DLXXXI.-APOSTROPHE. APOSTROPHE, Greek ȧró, from, and orpopń, a turning, a digressive address, is a figure by which the speaker turns the current of his discourse, and addresses some person or some object different from that to which his discourse had been directed. 1. "O ye judges! it was not by human counsel, nor by anything less than the immediate care of the immortal gods, that this event has taken place. The very divinities themselves, who beheld that monster fall, seemed to be moved, and to have inflicted their vengeance upon him. I appeal to, I call to witness you, O ye hills and groves of Alba ! you, the demolished Alban altars! ever accounted holy by the Romans, and coeval with our religion, but which Clodius, in his mad fury, having first cut down and levelled the most sacred groves, had sunk under heaps of common buildings; I appeal to you, I call you to witness, whether your altars, your divinities, your powers, which he had polluted with all kinds of wickedness, did not avenge themselves when this wretch was extirpated! And thou, O holy Jupiter! from the height of thy sacred mount, whose lakes, groves, and boundaries he had so often contaminated with his detestable impurities; and you, the other deities, whom he had insulted, at length opened your eyes to punish this enormous offender. By you, by you and in your sight, was the slow, but the righteous and merited vengeance executed upon him."-CICERO. I hear ye momently above, beneath, SECTION DLXXXII.-CATACHRESIS. CATACHRESIS, from the Greek karáxpnois, is an abuse of a trope, by which a word is wrested from its original application, and made to express something at variance with its true meaning. 1. "An iron candlestick," "a glass ink-horn.” 2. "Attempered to the lyre your voice employ, Such the pleased ear will drink with silent joy."-POPE. 3. "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank; CLIMAX, from the Greek λiμaž, a ladder, is the ascent of a subject, step by step, from a lower to a higher interest. 1. "We feel the strength of mind through the beauty of the style; we discern the man in the author, the nation in the man, and the universe at the feet of the nation.”MADAME DE STAEL. 2. I impeach thee, Warren Hastings, of high crimes and misdemeanours. I impeach him in the name of the Commons and House of Parliament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honour he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all.”—BURKE. 3. 66 In my affection to my country you find me ever firm and invariable. Not the solemn demand of my person, not the vengeance of the Amphictyonic council, not the terror of their threatenings, not the flattery of their promises, no! nor the fury of those accursed wretches whom they roused like wild beasts against me, could tear this affection from my breast."-DEMOSTHENES. 4. "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties ! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God !"Hamlet. SECTION DLXXXIV.-ANTI-CLIMAX. ANTI-CLIMAX, the opposite of climax, is a descent from great things to small; a sentence or paragraph in which the ideas descend, and become less important and striking at the close than at the com mencement. 1. "Who murder our wives and children, plunder our dwellings, steal our sheep, and rob our potato-patches." 2. "Die, and endow a college or a cat."-POPE. 3. "Under the tropie is our language spoke, And part of Flanders has received our yoke." SECTION DLXXXV.--ECPHONESIS, OR EXCLAMATION. ECH HONESIS, Greek expwvno, is an animated or passionate exclamation, and is generally indicated by such interjections as O! oh! ah! alas! If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have wakened death." -Othello. 2. "Oh mournful day to the Senate and all good men ! calamitous to the Senate, afflictive to me and my family, but to posterity glorious and worthy of admiration !"CICERO pro Sext. 3.Oh the great and mighty force of truth, which so easily supports itself against all the wit, craft, subtlety, and artful designs of men !”—CICERO pro Cælius. SECTION DLXXXVI.--ENIGMA. ENIGMA, from the Greek word aïviyμa, from aivisoopai, to hint, a dark saying in which some known thing is concealed under obscure language; an obscure question; a riddle. 1. "What creature is that which walks upon four legs in the morning, two at noon, and upon three at night?" Man. This is the famous riddle of the sphinx. 66 2. 'Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell, And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell; On the confines of earth 'twas permitted to rest, Oh! breathe on it softly, it dies in an hour."-BYRON. The letter H. SECTION DLXXXVII.-EPANALEPSIS. EPANALEPSIS, Greek iπaváλntis, repetition, is a figure by which a sentence ends with the same word with which it begins. 1. "Fare thee well, and if for ever, Even though unforgiving, never 'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel."-BYRON to his wife. 2. " Langsyne! with thee resides a spell To raise the spirit and refine. Farewell there can be no farewell 3. "A voice o'er all the waste and prostrate isle Wandereth, a valiant voice." |