ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

rendered him incapable of improving, by all the rules of éloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavours, and the most refined conversation in Athens.

Rule 8. A concession should end with the upward inflection.

EXAMPLES.

One may be a speaker, both of much reputation and much influence, in the calm arguméntative manner; to attain the pathetic and the sublime of oratory, requires those strong sensibilities of mind, and that high power of expression which are given to fèw. Reason, eloquence, and every art which has ever been studied among mankind may be abused, and may prove dangerous in the hands of bad men; but it were perfectly childish to contend that, upon this account, they ought to be abòlished.

Were there no bad men in the world to try and distress the good, the good might appear in the light of harmless innocence; but they could not have an opportunity of displaying fidelity, magnanimity, patience, and fortitude.

Rule 9. The first member of an antithesis should have the upward, and the opposite the downward inflexion.

EXAMPLES.

Homer was the greater génius; Virgil the better àrtist;-in the one, we must admire the mán; in the other, the work. Homer hurries us with a commanding impetuósity; Virgil leads us with an attractive majesty. Homer scatters with a generous profúsion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence. Homer, like the Nile, pours out his riches with a sudden óverflow; Virgil, like a river in its banks, with a constant strèam.

Compare the one's impatience with the other's mildness; the one's insolence with the other's submission; the one's humility with the other's indignàtion; and tell me whether he that conquered seemed not rather confounded, than he that yielded anything discouraged.

PROMISCUOUS EXERCISES ON THE PRECEDING RULES.

Science may raise to eminence, but religion only can give patience.

The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of

Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field rising into inequalities and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation. Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe and levelled by the roller.

Owe heaven a death! "Tis not due yet; and I would be loth to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not me on? Well, 'tis no matter-honour pricks me on. But how if honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour has no skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that wordhonour? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died on Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I'll none of it. Honour is a mere 'scutcheon-and so ends my catechism.

Were the miser's repentance upon the neglect of a good bargain, his sorrow for being overreached, his hope of improving a sum, and his fear of falling into want, directed to their proper objects, they would make so many Christian graces and virtues.

Is it credible; is it possible, that the mighty soul of a Newton should share exactly the same fate with the vilest insect that crawls upon the ground; that, after having laid open the mysteries of nature, and pushed its discoveries almost to the very boundaries of the universe, it should, on a sudden, have all its lights at once extinguished, and sink into everlasting darkness and insensibility?

The opera (in which action is joined with music, in order to entertain the eye at the same time with the ear) I must beg leave (with all due submission to the taste of the great) to consider as a forced conjunction of two things which nature does not allow to go together.

To dread no eye, and to suspect no tongue, are exemptions granted only to invariable virtue.

As a great part of your happiness is to depend upon the connexions which you form with others, it is of high importance that you acquire betimes, the temper and the manners which will render such connexions comfortable.

Our disordered hearts, our guilty passions, our violent prejudices and misplaced desires, are the instruments of the trouble which we endure.

To measure all reason by our own, is a plain act of injustice; it is an encroachment on the common rights of mankind.

If there's a power above us
(And that there is, all nature cries aloud

Through all her works) he must delight in virtue,
And that which he delights in must be happy.

The wise ministers and brave warriors who flourished during her reign, share the praise of her success; but, instead of lessening the applause due to her they will make great additions to it.

Do the perfections of the Almighty lie dormant ? Does he possess them, as if he possessed them not? Are they not rather in continual exercise ?

When ambition pulls one way, interest another, inclination a third, and perhaps reason contrary to all, a man is likely to pass his time but ill who has so many different parties to please.

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an art, the former as a habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised to the greatest transports of mirth, who are subject to the greatest depressions of melancholy. On the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents us from falling into any depth of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Nature has annexed to the passion of grief a more forcible character than that of any other-that of tears.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How wonderful, how complicate is man!

Philosophy makes us wiser, Christianity makes us better men; philosophy elevates and steels the mind, Christianity softens and sweetens it. The former makes us the object of human admiration, the latter of divine love. That insures us a temporal, but this an eternal happiness.

An elevated genius employed in little things, appears (to use the simile of Longinus) like the sun in his evening declination; he remits his splendour, but retains his magnitude; and pleases more, though he dazzles less.

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.

Where can any object be found so proper to kindle our affections, as the Father of the universe and the Author of all felicity? Unmoved by veneration, can you contemplate that grandeur and majesty which his works everywhere display? Untouched by gratitude, can you view that profusion of good which his beneficent hand pours around you?

II.-EMPHASIS.

Emphasis, which is that peculiar intonation given to certain words, arising from the feelings and emotions generated by the subject, forms one of the most prominent features in a correct Rhetorical Delivery. It is an earnest, vehement, or expressive signification of one's mind, in a form of speech that breaks through the oratorical arrangement of words, and renders the most insignificant particle important. When words, etc. are in contradistinction to other words, expressed or under

stood, a particular or more forcible stress and inflexion of the voice, alone enable the speaker to convey the correct meaning of the expression; consequently it is found, that wherever there is contradistinction in the sense of the words, there ought to be emphasis in the pronunciation of them.

66

'Emphasis," says Mr. Sheridan, "discharges in sentences the same office that accent does in words.

As accent dignifies the syllable on which it is laid, and makes it more distinguished by the ear than the rest; so emphasis ennobles the word to which it belongs, and presents it in a stronger light to the understanding.

If no emphasis be placed on any words, not only is discourse rendered heavy and lifeless, but the meaning left often ambiguous. If the emphasis be placed wrong, we pervert and confound the meaning wholly.

There are two kinds of Emphasis, viz.: Syllabic Emphasis, and Emphasis of Sense.

SYLLABIC EMPHASIS.

Syllabic Emphasis is that force or stress which is given to some particular syllable of a word above that which is given to any other; thus, in the word father, mother, the syllabic emphasis is on the first syllable; in reply, compose, necessity, it is on the second.

Neither justice nor injustice has anything to do with the present question.

There is a material difference between giving and forgiving. He who is good before invisible witnesses, is eminently so before the visible.

It is enacted in the laws of Venice,
If it be proved against an alien,
That by direct or indirect attempts
He seek the life of any citizen, etc.

I tell you truly and sincerely, that I shall judge of your parts by your speaking gracefully or ungracefully.

In this species of composition, plausibility is much more essential than probability.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »