in the storm, and our shores are covered with the wrecks."

When Irony, or any similar figure, is so strong as to be termed bitter (biting) or cutting, it is SARCASM; from the Greek sarkasmos, flesh. The Irony of Junius is seldom playful. It is sarcasm always inflicting a wound. Witness the following from one of his Letters to the Duke of Grafton:

"The character of the reputed ancestors of some men, has made it possible for their descendants to be vicious in the extreme, without being degenerate. Those of your Grace, for instance, left no distressing examples of virtue even to their legitimate posterity; and you may look back with pleasure to an illustrious pedigree, in which he raldry has not left a single good quality upon record to insult or upbraid you. You have better proofs of your descent, my Lord, than the register of a marriage, or any troublesome inheritance of reputation. There are some hereditary strokes of character, by which a family may be as clearly distinguished as by the blackest features of the human face. Charles the First lived and died an hypocrite. Charles the Second was an hypocrite of another sort, and should have died upon. the same scaffold. At the distance of a century, we see their different characters revived and

blended in your Grace. Sullen and severe without religion, profligate without gaiety, you live, like Charles the Second, without being an amiable companion; and, for aught I know, may die as his father did, without the reputation of a martyr."

We shall add another example of sarcastic Irony from the "Letter to a noble Lord" already quoted; because it will serve a twofold purpose. The comparison of the styles of different authors is a profitable exercise; and this will show how closely that of Junius in 1769 was imitated (or rather preserved) by Burke in 1806:

In the name of common sense, why should the Duke of Bedford think, that none but of the House of Russel are entitled to the favour of the Crown? Why should he imagine that no King of England has been capable of judging of merit but King Henry the Eighth? Indeed, he will pardon me; he is a little mistaken: all virtue did not end in the first Earl of Bedford;-all discernment did not lose its vision when his

Creator closed his eyes. Let him remit his rigour on the disproportion between merit and reward in others, and they will make no enquiry into the origin of his fortune. They will regard with much more satisfaction, as he will contemplate with infinitely more advantage, whatever

his pedigree has been dulcified, by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a long flow of generations, from the hard, acidulous, metallick tincture of the spring. It is little to be doubted, that several of his forefathers, in that long series, have degenerated into honour and virtue.”

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CHAPTER XI.

FIGURES OF THOUGHT continued.—

ALLUSION.

Allusion (from the Latin ad, and ludere, to play) is that figure by which some word, or phrase, in a sentence, calls to mind, as if accidentally, another similar, or analogous, subject. Thus, were a person to say 'I was surrounded with difficulties, and possessed no clue by which I could effect my escape,' the classical reader would, immediately, be reminded of the Clue of Ariadne and the Labyrinth of Crete. The speaker evidently alluded to that tale of heathen mythology.

There are two requisites to constitute a proper Allusion: that the subject alluded to shall be readily perceived, and that it recompense by its beauty, or its utility, for our being drawn aside from the main object of the discourse. Du Marsais adduces a fine example of this figure, in a petition of M. Robin to Louis XIV., requesting to be allowed to retain possession of a small island in the Rhone:

66 Qu'est-ce en éfet pour toi, Grand Monarque des Gaules, Qu'un peu de sable et de gravier?

Que faire de mon ile? Il n'y croît que des saules;
Et tu n'aimes que le laurier."*

In these lines the Willow is taken in its literal, and the Laurel in a figurative, signification; but it may be remarked that the Allusion could only be seen among those Nations where the Laurel is the symbol of victory.

PARONOMASIA, OR PUN.

A Pun is a verbal allusion in consequence of words of similar sound, or of the same orthography, having different meanings. The Rhetorical name of this figure is from the Greek para, near, and onoma, a name. It is a species of Witticism, because it contains an unexpected thought. Thus, a Gentleman, who had undertaken to make a pun upon any given subject, when it was proposed that he should make one on the King, replied that the King was not a subject. That Majesty if stript of its externals would remain a jest is only a pun upon part of a word.

* Monarch of France! my little Isle

Is worthless sand, unfit for Thee:
Why look for Laurels from a soil

Which scarcely bears the Willow tree?