A speaker thus vividly makes us feel that such intense passion burns within him as almost carries him beyond the bounds of reason, but yet that reason, though with difficulty, regains control. See Luke xix., 42; xiii., 9. Take an illustration from "The Bride's Tragedy," by Beddoes: "And must I hide these sweets not in my bosom- Just so she laid her head across my bosom When first-O villain! Which way lies the grave?" XLV. Sudden Self-interruption bears close resemblance to the three last; when in broken sentences the eddying perturbations of the soul, and its jarring inward self-contradictions, are powerfully set forth. Shakespeare, whom let the young orator study night and day to learn the resources of eloquence, gives examples in the soliloquies of "Hamlet," which seem written as if to show how utterly the human spirit defies to be bound in the fetters of any system or stiff theory. How unmatched the following: "That it should come to this! But two months dead!-nay, not so much-not two. Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother, O heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, An instance as wondrous-that is, as like the almost miraculous reality of the mind, find in "Lear," act ii., scene iv., Gloster's Ist speech, 15 lines. It is not that Shakespeare represents the human heart. No! He merely places man before us, and lets him represent himself. Sir James Mackintosh's speech for Peltier is very noble. He asks the Attorney-General, who urged the punishment of Peltier for a libel on Bonaparte, if it would have been wrong to expose, in the strongest manner, certain. deeds, like Napoleon's, of previous French rulers: "When Carrier ordered five hundred children under fourteen years of age to be shot, the greater part of whom escaped the fire from their size, when the poor victims ran for protection to the soldiers, and were bayoneted clinging round their knees, would my friend-but I can not pursue the strain of interrogation. It is too much. It would be an outrage to my friend. It would be an insult to human nature." Turn again to S., "Winter's Tale," act iii., scene ii., Paulina's 4th speech, line II. "Richard III.," act v., scene iii., Richard's 10th speech, lines 1-16. Do we often hear any thing so intense as this from the pulpit? If not, why not? Of all places under heaven, it is worse than inexcusable that the grand Christian rostrum should be -tame. A hero of Shakespeare can say, without the least exaggeration : "A thousand hearts are great within my bosom." Why must not every Christian orator feel constrained to as much? It is remarkably evident that feelings. which would prompt such a whirl of interrogations and breaks as Shakespeare dashes in our faces would make it wholly impossible to read that part of the sermon, and would necessitate a delivery as wild, abrupt, untrammeled, cataract-like, as the style. XLVI. Emblem, a thrilling figure, permit us to condense within an extremely brief notice; of which the most beautiful, the most impressive uses might be made, far more frequently than is done; such a volume of the poetic and of pathos can be hinted in a single emblematic object. A magnificent instance-be one as good as a hundred. When man fell, Milton assures us that "Earth trembled from her entrails, as again In pangs; and Nature gave a second groan. Sky lower'd; and, muttering thunder, some sad drops Or mark the force of the emblematic storm in Tennyson's "Sisters;" a howl of tempest that raves and maddens in every tiger-stanza: "I kissed his eyelids into rest; His ruddy cheek was on my breast; The wind is raging in turret and tree.” Why, in the name of all that is fresh and arousing, is this not oftener heard from the pulpit? While the summer sunshine through the high church windows pours flashingly, eloquent for God; or over the bread in the sacrament the white cloth lies, like shroud over a corpse, admirable would the effect be of leaving the emblem unapplied; for it is well to trust something to the audience. See Dr. Emmons, page 375. This we heard lately, suppose-though your author coins it: "How sad the ruin of female virtue! The purest thing hath been trampled into the most polluted! The other day the pure snow from heaven lay on the pavement of a street near by. How it glistened in the beam of God! Two days after, it was a soiled and sullied mass." From the Italian of Giambatista Volpe permit your author to translate for you the following sonnet, consisting all of emblems: "AN APPEAL TO YOUTH. "To battle trained, the death-defying steed Hastes fearless to the throng and din of fight. But if unrein'd he loiters in the mead Soon fades his kindling eye, his warrior might. Mirror for wood-nymph's form, the streamlet leads But lingering in the dock, the moths consume And never laurel round your forehead bloom!" No more pathetic instance will you find than that in the "Iliad," Book II., 308-332. As the serpent caught and slaughtered the sparrow and her brood of eight, so were the Achæans to storm Troy after the nine years of siege. The wise Odysseus dwelt all on this, in a most effective speech at a most critical moment. How instructive this old and triumphant case of pleading by emblem! As Theodore Tilton refers to the Weird, in which Mrs. Browning excels, we quote from him: "She abounds in figures, strong and striking, sometimes strange and startling; sometimes grotesque and weird; often, one may say, unallowable; but always having a piercing point of meaning that gives warrant for their singularity. Swords have not keener edges, nor flash brighter lights than the sudden similes drawn by this poet's hand. She illustrates at will from nature, art, mythology, history, literature, Scripture, common life. She plucks metaphors wherever they grow, and, to those who have eyes to see, they grow every where. Occasionally, taking for granted a too great knowledge on the part of her readers, even of such as are cultivated, her figures are covered with dust of old books, and their meaning is hidden in a vexing obscurity. But, on the other hand, her sentences often are as clear as ice, and have a lustre of prismatic fires." CHAPTER XII. FIGURES OF RHETORIC. PART SEVENTH. The Weird.-The Quaint.-Antithesis.-Epantiosis.-Antimetaboles.-Parison or Annomination.-Omoioteleuton. -Isocolon.-Commutation. XLVII. WE open this chapter with a turn of writing capable of fine adaptations, yet needing only short notice the Weird; never heretofore registered as figurative, but susceptible of effects that lie deep, and which are very beautiful, though extremely difficult to define. Often we feel them when we can not describe them; as in this by Horatius Bonar, a sainted Scottish clergyman: "Beyond the smiling and the weeping, I shall be soon. Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. "Beyond the frost chill and the fever, I shall be soon. Beyond the rock waste and the river, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come." |