crucify him-what name can I find for this? The word "climax" is generally used in common speech for the culminating point, but strictly speaking it applies to the whole flight of ascending steps. The principle of it is simple and is obeyed by all writers with any instinct for literary effect, whether consciously or unconsciously. It depends upon the law of our nature that all strong feelings tend to decline unless they are fed by stronger and stronger additions. No feeling can be sustained long at uniform pitch. This is why climatic structure must be more or less studied in all composition. If you have an audience to interest, you must keep alive the attention to the last, and you cannot keep alive the attention if you bring out all your best things, your most interesting, impressive, moving, exciting, startling thoughts at the beginning. Great orators frame their speeches on this principle, and it cannot be neglected with impunity in the humblest essay.' You must lay your account with it before you begin, when you think over the general plan of what you have to say. Above all, it is well to know how you are to end. There is much wisdom in the paradox enunciated by Edgar Allan Poe in his instructive essay on the "Philosophy of Composition," that the plot of a story is best constructed from the dénouementt backward. I do not know whether as a matter of fact any great speech was ever thought out from the peroration backward, but one can see that such a procedure would have its advantages. genius is likely to be spoilt by the study of these elementary arts; they will not, of course, teach him how to snatch the grace that is beyond the reach of art, the spontaneous felicities that are the delight of the literary epicure.* How to prepare a substantial meal for the hungry-that is as far as practical hints on writing can profess to go. FIGURES OF SPEECH. You may think that in what I have said about structure or arrangement I have not been sufficiently definite and magisterial† in my precepts; that I have left too much to your own discretion. But this has been my deliberate intention; right or wrong it is my opinion that the greater part must be left to the writer's own discretion, that the best a rhetorician can do for you is not to furnish you with rules but to set you thinking on general, common-sense principles from which you can deduce working rules for your own practice. If I have been indefinite in my remarks on structure, I shall be still more so in my remarks on what rhetoricians call Figures of Speech. In the use of figurative language, the writer must trust still more to his own resources. I shall merely endeavor to show what a figure is, why people use figurative language, and on what depends the effect of some of the leading figures that have been distinguished. When we realize what fig‡ures of speech are we can see at once why they cannot be manufactured by rule, though there may be some practical advantage in knowing their true nature and office. Be it understood that all these hints about method bear solely on compositions with a purpose, whether that purpose be to convey certain information or to drive home a certain conviction. Balances and periods and climaxes are merely means to certain definite ends; a man may have a workman-like command of these instruments; he even may be able to use them without seeming to use them, may have the art to conceal his art, and yet have none of the charm of a writer of genius. I do not think that any writer of Safety from punishment, freedom from injury or loss; im, not, poena, punishment. +[De-noo mong.] The raveling of a plot in a novel, the explanation of a mystery, seemed to the French like the straightening out of tangled thread, and they called it the unknotting, the untying; de [equivalent to the Latin dis], apart, and nouer, to knot. 1[Per-o-ra'tion.] The concluding part of a speech, or Latin fer, through, orare, to speak. oration A figure of speech may be broadly defined as any departure from the ordinary or commonplace in expression, whether in form of sentence, or the use of certain forms or mode of exposition or illustration or application of words. It is not easy to cover with a definition all the figures that rhetoricians have named, but this about does it. The word "figure" is a translation of the *[Epi-cure.] A follower of Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the third century B. C., and who taught that supreme mental bliss ought to be the highest object in life, and that this bliss consisted "in a perfect repose of the mind, in an equilibrium of all mental faculties and passions." As used to-day, epicure is applied to one indulging himself in great physical enjoyment, especially that arising from the gratification of his appetite for table luxuries. The word is a fine example of perverted meaning. † Authoritative, appropriate to a master, or teacher. Latin magister, master, chief, head. Greek schema, our "scheme," and was applied at first to extraordinary figures or forms of sentence, such as balance, the period, climax. These are, as it were, figures by preeminence, sentences in which the figure or form is remarkable enough to stand out. Gradually the name has been extended to other departures from the ordinary in expression, for some of which the old rhetoricians had the distinctive name of tropes (literally, turns, i. e. from the ordinary); such as Interrogation and Exclamation, which are departures from the plain or ordinary use of certain forms; Personification, Hyperbole,* Irony, which are departures from the plain mode of exposition; Simile, a departure from the plain mode of illustration; Metonymy,† a departure from the ordinary direct application of words. On each of these I shall make some comments, but mark at the outset that the essence of all figurative as distinguished from plain expression, is the departure from the common, and that the motives for this departure are partly the natural love of variety and irregularity, the instinct of rebellion against routine, and partly the natural love of impressing, startling, exciting attention. It is this last property of figurative language that commends it to the notice of the rhetorician. This makes it useful for the torpid or lethargic reader. If everybody were as much interested in every thing as everybody else, and if nobody were ever excited beyond a a certain steady pitch, there would be no occasion for figurative language. But we are variously interested in things and so all of us when excited are apt to depart from the common in our expressions in order to stir others up to our level. Hudibras is not the only man of whom it may be said that He could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope. Savages use more figures of speech than civilized men; children more than grown up people. The fewer words a man has, the more apt he is to make an uncommon use of them. We may say generally that a man's "Hy-per'bō-le." See THE CHAUTAUQUAN for January, page 535. For "Simile," see the same issue, page 536; and for "Irony" the February issue, page 670. [Me-ton'I-my.] Greek meta, a preposition which in composition with another word frequently indicates a change, and nomos, a name. It is defined as "a trope in which one word is put for another; as when we say a man keeps a good table instead of good provisions." figurative language is proportionate to the liveliness of his ideas and the poverty of his vocabulary. INTERROGATION, EXCLAMATION, APOSTROPHE, VISION. These figures, like all artifices of style, were much in use among the writers of last century. Being strong and marked, they have a great attraction for beginners. The earlier letters of Shelley are full of them. The greatest modern master of the style is Carlyle, and a study of his use of abrupt figures gives the best clue to the conditions of their effect. The plain use of the Interrogative form is to ask a question; it is a figurative use to convey a feeling or an opinion in the form of a question. "Where are the snows of last year?" 'Where now is Alexander or Hercules?" "What is love or friendship? Is it something material,—a ball, an apple, a plaything-which may be taken from one and given to another? Is it capable of no extension, no communication?" No answer is expected to such questions, as in plain interrogation. Either the answer is obvious, and the question intended merely to give a turn to the reader's reflections, or the question is intended to call attention to a topic and prepare the reader's mind for an answer which the writer proceeds to give. The form of Exclamation is seen in its plain use in interjections, which express a present excitement too sharp and sudden for the formality of a regular sentence. The form is used figuratively when a writer exclaims as if under the pressure of a sudden feeling, "What an entity, one of those night-leaguers of San Martin; all steadily snoring there in the heart of the Andes under the eternal stars!" "The battering of insurrectionary axes clangs audible across the Eil-de-Bœuf. What an hour!" "Mil Similarly, the form of Apostrophe,* the plain use of which is to address by name or epithet a person within hearing, is put to extraordinary or figurative use when applied to absent persons or inanimate things. ton! thou shouldst be living at this hour!'"' "Ancient of days, august Athena, where, where are thy men of might?" "O Tam! O Tam! thou'lt get thy fairin'!'' *Greek apo, away, strophein, to turn. A turning away from an audience to address some absent person or thing personified. It is to be remarked that in all these three yourself, strongly enough to warrant your figures, Interrogation, Exclamation, and departure from ordinary expression, but your Apostrophe, there is assumed, as it were, an theme may not bear equal dignity in the extraordinary excitement, an unusual height eyes of common-sense. Your emotion may of sublime or humorous feeling, as if the sub- be purely personal. Still, instinct is the only ject were bodily before the eyes of the writer. safe guide here. Make sure that your emotion There is thus in all three an element of what is genuine, and take your chance of finding rhetoricians have termed Vision, that mode it shared by others. of narrative or description in which events and scenes are described as if the writer were looking on, and had all the vivid emotions of an actual spectator. Carlyle's "French Revolution" is one continued "vision" of this sort; the writer exclaims, questions, and apostrophizes as the scenes and actors pass before him. Wo now to all bodyguards, mercy is none for them! Miomandre de Sainte-Marie pleads with soft words, on the grand staircase, descending four steps to the roaring tornado. His comrades snatch him up, by the skirts and belts; literally from the jaws of destruction; and slam-to their door. This also will stand few instants; the panels shivering in, like potsherds. Barricading serves not: fly fast, ye bodyguards: rabid Insurrection, like the Hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels! The terror-struck bodyguards fly, bolting and barricading it follows. Whitherward? Through hall on hall: wo now! toward the Queen's suite of rooms. Tremble not, women, but haste! The exclamatory style is best used to express strong feeling. This gives the clue to the right use of it. There is no excuse for departing from the ordinary forms of expression unless there is a departure from the ordinary level of feeling. The beginner who is tempted to experiment in these abrupt forms-and most beginners have felt the temptation-should bear this in mind. One or two other cautions may be given for his consideration. 1. If you use these abrupt forms in description, you must see that the general energy of your language is in correspondence. It is not everybody that has Carlyle's graphic vigor; and feeble, commonplace language combined with these ambitious figures is open to be laughed at. 2. Bear in mind that the effect of a figure is due to its being a departure from the common mode of expression. If it is used too often it ceases to be a figure; it becomes normal; it loses the charm of rarity. There are figures, for example, in every sentence of the following extract; it is all compact of figures technically; but it has none of the essence of figurative language; it is essentially commonplace. The writer is supposed to stand before the tomb of Eugenia's husband under the impression that Eugenia herself is also dead and buried there : "And is it even so?" I half-articulated with a sudden thrill of irrepressible emotion, "poor widowed mourner! lovely Eugenia! Art thou already re-united to the object of thy faithful affection? And so lately! Not yet on that awaiting space on the cold marble have they incribed thy gentle name. And these fragile memorials! Were there none to tend them for thy sake?" I should be sorry if these cautions prevented the beginner from attempting the high style of inversions and exclamations. He should not let caution freeze his ambition. The vulgarity of the style may always be redeemed by freshness of idea and language. He should trust his instincts. He will find out soon enough from others when he becomes ridiculous. No one who is too much afraid of being laughed at can ever become a very effective writer. PERSONIFICATION. The same cautions and counter-cautions to "be not too cautious neither," apply to Personification, the art of writing about inanimate things as if they had human life, feeling, and personality. Children and savages personify naturally and literally, and for children of a larger growth there is a certain irrational charm in making-believe that things about which we feel strongly have a life and feeling of their own. An attachment to any object inclines us to attribute life to it, and feeling, and thought, perhaps as a result of our craving for reciprocity.* A sailor speaks of his watch [Res-i-pros'i-ty.] Mutual action and reaction, interchange. It is a modification of the Latin noun reciprocatio, the origin of which cannot be traced further. It feel strongly about the subject has been conjectured that it might have arisen from the as "she," personifies his weather-glass, and half-believes the mercury within it to be a living, sentient being. This gives the clue to the right use of the figure. There must be some excess of feeling to justify it, if it is to be used with really telling and convincing effect. One of the counts in Wordsworth's indictment of the "poetic diction" of the eighteenth century was the use of personification as a mere grace or embellishment, a mere trick or habit, without reference to the strength of the feeling to be expressed. It was on this ground that Wordsworth objected to Cowper's lines: But the sound of a church-going bell Nor smiled when a Sabbath appeared. But it shows how relative all principles of style are, that to thousands of good evangelicals, such as Cowper himself was, this personification of the valleys and rocks would appear perfectly natural, the appropriate vehicle of a strong feeling. The effect of personification in heightening description has always been felt, and various fashions or modes of the figure have prevailed at different periods. It would take a treatise words re, back, que, and, pro forth, que, and; the words being compounded thus, reque, proque, pronounced ra-que pro-que. *[Sen'shl-ent.] Having the faculties of sensation and perception. Latin sentire, to perceive by the senses. to follow them. The general remark may be made that the literary effect decays as the fashion spreads, each fashion in its turn becoming old-fashioned and vulgar. And see when surly Winter passes off, Far to the North, and calls his ruffian blasts, His blasts obey and quit the howling hill, While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch— When Thomson wrote his "Seasons," this kind of thing was not too easy, but after a generation or two the people tired of it. A very similar fashion in prose was popularized by Dickens, who was a great master of it, the fashion of describing the objects of a landscape, the houses of a street, the furniture of a room, as if they were a company of human creatures, with individual caprices, longings, likings, and antipathies. Dickens generally practises this art as an artist, and uses it to harmonize the details of his pictures and expand and deepen the sentiment of his story, as, for example, in his description of the night-wind in the opening of "The Chimes," or of hunger in the Saint Antoine quarter in "The Tale of Two Cities." But even in his hands this personification became a mere trick or knack, and since his time it has been as much a commonplace element in novelists' diction as it was in the poetic diction of last century, a cheap ornament put on without much regard to its suitability. A I. LIFE IN MODERN ENGLAND.* BY J. RANKEN TOWSE. LTHOUGH Queen Elizabeth has been in her grave for nearly three hundred years, the effects of her policy are even yet apparent in the community which she once ruled, and it is necessary to go back to her reign to trace the origin of those different forces which constitute the social system of Modern England. In the popular mind her fame is associated chiefly with the overthrow of the Armada, a national triumph in which she had no considerable share, whereas her real title to public gratitude and admiration lies in the ability and energy which she devoted to the improvement, it would scarcely be too *Special Course for C. L. S. C Graduates much to say the establishment, of civil administration. When she ascended the throne the whole country outside the limits of the larger cities and towns was in a condition of fearful disorder. The glut which had long prevailed in the labor market had not yet been overcome by the development of new industries and the discontent among the laboring classes was increasing rapidly, owing to the constant evictions and inclosures due to change in the ownership of landed property. The great middle class, which is the most solid and powerful element in the social system of today, had practically no existence or was represented by a few rich traders only, society consisting in the main of the nobility and country gentlemen on the one side and a horde of small shopkeepers, mechanics, farmers, and peasantry on the other. Every country was overrun by bands of outlaws, the natural product of civil war and anarchy, who sustained themselves by open pillage and were the sworn foes of all constituted authority, or by sturdy beggars who did not hesitate to take by force what was denied to their importunities. The most bloody and brutal means of repression had been employed in vain against these offenders, and were continued for some time by Elizabeth. Instances are on record where batches of fifty men were hanged together and the magistrates complained of the necessity of waiting for the assizes before hanging as many more. There seemed to be an idea that the shortest and simplest method of insuring social order was by depopulation, by making a solitude and calling it peace. The two classes of society, the prosperous and the wretched, were arraigned against each other almost in conditions of open hostility and the stability of the government itself was constantly threatened. It was in this grave emergency that Elizabeth and her council appointed a royal commission to inquire into the whole subject. The old laws against vagrants and idlers were retained or strengthened but a distinction was made for the first time between vicious and dissolute idlers and the deserving poor whom misfortune or sickness had brought to want. Each town and parish was made responsible for the relief of its own poor, and the justices of the peace were authorized to assess all persons who refused to contribute their fair share of the cost. A little later on additional laws were passed defining more clearly the distinction between the pauper and the vagabond,* and houses of correction were established in which compulsory labor was exacted from all beggars and suspicious characters while the power to levy poor rates was transferred from the justices to the church wardens. Thus was established the parish system which existed in England until a comparatively short time ago. Notwithstanding the later abuses of ad * From the Latin vagari, to stroll about, to wander. It is "a word whose etymology conveys no reproach. It denoted at first only a wanderer. But as men who have no homes are apt to become loose, unsteady, and reckless in their habits, the term has degenerated to its present signification." ministration which crept into it, this system was productive of an incalculable amount of good. It put an end to the social discontent which threatened a new revolution, it hastened the restoration of order, and it largely increased the industry and productiveness of the agricultural districts. The wellto do, upon whom the burden of taxation fell, soon perceived that it was to their interest to furnish work for the unemployed, and the vagabonds discovered that it was easier and pleasanter to work for hire than to go to jail and work upon compulsion. Many causes combined to ameliorate the condition of the laboring classes. The general prosperity of the country brought about large investments in land, and stimulated* improvement in the methods of cultivation. As farms increased in size and number more hands were needed to work them, while the rapid development of old and the introduction of new manufactures absorbed the surplus agricultural population. The woolen manufacture already had assumed great proportions and the art of spinning yarn and weaving of cloth, of which Flanders had practically held a monopoly, spread from the towns to the villages and hamlets. Every homestead had its spinning-wheel and distaff, and the housewives began to pride themselves upon the excellence of their homespun. The worsted+trade, centered in Norwich, extended over all the eastern counties and the south and west were full of mining and manufacturing activity, although there were signs already of the impending trade revolution which transferred so much wealth to the north. The growth of England's commerce, meanwhile, was phenomenal. Her ships, mere cockle-shells, compared with the leviathans of the present date, penetrated to every quarter of the globe, and London became the market of the world. On its wharves could be found the gold and sugar of the West, the cotton of India, and the silks of the East. The foundation of the Royal Exchange by Sir Thomas Gresham, a great city magnate, was one of the signs of the times. The dis The Latin word stimulus means a goad. Any thing which excites or rouses to action, serves in a figurative sense the same purpose as a goad, and hence is said to stimulate. +[Wust'ed; the « takes the same sound it has in push.] A twisted yarn, so named from Worsted, a town in Norfolk, England, where it was made. |