138. Words and phrases which, though in apposition, are separated from each other, sometimes require the aid of emphasis to express fully their grammatical concord:

But O! how altered was its sprightlier tone,
When cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,
Her bow across her shoulder flung,

Her buskins gemm'd with morning dew,

Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,
The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known.'

'Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move,
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying love, we but our weakness show,
And wild ambition well deserves its woe.'

The Passions.

POPE'S Prologue to ADDISON's Cato.

Here glory and love are in apposition with springs in the preceding line, and must not be read as if objects of move. A pause should be made after move, and 'the hero's glory, or the virgin's love,' treated as a parenthesis. But such constructions are very awkward, and require care on the part of a reader.

139. The relation between a Relative and its Antecedent is sometimes obscured by the intervention of a phrase or sentence, and may be brought into relief by emphasizing the Antecedent, the amount of emphasis varying with the degree of obscurity.

6

'He talks to me that never had a son.'-King John, iii. 4.

My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? -As You Like It, i. 1.

'The question of his death is enrolled in the Capitol; his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered death.'-Julius Cæsar, iii. 2.

'He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.'—Ibid.

"That power I have, discharge; and let them go
To ear the land that have some hope to grow.'

Richard II. iii. 2.

Here emphasis is likewise due to the implied an

tithesis.

'He does me double wrong

That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.'—Ibid.

61

It was great pity, so it was,

This villanous salt-petre should be digged

Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,

Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed

So cowardly.'-1 Henry IV. i. 3.

But this last example almost defies emphasis, however skilfully managed.

'Be thou the first true merit to befriend :

His praise is lost who stays till all commend.'-POPE.

Here his is also emphatic, owing to its antithesis to all.

140. When words or phrases are inverted, they usually take an emphasis; and preserve the same inflection as if they stood in their proper grammatical order:

'Timotheus, placed on high

Amid the tuneful quire,

With flying fingers touched the lyre:

The trembling notes ascend the sky,

And heavenly joys inspire.'

DRYDEN, Alexander's Feast.

'With that, straight up the hill there rode

Two horsemen drench'd with gore,

And in their arms, a helpless load,

A wounded knight, they bore.'-SCOTT, Marmion.

'O, Woman! in our hours of ease,

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made;

When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!

Scarce were the piteous accents said,

When, with the Baron's casque, the maid,

To the nigh streamlet ran.'—Ibid.

'Behold her mark

A little fountain cell,

Where water clear as diamond-spark

In a stone basin fell.'-Ibid.

'The breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rockbound coast;

And the woods, against a stormy sky,

Their giant branches tost.'

HEMANS, Pilgrim Fathers

141. Emphasis is Antithetic when it expresses or implies contrast. Antithetic emphasis is generally, though not always, laid upon the same parts of speech: most usually upon nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs:

'O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full.'

DENHAM, Cooper's Hill.

"Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill

Appear in writing or in judging ill.'-POPE.

All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage: when young, indeed,
In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,

As duteous sons our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;

At fifty chides his infamous delay,

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ;

In all magnanimity of thought

Resolves and re-resolves; then dies the same.

YOUNG, Night Thoughts.

'Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station

Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.- Hamlet, i. 3.
'O Cromwell, Cromwell!

Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my King, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to my enemies.'

Henry VIII. iii. 2.

'Kind souls, what, weep you, when you but behold
Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors.'
Julius Caesar, iii. 2.

Very rarely upon conjunctions and prepositions:

'You may follow your own course in this matter if you please, but you will take the consequence of your obstinacy.'

He did his party all the harm in his power; he spoke for it, and voted against it.'

Most rarely of all upon the article. Sheridan proposed to emphasise it in the following line:

'Put out the light, and then put out the light.'-Othello, v. 2.

When Sheridan's lectures were published, this reading was censured as extremely puerile by a writer in

the Monthly Review,' who preferred the usual stagereading:

'Put out the light, and then-put out the light!' Whether the reader agrees with the professor, or with his reviewer, he must admit with the former that 'particles, whenever they are emphatical, change the meaning of the words from that which belongs to them as pronounced in the common way.' And this may justify our insertion of the above line.

142. Emphasis is Absolute when it distinguishes words without suggesting relation or contrast:

'But see! look up!-on Flodden bent,

The Scottish foe has fired his tent.'-SCOTT, Marmion, vi.

'The war, that for a space did fail,

Now trebly thundering swell'd the gale,

And Stanley! was the cry ;

A light on Marmion's visage spread,

And fired his glazing eye:

With dying hand above his head,

He shook the fragment of his blade,

And shouted "Victory!—

Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!"

Were the last words of Marmion.'-Ibid.

Just then a scout came flying,

All wild with haste and fear:

To arms! to arms! Sir Consul;

Lars Porsena is here." -MACAULAY, Horatius.

"Down with him!" cried false Sextus,
With a smile on his pale face.
"Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena,
"Now yield thee to our grace." "—Ibid.
"Curse on him! quoth false Sextus;

"Will not the villain drown?"-Ibid.

'An hour passed on-the Turk awoke :
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentry's shriek,
"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!”