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'The king of France, with twice ten thousand men,

Marched up the hill, and then-marched down again.' This figure is not to be employed, of course, unless it is desired to depreciate the subject by covering it with ridicule.

Interrogation.-Interrogation is a statement thrown into the interrogative form for the purpose of giving it emphasis:

How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?-Cicero.
Who would lose this intellectual being,

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Those thoughts that wander through eternity?—Milton.
Breathes there a man with soul so dead,

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The power of this figure consists in arresting the attention by a personal appeal to the reader or hearer, which compels him to give answer to the question.

The student

should occasionally avail himself of this advantage in the work of composition. A new interest is imparted to the subject by suddenly turning the flow of narrative out of its course, as if to demand an answer.

Exclamation.- Exclamation is the expression of

emotion:

O unexpected stroke, worse than death!-Milton.
Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness!-Cowper.
O my soul's joy!

If after every tempest come such calms,

May the winds blow till they have wakened death!-Shakespeare. 'Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall!'

The more figurative use of exclamation consists in its intentional employment to vary the style from the common order, to avoid monotony, or to emphasize a statement, as in the last two examples.

This figure, like each of the others, may be associated with other figures. Thus, in the third example, we have

personification in 'my soul's joy'; antithesis in 'tempest' and calms' which words are also metaphorical; hyperbole in the last line, and, underlying it, metaphor in 'winds' and 'wakened.' The last example exhibits a marked antithesis in 'elevation' and 'fall.'

The figures, from Simile to Exclamation inclusive, may be regarded as Figures of Thought; that is, the figure in these cases consists in the turn of the sentence, or thought, rather than in the turn of the word, or idea. It is to be remembered, however, as has been copiously illustrated, that the two classes of figures- Figures of Diction and Figures of Thought- are often associated, and sometimes intermingled.

ORIGIN OF FIGURES.

Necessity. Like other products of this world, human speech began as a little plant, growing slowly to the stature of the tree, with its buds and leaves and blossoms and fruit. Now this growth, more than to any other cause, is due to the use of words in new applications. These applications are two-fold:

1. When men see a strange object, they are not satisfied till they have heard its name. If it has none, as would happen in the first settlement of a country; or if its name is unknown, as might happen in importation from a foreign country, they proceed to give it one: and in doing so, the prevailing tendency, as has been observed from the earliest times, is to use the name of some known object nearly resembling the one to be named. To combine and re-apply old names is easier than to invent new ones; and wherever this is done, the result is a metaphor. Thus, the French, on the first introduction of the potato, called it 'the apple of the earth' (pomme de terre). Englishmen called the anana (its name in the East) 'pineapple '-a name suggested by the likeness of the

new fruit to the cone of the pine. Captain Erskine relates that in the Fiji Islands, man, dressed and prepared for food, is known as 'long pig'; human flesh and pork being the two staple articles of food, and the natural pig being the shorter. The New Zealanders called the first horses they saw, 'large dogs,' and the Highlanders styled their first donkey a 'large hare.' The Kaffirs called the parasol a 'cloud' transferring to the new object a name. belonging to one resembling it, somewhat, in figure and effect. Among the Malays, the sun is mata-ari — literally the eye of day'; the ankle is mata-kaki-'the eye of the foot'; and a key is 'child of a lock.' The Romans called the giraffe camelopardus, from its resemblance to the camel and leopard, and ovis fera (foreign sheep) from its resemblance to the latter in mildness of disposition. These transfers, it is seen, are made between one material substance and another.

2. Man's earliest words, like the child's, related, not to his soul, but to his body and to material objects. As he gradually advanced to consider and explain thinking, feeling, and willing, his own yearnings and passions, he could neither understand them himself nor make them intelligible to others, except by a reference to things which he could see or hear or taste or smell or touch that is, by the use of his old terms in a new sense. The ideal, the spiritual, the mental, is, of itself, dim, shadowy, and unseen; and is incapable of being known at all but by a material image that shall make it in some sort visible, as a diagram illustrates a truth in Geometry.

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Thus our soul' - German seele is derived from the same root as the word 'sea.' The word 'reason' is supposed to be connected with the Greek rheo, 'I flow.' Consider,' from the Latin considerare, means to fix the eyes on the stars; 'deliberate,' from deliberare, to weigh.

The Greek for the soul of man means 'wind'; and the
Hebrew, 'breath.'

Again, the spirit, its desires and emotions, are named from the various parts of the body in which they were once believed to reside. In Hebrew, the mind and understanding are named from the heart, the liver, and the kid'The bowels' signifies mercy; 'the flesh,' lust; 'the nose,' anger-long of nose,' patient, short of nose,' irritable. In Greek, the diaphragm is used for the understanding; the liver, for feeling; the nostrils, for contempt; the stomach and the bile, for anger; the breast, for courage. In Latin, the nostrils are applied to taste and refinement; the nose, to satire; the eyebrow, to disdain; the throat, to gluttony. Similarly, we use the blood for passion (young blood'), the phlegm for dulness, the spleen for envy. 'Sanguine hopes' means literally bloody hopes, and a melancholy man' means properly a man whose bile is black.

Some of the metaphors in use among savage races are highly picturesque. The Kaffirs denote great dexterity by 'flying ant'; a dependant by inja, 'dog'; death by quanka, 'to be snapped asunder'; pride by 'to eat one's self.' The Malays signify affront by 'charcoal on the face'; malice by 'rust of the heart'; impudence by 'face of board'; sincerity by white heart.'

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Scarcely less ingenious are the metaphors of the Chinese. Capriciousness is expressed by 'three mornings — four evenings'; cunning speech by 'convenient hindteeth'; persuasive speech by 'convenient front-teeth'; disagreement by 'you east-I west.'

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Utility. If figures are a necessity, it is needless to add except, perhaps, to emphasize it - that they are in a high degree serviceable. This, indeed, has been said and insisted upon repeatedly, and is copiously illustrated by the examples. Their preeminent value appears in the

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conveyance of moral and religious instruction; for things of a spiritual nature, as observed above, cannot be conceived except by borrowing our notions of them from things visible or familiar to the senses. In adapting such instruction to simple understandings, whose words are few and of material import, the more striking the figure, the more impressive the lesson; for the figure communicates an idea by an image—gives to the thought a shape. This consideration, coupled with the paucity of words in the Hebrew language, accounts largely for the extensive use of figures by the sacred writers. Iniquity, or guilt, is expressed pictorially by a spotted garment'; vain pursuits, by feeding on ashes'; a sinful life, by 'a crooked path'; misery, by 'drinking the cup of astonishment'; prosperity, by 'the candle of the Lord shining on our head.' 'In the book of Job,' says Renan, 'God puts sins in a sack, seals it, and flings it behind his back'― all which means to forget. Christ is 'the true vine,' 'the branch,' 'the Lamb that was slain,' 'the Lion of the tribe of Judah.'

The point here to be distinctly noticed is, that figures not only express thought that plain language cannot express, but in other instances, express thought more forcibly than literal language can express it. Consider, also, the following:

'The news was a dagger to his heart.'

'Canst thou minister unto a mind diseased
Pluck from the heart a rooted sorrow?'

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.—George Eliot.

What point and force does Macaulay give to his plea for thorough study by the use of the following simile!

'Rumford, it is said, proposed to the Elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding his soldiers at a much cheaper rate than formerly. His

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