"The avenger of blood was on his track." When the Deity is mentioned by one of his attributes, what is predicated of him should be consistent therewith. "The Judge of all the earth will do right." "The Lord of Hosts is on our side." It would be an impropriety to say, "the Almighty knows our thoughts." "This subject reminds me of what I was told at Calais from a very good hand." It is not the hand that tells.

The designation of a great man by his locality is a figure useful only for varying the expression; as the Stagirite, the bard of Mantua, the distinguished Florentine.

(2.) The reverse operation of using the Whole for a Part is a species of synecdoche: as, the smiling year, for the spring; "cursed be the day when a manchild was born."

As in the case already mentioned of putting the genus for the species, this must be a rare figure, since it runs contrary to the general principle regulating vividness of impression. It may sometimes happen that there is something in the aspect of a whole that arrests the attention more forcibly than the part would do. The phrase "the Roman world" is intended to impress the mind with the vastness of the Roman empire.

(3.) The name of the Material is given for the thing Made: as, the glittering steel (for the sword); the marble speaks; the canvas glows; wine ten years in the wood.

The name of the material is strongly suggestive of the visible aspect of the thing, and especially the color, which it is more difficult to realize vividly than the form or outline. Hence this is one of the picturesque figures.

(4.) The name of a passion is sometimes given for the object that inspires it; as, my love, my joy, my delight, my admiration, my aversion, my horror, for the .causes of those feelings.

By this figure the Deity is styled "the terror of the op pressor, and the refuge of the oppressed." Again, "The Lord

is my song, He is become my salvation." Dryden introduces the Duke of Monmouth as

"The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,

The young men's vision, and the old men's dream."

Song, salvation, prayer, vision, dream, are used instead of their several objects. "The sigh of her sacred soul," in Ossian, designates him that is sighed for.

The name of a person is occasionally put for his fame or renown. "Kant, the greatest name in the philosophy of Germany.' “The dreaded name of Demogorgon."

The effectiveness of the present variety of the Synecdoche is explained on the general principle of selecting the prominent or the pertinent portion of the thing designated.

The Euphemism is sometimes a figure of contiguity; as, stopping payment, for becoming bankrupt.

35. The Transferred Epithet is a common figure in poetry.

The shifting of an epithet from its proper subject to some allied subject or circumstance is illustrated in these examples: "Hence to his idle bed." "He plods his weary way.” "The ignorant fumes that mantle their dearer reason." eye thou mayest behold."

"The little fields made green

By husbandry of many thrifty years."

"With easy

Kindred ideas are thus brought closer together; as, idle and bed. Thrifty years is vigorous by condensation.

We have cases in ordinary prose where this figure is used, for the sake of conciseness; as, a criminal court, the condemned cell.

FIGURES OF CONTRAST.

36. It is a first principle of the human mind that we are affected only by change of impression, as by passing from hot to cold, from hunger to repletion, from sound to silence. This applies to both Feeling and Knowledge.

Every outburst of feeling implies that we have passed from one condition to another. In some emotions, as wonder, the prominent fact is a transition from a previous state; the shock of change is the cause of the feeling. In like manner, a sense of freedom presupposes restraint, and the sentiment of power some previous state of impotence or weakness.

Knowledge, likewise, implies transition. We know light by having passed out of the dark, height by comparison with depth, hardness with softness. In short, knowledge is never single; it must have at least two objects, sometimes more than two. Our knowledge of man, for instance, takes in all that we ever contrast with man-God, angel, animal, &c.

The essential plurality of Knowledge is not fully represented in ordinary language; we are supposed to be capable of recalling the full contrast involved in each case—heat as against cold, man as opposed to brute, &c. Still, it not unfrequently happens that our understanding of a thing is aided by the express mention of contrasting objects; this mention is therefore a device of Rhetoric, and is called Antithesis or Contrast.*

So it is in the production of Feeling. A speaker may convey a more forcible impression of Liberty by conjoining, with the language usually applied to it, an explicit description of the opposite condition of Restraint. The reference to the opposite contrasting state is almost unavoidable in description; but by the figure of Antithesis this reference amounts to a fully drawn parallel picture.

37. Antithesis, properly so called, consists in the explicit statement of the contrast implied in the meaning of any term or description.

This is exemplified in Motion and Rest, Hot and Cold, Liberty and Restraint, Pain and Pleasure, Industry and Idleness. These are the contrasts that give the contrasted words their principal meaning. The following are examples:

*It is like judging qualities by placing them beside their contrasts, instead of trusting for these to memory. Thus a white surface appears brighter in proximity to black; a weight is compared with a present, instead of a remembered, standard.

"To be a blessing, and not a curse.” "Two men I honor, and no third."

"In

peace there's nothing so becomes a man As mild behavior and humanity;

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Let us be tigers in our fierce deportment."

Here the characteristic attitude of war is sufficiently given in the last two lines; but for additional vividness the poet prepares the way by an explicit reference to peace.

So in Tennyson's Brook:

"Men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.”

The idea of perpetuity is more fully impressed by putting beside it an example of its natural opposite, the transitory.

An apposite example occurs in Froude's Henry VIII.: "The petition claims especial notice, not only because it was the first active movement towards a separation from Rome, but because it originated, not with the King, not with the parliament, not with the people, but with a section of the clergy themselves."

38. There are several forms of Antithesis, in which the contrast is only of a secondary kind.

(1.) The contrast of the members of a comprehensive class.

For example, Heat and Light (class of sensations, or of natural agents); Liberty and Plenty (class of worldly blessings); Industry and Frugality (means to wealth); Sublimity and Beauty (artistic effects); Painting and Poetry (fine arts).

The process of classification, whereby things are brought together on some point of resemblance, is accompanied with the marking of differences. We come to know heat, not merely by its fundamental opposite cold, but by its difference from light, another member of the class of natural agents. Heat thus acquires a new meaning, consisting in the peculiarities wherein it differs from light; and, to indicate that meaning explicitly, we should mention light. So Liberty, besides being opposed to Restraint, is opposed to Plenty, to Health, to Honor, in the class of worldly advantages; every one of those con

trasts is something added to its meaning; and, to make that meaning certain, the contrast may be stated. This form of Antithesis is frequent in literature. It is common to contrast points of character that are different phases of excellence or defect, as Sense and Sensibility, Genius and Judgment, the Irascible and the Pusillanimous; these are not fundamentally opposed, like Sense and Folly, which are merely the two sides' of the same property. The balanced descriptions of Homer and Virgil by Dryden, and of Dryden and Pope by Johnson, are but secondary contrasts. The antithesis of the sycophant and the honest politician, in Demosthenes on the Crown, is more of a real contrast, and is highly effective both as exposition and as oratory.

The qualities contrasted under the foregoing head may also possess a certain agreeable effect when brought together. Thus the contrast of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is the means of producing situations, sometimes harmoniously pleasing, at other times ludicrously incongruous.

The harmony of different qualities is brought about when they mutually supply each other's deficiencies. Thus, a man of inventive genius and a man of practical judgment may combine with advantage to both; and such harmonious combinations form an agreeable picture.

As no one pleasure can endure long, it is usual to provide for variety of excitement. Thus, a poem alternates from sublimity to tenderness, from description to interest of narrative, from the ornate to the plain. In so doing, the moods must not be incompatible or mutually destructive, as would be a combination of the solemn and the ludicrous; in other words, a "ertain keeping must be preserved.

(2.) Another form of Antithesis is seen when things contradictory are brought pointedly together to increase the oratorical effect.

As in Chatham: "Who is the man that has dared to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods?—to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of