interlards his argument with themes suited to the popular taste. Digressions are always allowable when not carried too far, but mere padding is a term always used in a contemptuous sense, and is meant to designate a fault. Analogous to bombast, etc., are such terms as "buncombe," "hifalutin," which have come into use in America. The origin of one of these is given in Wheeler's History of North Carolina: "Several years ago, in Congress, the member from this district (Buncombe) arose to address the house, without any extraordinary powers in manner or matter to interest the audience. Many members left the hall. Very naively he told those that remained that they might go, too; he should speak for some time, but 'that he was only talking for Buncombe."" The following are illustrations: "We understand it now. The President is impatient to wreak his vengeance on South Carolina. Be it so. Pass your measure, sir! Unchain your tiger! Let loose your war-dogs as soon as you please! I know the people you desire to war on. They await you with unflinching, unshrinking, unblanching firmness." "You may scoop out the Valley of the Mississippi and bury truth there; you may heap over her grave the Alleghanies, and pile above these the Rocky Mountains-but in vain. After all truth will have her resurrection." CHAPTER XII. THE ILLUSTRATIVE STYLE. $247. THE ILLUSTRATIVE STYLE. IN connection with the subject of vivacity there are certain distinctive styles of writing which are worthy of special attention. The first of these to be considered is the illustrative style. This name is given to a certain manner of composition where the subject is made clear and attractive by means of illustration. Such a style is usually in the highest degree perspicuous, for the aim of the writer is to make himself understood; and it is also full of persuasiveness, for it is equally his aim to commend his work to the reader. Therefore he spares no pains to make his style agreeable, so that it shall win attention and attract sympathy. In examining this subject it will be found that there are certain aids of which the writer avails himself, and which accordingly form the chief characteristics of the illustrative style. These are: 1. The statement of general propositions accompanied with particular examples. 1. The illustrative style is sometimes characterized by general statements, with particular examples: 66 The clergy were regarded as, on the whole, a plebeian class; and, indeed, for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants. . . . A young Levite-such was the phrase then in use-might be had for his board, a small garret, and ten pounds a year; and might not only perform his own professional functions; might not only be the most patient of butts and listeners; might not only be always ready in fine weather for bowls and in rainy weather for shovel-board; but might also save the expense of a gardener or of a groom. Sometimes the reverend man nailed up the apricots, and sometimes he curried the coach horses. He cast up the farrier's bills. He walked ten miles with a message or a parcel. If he was permitted to dine with the family, he was expected to content himself with the plainest fare. He might fill himself with the corned beef and the carrots; but as soon as the tarts and cheese-cakes made their appearance he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part of which he had been excluded."-MACAULAY. The principle of which this is an illustration has already been discussed and explained in connection with the figure exemplum. It only remains to point out in this place the bearing which this passage has on the present subject. The general statement here is that the greater part of the clergy were mere menial servants; and this is explained and maintained by a number of details which in themselves would be deemed trivial, but which, when assembled together and presented as examples, are full of convincing force. § 249. ALLUSION. 2. In the following passage the theme is illustrated by means of allusion: "All human beauty is but skin-deep, and scarcely that. A little rough ening of the cuticle will mar the fairest face, and change beauty to hideousness. What fearful irony leers upon us from the human skull. This was the head, this the divine countenance of some Helen, some Aspasia or Cleopatra; some Agnes of Meran or Mary of Scotland; on whose eyelids hung the destinies of nations; for whose lips the lords of the earth thought the world well lost; from whose lineaments painters drew their presentment of the Queen of Heaven."-HEDGE. In the enumeration of names there is an historical allusion, while in the phrases "lords of the earth," "world well lost," are literary allusions to well-known passages in Horace and Shakespeare. This passage is immediately followed by another which illustrates by quotation : "The saying of the poet, 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,' is true only when predicated of the image in the mind, and of intellectual contemplation. The beauty of things is a phantom; the enjoyment the senses have of it a slippery illusion." Quotation is elegantly used for purposes of illustration in the opening of Thackeray's lecture on Goldsmith: "Jeté sur cette boule "Une plainte touchante De ma bouche sortit; Le bon Dieu me dit: chante, "Chanter, ou je m'abuse Tous ceux qu'ainsi j'amuse Ne m'aimeront-ils pas ?" "In those charming lines of Beranger, one may fancy described the career, the sufferings, the genius, the gentle nature of Goldsmith, and the esteem in which we hold him. Who of the millions whom he has amused doesn't love him? To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title is that for a man !"-THACKERAY. $ 250. COMPARISON AND METAPHOR. 3. The subject will be found illustrated by both of these figures in the following exquisite passage by Oliver Wendell Holmes : "Did you never in walking in the fields come across a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it close to its edges? and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under its edge, and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, ‘It's done brown enough by this time.' What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among the members produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous, or horny-shelled-turtle-bugs one wants to call them ; some of them softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches (nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has one of her flat-pattern live time-keepers to slide into it); black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless slug-like creatures; young larvæ, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned, and the wholesome light of day let in upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs-and some of them have a good many-rush round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next year you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect angels open and shut over their golden disks as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their glorified being. "The stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature, borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty, divinely taking outlines and color, light upon the souls of men, as the butterflyimage of the beatified spirit rising from the dust-soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which would never have found wings had not the stone been lifted." § 251. ANECDOTE. In the following passage illustration is made by means of anecdote : "I hold old Johnson to be the great supporter of the British monarchy and Church during the last age. ... Johnson was revered as a sort of oracle, and the oracle declared for Church and king. What a humanity the old man had! He was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures; a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. What, boys! are you for a frolic?' he cries, when Topham Beauclerc comes and wakes him up at midnight. 'I'm with you.' And away he goes, tumbles on his homely old clothes, and trundles through Covent Garden with the young fellows. When he used to visit Garrick's Theatre, and had 'the liberty of the scenes,' he says, 'All the actresses knew me, and dropped me a courtesy as they passed to the stage.' That would make a pretty picture; it is a pretty picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gayety, tenderly surveyed by wisdom's merciful, pure eyes."-THACKERAY. CHAPTER XIII. THE EPIGRAMMATIC STYLE. § 252. EPIGRAMMATIC STYLE. Another style associated with vivacity is that which is called. the epigrammatic. By this is meant a style which resembles that of an epigram. An epigram is a short poem or sentence, applied to some person or thing, and ending in an ingenious point or witty sting, as in the following examples: "Whilst Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give; See him when starved to death, and turned to dust, The poet's fate is here in emblem shown, He asked for bread, and he received a stone." "Seven Grecian cities strove for Homer dead, Through which the living Homer begged his bread." The characteristics of the epigrammatic style are-comparison, metaphor, allusion, and above all antithesis. § 253. IN POETRY. Pope surpasses all English poets in this respect; nearly all of his poetry being written in the epigrammatic style : "Who sees with equal eye, as Lord of all, Atoms or systems into ruin hurled; And now a bubble burst, and now a world." |