Page images
PDF
EPUB

wrecked and cast on the desolate island, and as finding some money, the narrative thus proceeds:

"I smiled to myself at the sight of this money. 'Oh, drug!' I exclaimed, 'what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me, no, not the taking off the ground; one of these knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of use for thee; e'en remain where thou art, and go to the bottom, as a creature not worth saving.'"

This is natural and impressive.

73. How much Used.-It would be easy to fill this volume with beautiful specimens of Personification. Especially does it abound in poetry. It is also often found in oratory. Yet many eminent orators never use what we call Personification of the third degree, and you may read hundreds of volumes in prose without a single example. Many elegant speakers have never employed it once.

How sublime is Milton's oft-quoted address to Light!

"Hail! holy Light, offspring of Heaven, first-born,

Or of the Eternal, co-eterual beam,

May I express thee unblamed-since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light

Dwelt from eternity, dwelt thou in thee,

Bright effluence of bright essence increate ?"

Not less sublime is Byron's address to the Ocean, beginning thus:

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain:

Man marks the earth with ruin; his control
Stops with thy shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths, with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown."

RULES ON PERSONIFICATION.

155

Oftentimes thus by personification much thought and instruction can be conveyed, under the guise of referring to the qualities and circumstances of the object, addressed. Thus Shakspeare says to Sleep:

"Oh, thou dull god! Why liest thou with the vile,

In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude, imperious surge? * * *
Canst thou, oh, partial sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And, in the calmest and the stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a king? Then, happy, low, lie down,
Uneasy is that head that wears a crown."

This figure is often used in Wit and Burlesque.
74. Directions on Use of Personification.

(1.) Personification of the higher degrees should be used sparingly, or the style will appear too artistic to please the taste.

(2.) The occasion should always justify its use.

(3.) Let it not be dwelt upon too long, and the idea of personality be carried out so far as to weary or displease the hearer.

75. Prosopopaia.-Personification is sometimes termed Prosopopoeia, but, strictly speaking, Prosopopœia is more general, and includes all kinds of speaking in which the speaker represents for the time either a personified thing or a person absent or deceased. It therefore includes both Personification and Apostrophe, which is more fully explained in the next chap

*ter.

read

CHAPTER X.

APOSTROPHE.

76. Definition, and Examples.-A sudden turning away from the current of thought to address another person or party, or an absent or deceased person as though present and alive, is called Apostrophe.

This figure of speech is often combined or associated with Personification. It exhibits intense feeling, and, if the occasion justifies it, is impressive and efficient.

The following, from a prize essay on Education by Dr. Hamilton, is a specimen of an impressive style, and contains an Apostrophe:

“The nature of man is the shoal on which all infidel philosophy, and, if it can be, all infidel benevolence, are wrecked. These can not explain him. They mark contrasts in him which they can not reconcile. The great and the little, the strong and the weak, the divine and the infernal, they can not adjust. His origin they can not deduce. His recovery they can not meditate. They may explore all secrets, and master all difficulties but this. Christianity alone makes it plain. Man is great, but fallen; is strong, but sinning; is divine, but debased: therefore is he spiritually little, weak, infernal. It brings him back to spiritual greatness, strength, and divinity. It shows him all that he was, is, and shall be. It explains the intermediate stages and processes. It accounts for all. Man! taught by this religion, I can abhor thee, dread thee, reverence thee, bemoan thee, shun thee, flee thee! But oh, fearful, mysterious being, 1 can not slight thee!"*

*The Institutions of Popular Education. An Essay to which the Manchester Prize was adjudged. By the Rev. Richard Winter Hamilton, D.D., LL.D. (London, 1845), p. 34.

INSTANCES OF APOSTROPHE.

157

All can see that turning from the descriptive current of thought to address man, adds great energy to the passage.

The following characteristic quotation from Carlyle's Essay on Sir Walter Scott exhibits the same. figure:

"To omit mere prurient susceptivities that rest on vacuum, look at poor Byron, who really had much substance in him. Sitting there in his self-exile, with a proud heart striving to persuade itself that it despises the entire created universe; and far off, in foggy Babylon, let any pitifullest whipster draw pen on him, your proud Byron writhes in torture, as if the pitiful whipster were a magician, or his pen a galvanic wire struck into Byron's spinal marrow! Lamentable, despicable, one had rather be a kitten and cry mew! Oh, son of Adam, great or little, according as thou art lovable, those thou livest with will love thee!"

This is a figure frequently employed by Carlyle in his disjointed, jerking style. Take another specimen from the same essay:

"The most famed man, round whom all the world rapturously huzzahs and venerates, as if his like were not, is the same man whom all the world was wont to jostle into the kennels; not a changed man, but in every fibre of him the same man. Foolish world! what went ye out to see? A tankard scoured bright! And do there not lie, of the self-same pewter, whole barrowfuls of tankards, though by worse fortune all in the same state?"

The frequency with which this figure is employed in impassioned oratory will justify the presentation of other illustrations of it. Edward Everett, in a eulogy pronounced on La Fayette, introduces the following apostrophes:

"You have now assembled within these sacred walls to perform the last duties of respect and love, on the birthday of your benefactor, beneath that roof which has resounded of old with the master voices of American renown. Listen, Americans, to the lessons which

seem borne to us on the very air we breathe, while we perform these dutiful rites. Ye winds, that wafted the Pilgrims to the land of promise, fan in their children's hearts the love of freedom! Blood, which our father's shed, cry from the ground! Echoing arches of this renowned hall, whisper back the voices of other days! Glorious Washington, break the long silence of that votive canvas: speak, speak, marble lips, teach us the love of liberty protected by law."

Nothing but intense feeling in the speaker, shared by the audience, would justify such an appeal, not surpassed by any thing in ancient or modern oratory; but the occasion' did justify it, and when Everett uttered those words, the audience, swayed by his power, seemed, while in perfect silence they followed the gesture of the orator, and gazed first upon the portrait and then upon the statue of Washington, to expect every instant to hear the canvas or the marble speak!

77. Remarks by Everett upon Apostrophe.-Some excellent remarks upon this figure of Rhetoric are given by Edward Everett in his review of the speeches of Webster.* Speaking of an orator, he says:

"In those portions of his discourse which are purely didactic or narrative, he will not be apt to rise-he will not have occasion to rise-above his notes, though even here new facts, illustrations, and suggestions will spring up before him as he moves on. But when the topic rises, and the strain becomes loftier and bolder, the thick-coming fancies can not be repelled; the whole storehouse of the memory is unlocked, its most hidden shrines fly open-all that has been seen, heard, read, felt, returns in most vivid colors-the cold and premeditated text will no longer suffice for the glow.

*See North American Review, vol. xli. pp. 231-251.

« PreviousContinue »