The trembling trees, in ev'ry plain and wood,
Her fate remurmur to the filver flood;
The filver flood, fo lately calm, appears
Swell'd with new paffion, and o'erflows with tears;
The winds, and trees, and floods her death deplore,
Daphne, our grief! our glory! now no more.
Pope's Paftorals, iv. 61.

Let grief or love have the power to animate the winds, the trees, the floods, provided the figure be dispatched in a fingle expreffion. Even in that cafe, the figure feldom has a good effect; because grief or love of the paftoral kind, are caufes rather too faint for fo violent an effect as imagining the winds, trees, or floods, to be fenfible beings. But when this figure is deliberately fpread out with great regularity and accuracy through many lines, the reader, instead of relishing it, is ftruck with its ridiculous appearance.

SECT. II.

TH

APOSTROPHE.

HIS figure and the former are derived from the fame principle. If, to gratify a plaintive the fame principle. paffion, we can bestow a momentary fenfibility upon an inanimate object, it is not more difficult to bestow a momentary prefence upon a fenfible being who is abfent.

Hinc Drepani me portus et illætabilis ora
Accipit. Hic, pelagi tot tempeftatibus actus,
Heu! genitorem, omnis curæ cafufque levamen,
Amitto Anchifen: hic me, pater optime, feffum
Deferis, heu! tantis nequicquam erepte periclis.
Nec vates Helenus, cum multa horrenda moneret,
Hos mihi prædixit luctus; non dira Celæno.

Eneid. iii. 707.

This figure is fometimes joined with the former:
things inanimate, to qualify them for liftening to
a paffionate expoftulation, are not only perfonified,
but alfo conceived to be prefent.

Et, fi fata Deûm, fi mens non læva fuiffet,
Impulerat ferro Argolicas foedare latebras:
Trojaque nunc ftares, Priamique arx alta maneres.

Helena.

Eneid. ii. 54.

-Poor Lord, is't I

That chafe thee from thy country, and expofe
Those tender limbs of thine to the event

Of non-fparing war? And is it I

That drive thee from the fportive court, where
thou

Waft shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark
Of smoky mufkets? O you leaden meffengers,
That ride upon the violent speed of fire,
Fly with falfe aim; pierce the ftill moving air,
That fings with piercing; do not touch my Lord.
All's well that ends well, act 3. fc. 4.

This figure, like all others, requires an agitation
of mind. In plain narrative, as, for example,
in giving the genealogy of a family, it has no good
effect.

-Fauno Picus pater; ifque parentem Te, Saturne, refert: tu fanguinis ultimus auctor. Eneid.vii. 48.

refpect to fize, either very great of its kind or very little, ftrikes us with furprife; and this emotion, like all others, prone to gratification, forces upon the mind a momentary conviction that the object

Ch. XX. is greater or lefs than it is in reality. The fame effect, precifely, attends figurative grandeur or littlenefs. Every object that produceth surprise by its fingularity, is always feen in a falfe light while the emotion fubfifts: circumftances are exaggera ted beyond truth; and it is not till after the emotion fubfides, that things appear as they are. A writer, taking advantage of this natural delufion, enriches his defcription greatly by the hyperbole. And the reader, even in his cooleft moments, relifhes this figure, being fenfible that it is the operation of nature upon a warm fancy.

It will be obferved, that a writer is generally more fuccessful in magnifying by a hyperbole than in diminishing: a minute object contracts the mind, and fetters its power of conception; but the mind, dilated and inflamed with a grand object, moulds objects for its gratification with great facility. Longinus, with refpect to the diminishing power of a hyperbole, cites the following ludicrous thought from a comic poet. "He was owner of a bit of "ground not larger than a Lacedemonian letBut, for the reafon now given, the hyperbole has by far the greater force in magnifying objects; of which take the following fpecimen.

ter.*"

For all the land which thou feeft, to thee will I give it, and to thy feed for ever. And I will make thy feed as the duft of the earth: fo that if a man can number the duft of the earth, then fhall thy feed also be numbered.

Genefis xiii. 15. 16.

Illa vel intactæ fegetis per fumma volaret
Gramina: nec teneras curfu læfiffet ariftas.

Eneid. vii. 808.
-Atque

*Chap. 31. of his treatise on the sublime.

t

-Atque imo barathri ter gurgite vaftos Sorbet in abruptum fluctus, rurfufque fub auras Erigit alternos, et fidera verberat undà.

Eneid. iii. 421.

Horrificis juxta tonat Ætna ruinis,
Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem,
Turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla :
Attollitque globos flammarum, et fidera lambit.

Eneid. iii. 571.

Speaking of Polyphemus,

Ipfe arduus, altaque pulfat

Sidera.

Eneid. iii. 619.

-When he speaks,

Henry V. act. 1. fc. I.

The air, a charter'd libertine, is fill.

Now fhield with fhield, with helmet helmet clos'd,
To armour armour, lance to lance oppos'd,
Hoft against hoft with fhadowy fquadrons drew,
The founding darts in iron tempefts flew,
Victors and vanquifh'd join promifcuous cries,
And fhrilling fhouts and dying groans arise;
With ftreaming blood the flipp'ry fields are dy'd,
And flaughter'd heroes fwell the dreadful tide.
Iliad iv. 508.
The following may also pass, though stretched
pretty far.

E conjungendo à temerario ardire
Eftrema forza, e infaticabil lena
Vien che fi' impetuofo il ferro gire,
Che ne trema la terra, e'l ciel balena.

Gierufalem, cant. 6. st. 46.

Quintilian is fenfible that this figure is natural.

"For," fays he, "not contented with truth, we

I 4

* L. 8. cap. 6. in fin.

"naturally

66

And

"naturally incline to augment or diminish beyond "it; and for that reafon the hyperbole is familiar even among the vulgar and illiterate.” he adds, very justly, "That the hyperbole is then proper, when the fubject of itfelf exceeds the common meafure." From these premises, one would not expect the following conclufion, the only reafon he can find for justifying this figure of fpeech. "Conceditur enim amplius dicere, quia "dici quantum eft, non poteft: meliufque ultra

quam citra ftat oratio." (We are indulged to fay more than enough, because we cannot fay enough; and it is better to be over than under.) In the name of wonder, why this flight and childish reason, when immediately before he had made it evident, that the hyperbole is founded on human nature? I could not refift this perfonal stroke of criticifm, intended not against our author, for no human creature is exempt from error; but against the blind veneration that is paid to the ancient claffic writers, without distinguishing their blemishes from their beauties.

Having examined the nature of this figure, and the principle on which it is erected; I proceed, as in the firft fection, to fome rules by which it ought to be governed. And in the first place, it is a capital fault to introduce an hyperbole in the defcription of an ordinary object or event which creates no furprife. In fuch a cafe, the hyperbole is altogether unnatural, being deftitute of furprife, the only foundation that can fupport it. Take the following inftance, where the fubject is extremely familiar, viz. fwimming to gain the fhore after a fhipwreck.

I faw him beat the furges under him,

And ride upon their backs; he trode the water;

Whose