Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, "Joanna Baillie," says Mrs. Jamieson, “had a great admiration of Macaulay's Roman ballads." "But," said some one, "do you really account them poetry?" She replied, "They are poetry, if the sounds of the wartrumpet be music." The Rev. William Lisle Bowles is still remembered by a petite volume of sonnets, only fourteen in number, highly finished, but possessing little force. His edition of Pope led him to argue that— "All images drawn from what is beautiful or sublime in the works of nature are more beautiful or sublime than any images drawn from art." Byron replied that a ship in the wind, with all sail set, is a more poetical object than a hog in the wind; though the hog is all nature, and the ship is all art. Beware of being narrow or sectarian in your taste in literature. CHAPTER III. FIGURES OF SYNTAX. PART FIRST. Ellipsis.-Asyndeton, or Lack of "Ands." HAVING discussed eighteen figures of Etymology, figures of Syntax we reach next, deviations from the ordinary construction of words. We have now attained a higher round of the ladder. But for such deviations, style would be tame and monotonous; grammar would fetter too closely the free movements of the mind, flashing forth its fire and electric glow. For figures are struck out, not by the whim or at the prompting of rhetoricians, but at the bidding of the soul. In classifying figures we are recording, not inventing, phenomena; and these, phenomena at once of language and of mind-of mind yearning to move freely and variously; a yearning strong in proportion to the degree of mental life; as the fir, in the joy and vigor of its young existence, strikes its roots in every direction, in the cliff and through its Alpine crevices, and tosses its defiant head, varying every instant in the breeze. But, on the other hand, the mind, in its depth and grandeur, recognizes, also, the claims of order and law; bows before these claims with inborn reverence; feels that through obedience to them its strength will be mightily increased. Hence came Grammar; hence it happens that the permitted figures of syntax, or licenses of construction, are limited, ascertainable, can be classified. In studying the legitimate vagaries of language and its great laws, we are studying the mind of man in its deepest recesses; we have entered on the sublime domain of psychology, or the strength and beauty of the soul. Mark this axiom carefully: All genuine study of language carries you into the study of mind; and is in affinity with the Deathless, the Immutable, the Divine. XIX. Omission, or Ellipsis, is one of the most common usages of speech, and is so numerous in its varieties as to deserve a volume to itself; we utter few sentences without it; the omission of a word or words necessary to complete the grammatical construction, though not necessary to make the meaning precise. Cumbrous would style be without this; it is demanded by the free soul's thirst for free movement, so that style may be wings, not chains. It is an approach to disembodied spirit, and hints a longing in that way. You detect ellipsis in Fontenelle's saying: "Women are the opposite of clocks: the clocks serve to remind us of the hours; the women, to make us forget them." There were few words in the retort which Pope once provoked. He had taunted a young officer with his ignorance. The poet was small and crooked: "Could you so much as tell me what a point of interrogation is ?" Not so much as a verb in the reply. With a wave of his hand toward the poet, the youth answered "A little crooked thing that asks questions." In almost all short repartees the force and effect are a good deal owing to ellipsis. A dull writer was remarking that he and the distinguished Frenchman, Guizot, rowed in the same boat, both being writers of history: "You row in the same boat," Douglas Jerrold replied, "but not with the same sculls." Foote, the comedian and farce-writer, passing one day along a humble London street, noticed an odd elliptical inscription over the door of a mean-looking barber's shop: G "Here lives Jemmy Wright Shaves as well as any man in England; Most of the windows had paper in them instead of glass. Foote determined to see the author of such original lines; he popped his head fairly through a paper pane, and shouted inside "Is Jemmy Wright at home?" Jemmy, with the greatest good-humor in the world, popped his head through the adjoining pane, which was of paper too, and exclaimed "No, sir! He's just popped out." In Punch's "Poetical Cookery Book" is the following recipe for boiling chicken, a parody on Moore's "Dorah Creina :" "Lesbia hath a fowl to cook, But being anxious not to spoil it, For how to roast and how to boil it. Sweet it is to dine upon, Quite alone when small its size is; Its delicacy much surprises. O my tender pullet dear, My boil'd, not roasted, tender chicken; I can wish no other dish, With thee supplied, my tender chicken!" Your author presumes to intrude on you an instance, and more than one: "Hast ne'er beheld, while spring's fresh winds were sighing, When from a nest all ruffled by the blast, One of the brood was cast, The mother-bird with patient labor trying In advertisements or telegrams, where every word has to be paid for, one learns right speedily to value high the market worth of ellipses. In the following anecdote the advertising style is mimicked. During the last years of his life McDonald Clark, known in New York as the mad poet, was made free of the Astor House table. Every one knew him by sight, and one day, while quietly taking his dinner, two persons, seating themselves opposite, began a conversation intended for his ears. said: "Well, I have been in New York two months, and have seen all I wish to see-with one exception.' 'What is that?' said the other. McDonald Clark, the great poet,' responded Number One, with solemn emphasis. Clark raised his eyes slowly from his plate, and seeing the attention of the table was on him, stood up, placing his hand over his heart, and bowing with great gravity to the two, said, 'I am McDonald Clark, the great poet.' The two started in mock surprise, gazed at him in silence for a few moments, and then, amid an audible titter of the company, one of them drew from his pocket a quarter dollar, and, laying it before Clark, still looked at him without a smile. Clark lifted the coin in silence and dignity; put it in his pocket, drew thence a shilling, which he deposited before the man, with these words-'Children, half price.' The titter changed into loud laughter, and the two disappeared in shame." In Dr. Johnson's best poem, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," repeated ellipses occur in his spirited picture of Charles XII. of Sweden: "A frame of adamant, a soul of fire, No dangers fright him and no labors tire; |