And Hell itself will pass away, And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day." -MILTON. Here the climax may be stated as follows: first, the return of the age of Gold; secondly, the death of Vanity; thirdly, the departure of Sin; and, last of all, "Hell itself will pass away." Similar examples of climax may be found in the following passages: "He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God."-MACAULAY. "Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race accursed of God and man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the head to the nations."-MACAULAY. "Thou didst blow with thy wind; the sea covered them: they sank like lead in the mighty waters."-Exodus. "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness." ST. PAUL. "If we rise yet higher, and consider the fixed stars as so many oceans of flame, that are each of them attended with a different set of planets, and still discover new firmaments and new lights that are sunk farther in these unfathomable depths of ether, we are lost in such a labyrinth of suns and worlds, and confounded by the magnificence and immensity of nature."CHALMERS. § 161. INCREMENTUM. With climax is now associated incrementum, once considered as a separate figure. In this the thought with which the sentence begins is enlarged, and its force increased by the addition of others of more importance. The following illustrations present no essential difference from those already given: "I trust myself once more in your faithful hands. I fling myself again on you for protection. I call aloud on you to bear your own cause in your hearts."-BROUGHAM. "It is coming fast upon you; already it is near at hand—yet in a few short weeks, and we may be in the midst of those unspeakable miseries the recollection of which now rends your souls asunder."-BROUGHAM, § 162. PROGRESSIO. It is defined as a Progressio also, once considered as a separate figure, is now, like incrementum, associated with climax. progressive strengthening of the expression. an example: The following is "The minister alights; justice looks up to him with empty hopes, and peculation faints with idle alarms; he finds the city a prey to an unconstitutional police-he continues it; he finds the country overburdened with a shameful pension-list-he increases it; he finds the House of Commons swarming with placemen-he multiplies them; he finds the salary of the secretary increased to prevent a pension-he grants a pension; he finds the kingdom drained by absentee employments and by compensations to buy them home; he gives the best reversion in the country to an absentee-his brother."-GRATTAN. § 163. HYPERBOLE. Hyperbole may be considered as the highest form of the augmentative figures. It gives the largest possible liberty to the imagination, and for this reason is often classified with the figures of similarity, with which imagination has more to do. It is properly, however, one of the figures of gradation. Hyperbole may be defined as the enlargement of an object beyond its natural and proper dimensions. Quintilian calls it "an elegant surpassing of truth." In its highest form it is associated with excitement of feeling. This is seen in Satan's despairing soliloquy in Paradise Lost: "Beneath the lowest deep, a lower deep, Still threatening to devour me, opens wide.” This is not to be criticised for its grammar; but to be taken as the language of intense emotion. "Mean weeds," says Carlyle, in his description of the execution of Marie Antoinette, " clothe the Queen of the world.” Burke's well-known passage on the same Marie Antoinette affords another example: "Never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision." Emerson's lines contain an hyperbole of the best kind: "Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world." § 164. TRANSGRESSIO. With hyperbole may be associated a form of statement once considered as a separate figure, and called "transgressio," which consists of any kind of exaggeration. It therefore includes the following in addition to those which have already been noticed : 1. Animated description passing beyond literal truth. This may be allowed as legitimate hyperbole, or, if a separate name be preferred, transgressio. Poets, orators, and writers of fiction all indulge in this exaggerated statement, and Victor Hugo's writings abound in it. "This is our bad condition here. How much worse it is ten miles from Boston you may conceive. The darkness might be felt."-FISHer Ames. 2. Many colloquial expressions illustrate this figure; as “to cry one's eyes out," "to weep as if one's heart would break," "to split one's sides with laughing." "If a young merchant fails," says Emerson, men say he is ruined." 3. Humorous writing abounds in this; indeed, a distinct department of this sort of literature, i. e., American, is based upon exaggeration. Hyperbole, when improperly used, is certain to degenerate into bombast. CHAPTER VI. FIGURES OF GRADATION.-DECREMENTIVE. § 165. DECREMENTIVE FIGURES. UNDER this class is included those various forms of expression by which any given subject is diminished before the mind and divested of its ordinary importance. They are the opposite of those which have just been considered; but like them are applicable to leading propositions, deductions, and conclusions. While the augmentative figures present these in the most striking and effective manner, so that they may arrest the attention, the decrementive forms are used to lessen their importance, and make them appear of little value. The former would be applied by the writer to his chief topics to enhance their value, and the latter would be applied by his opponent to the same topics to diminish that value. § 166. DIMINUTION. Diminution is the opposite of amplification, and may be defined as the lowering of the importance of any topic by the assemblage of particulars designedly introduced for the purpose of lessening its force and proper value. As amplification may proceed through many stages of expansion, so this lowering process may consist of many gradations, from the slightest diminution of any given subject to the lowest possible depreciation, accompanied with contempt and ridicule. All the modes by which the one may be effected have also their counterparts in the other. 1. This figure is exhibited, first, in the form of direct statement; as"Will God incense his ire For such a petty trespass?"-MILTON. Here the offence is affirmed to be "petty" simply in itself. "Did ye not hear it? No. 'Twas but the wind."—Byron. 2. Sometimes diminution is made by means of a comparison with some other object : "Nature will not have us fret and fume. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the temperance meeting, or the Transcendental Club into the fields and woods, she says to us-'So hot, my little sir!”—EMER SON. Here the excitement of common life is made to seem trivial beside the grand calm of Nature. "How it aggravates the disgust with which these paste diamonds are now viewed, to remember that they were paraded in the presence of Edmund Burke-nay (credite posteri), in jealous rivalry of his genuine and priceless jewels. Irresistibly one is reminded of the dancing efforts of Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs against the native grace of the Vicar of Wakefield's family."-DE QUINCEY. The style of Sheridan, when set in comparison with that of` Burke, is thus made to appear tawdry and meretricious. "And what is this world in the immensity which teems with them, and what are they who occupy it? The universe at large would suffer as little in its splendor and variety, by the destruction of our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf.” -CHALMERS. Here this world and all its concerns are made to appear insignificant in comparison with the immensity of the universe. "An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise."-DR. R. SOUTH. Man at his best is here represented as of little worth when compared with the possibilities which lay before him, had he kept his first estate. 3. It is also sometimes effected by accumulation; that is to say, a number of particulars are gathered together for the express purpose of lowering the importance of any given subject : “What, then, have you made Ireland? Look at her again. This fine country is laden with a population the most miserable in Europe, and of whose wretchedness, if you are the authors, you are beginning to be the victims; the poisoned chalice is returning in its just circulation to your own lips. Your domestic swine are better housed than the people. Harvests the most abundant are reaped by men with starvation in their faces, famine covers a fruitful soil, and disease inhales a pure atmosphere; all the great commercial facilities of the country are lost; the deep rivers that should circulate opulence and turn the machinery of a thousand factories flow to the ocean without wafting a boat or turning a mill; and the wave breaks in solitude in the silent magnificence of deserted and shipless harbors."-DANIEL O'CONNell. In this passage there is an accumulation of particulars referring to the condition of Ireland, for the purpose of representing that country at its very worst. § 167. DEPRECIATION. Depreciation is diminution associated with the feeling of contempt. An illustration of this may be found in Sir Walter Raleigh's verses, "Go, Soul, the Body's Guest," from which are taken the following lines: "Tell physic of her boldness, Tell skill it is pretension, Tell charity of coldness, |