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into its own nature.

It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness!" The gloom of his character discolors all the passions of men, and all the face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of paradise and the Glories of the Eternal Throne. All the portraits of him are singularly characteristic. No person can look on the features, noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woeful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belonged to a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy.

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished on his entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come; some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful proscription-facetiously termed the act of indemnity and oblivion--had set a mark on the poor, blind, deserted poet, and held him up by name to the hatred of a profligate Court and an inconstant people. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in the style of a

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bellman, were now the favorite writers of the sovereign and the public. It was a loathsome herdwhich could be compared to nothing, so fitly, as to the rabble of Comus-grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human,-dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these his Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless and serene-to be chatted at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole tribe of Satyrs and Goblins.

If ever despondency could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor penury, nor age, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was, when on the eve of great events he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be-when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die!

Macauley.

END OF PART 1. OF SECOND DIVISION.

SECOND DIVISION.

PART II.

INFLECTION (continued).

We have hitherto considered the inflections proper to simple sentences only. We now proceed to some

SPECIAL RULES OF INFLECTION,

proper to periods of peculiar form and more elaborate construction; and to the different members or branches of which they may be composed.

1. APPOSITION.-2. ANTITHESIS.

1. APPOSITION in meaning and construction requires the apposition to be marked by inflection; that is—

RULE.

Words, or phrases, in apposition with each other, take the same respective inflections;—unless any of them be made emphatic for force.

EXAMPLES.

I reside in New York a magnificent city.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity-these three.

2. ANTITHESIS, or opposition of meaning, requires antithesis of inflection; that is,

RULE.

Words or phrases in antithesis to each other take opposite inflections.

EXAMPLES.

He spoke for, not against peace.

As fire is opposed to water, so is vice to virtue.

We seek not peace, but war; and we shall fight, not pray;

for we had rather die than live.

The above are examples of single antithesis.

DOUBLE ANTITHESIS.

In the following, the antithesis is double; that is, of several opposite ideas, and consequently opposite inflections.

EXAMPLE.

Rational liberty is directly opposed to the wildness of anarchy.

(Here rational is in antithesis to wildness, and liberty to anarchy: the inflections on each respectively are therefore also opposed.)

FURTHER EXAMPLES.

If you seek to make one rich, study not to increase his stores, but to diminish his desires.-Seneca.

The peasant complains aloud; the courtier in secret repines. In want, what distress! in affluence, what satiety ! The ignorant, through ill-grounded hope, are disappointed; the knowing, through knowledge, despond.-Young.

All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.-1 Cor. c. 15.

Note also the melody that is produced to the ear by this antithetical alternation of inflection; which thus has the effect, not only of logically increasing the force and power of the contrast of ideas, by contrast of pitch, but, at the same time, of pleasing the ear by an agreeable variety of tone.

IMPLIED ANTITHESIS.

Antithesis may be implied, when not expressed; in which case the sense is left unfinished, (as it were,) and, consequently, is marked with the rising inflection.

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(Implying that some other boy is a bad one.)

You ask too much money; I'll give you a dollar.

(Implying, "but not any more.")

I'd give a hundred dollars for such a horse as

that.

(Implying, "but not for an inferior one.")

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