descending to the nature of the beast.

Its fit hour of activity

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is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns that spite against the x wrong-doers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the martyrs are justified. EMERSON.

I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment, in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a masterspirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. - MILTON.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust

before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and who heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. - MACAULAY.

More manifest still are the physiological benefits of emotional pleasures. Every power, bodily and mental, is increased by "good spirits," which is our name for a general emotional satisfaction. The truth that the fundamental vital actions - those of nutrition are furthered by laughter-moving conversation, or rather by the pleasurable feeling causing laughter, is one of old standing; and every dyspeptic knows that in exhilarating company, a large and varied dinner, including not very digestible things, may be eaten with impunity, and, indeed, with benefit, while a small, carefully chosen dinner of simple things, eaten in solitude, will be followed by indigestion. - HERBERT SPENCER.

NOTE

In addition to the foregoing extracts, some of those previously given, in poetry as well as prose, may be studied in the same way. Furthermore, the student may be required to examine more at length a few authors designated by the teacher, in order to determine (1) the proportion of simple, complex, and compound sentences; (2) the proportion of loose, periodic, and balanced sentences; (3) the percentage of Anglo-Saxon or Latin words; and (4) the average number of words in a sentence. The results will give occasion for interesting and instructive comparisons.

34. Definition.

CHAPTER V

FIGURES OF SPEECH

A figure of speech is a deviation from the plain and ordinary mode of speaking. Its object is greater effect. Figures originated, perhaps, in a limitation of vocabulary; and many words that are now regarded as plain were at first figurative. But the use of figures is natural, and at present they are used to embellish discourse and to give it greater vividness and force. To say with Thomson, for example,

"But yonder comes the powerful King of day,
Rejoicing in the east,"

is far more vivid and forceful than to say "the sun is rising." Nearly all great writers, especially poets, enrich their style by the use of figures.

35. Kinds of Figures. There are various kinds of figures, which may be reduced, however, to three classes or groups. The figures based upon resemblance are simile, metaphor, personification, and allegory. Those founded on contiguity are metonymy, synecdoche, exclamation, hyperbole, apostrophe, and vision. Those resting upon contrast are antithesis, climax, epigram, and irony. Other forms of classification have been proposed. There are figures of diction and figures of thought; the former are found in the choice of words, the latter in the form

of the sentence. To figures of diction has been given the name of figures of intuition, because they present a sensible image to the mind; to figures of thought has been given the name of figures of emphasis, because they emphasize the thought. We thus get the following division:

36. Figures of Resemblance. (1) Simile is a form of comparison in which one thing is likened to another. It is usually introduced by like or as, or some other word of comparison; as,

"The twilight hours like birds flew by,

As lightly and as free."

It is obvious that the things compared in simile should have some sort of resemblance. When the points of resemblance are too remote the simile is said to be farfetched. This was a frequent mistake among the socalled "metaphysical poets" of the seventeenth century. Except in burlesque or mock-heroic style, dignified subjects should not be likened to what is trifling or low. The effect of such a simile is ridiculous, as in the wellknown lines from Butler's "Hudibras":

"And, like a lobster boiled, the morn

From black to red began to turn."

(2) Metaphor is an abridged simile, the words expressing likeness being omitted. In the sentence, “Roderick Dhu fought like a lion," we have a simile; but when we say, "He was a lion in the fight," we have a metaphor. The metaphor is briefer and more striking than the simile; it springs from greater emotion or mental energy, and often imparts great force or beauty to a passage. Thus, likening human life to a voyage at sea, Shakespeare says:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries."

There are several errors that are not infrequent in the use of metaphor. A metaphor should not be blended with plain language in the same sentence, nor should it be extended too far. The latter fault is called "straining the metaphor." Two incongruous metaphors should not be used in the same sentence. In the following lines from Addison his muse is first conceived of as a steed that needs to be restrained with a bridle, and then as a ship that is eager to be launched:

"I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain,
That longs to launch into a bolder strain."

(3) Personification is the attribution of life to inanimate things. When we speak of "the thirsty ground or "the angry ocean," we endow these objects with the feelings of living creatures. Personification is a bold species of metaphor; it is the offspring of vivid feeling