secret of many a failure in Method has been a failure in Selection; the want of power to choose wisely serving, as a rule, to debar the writer from making a judicious arrangement of material. (4) COMPLETENESS. The proposition must be discussed fully. Everything essential, everything that is necessary to set the subject as defined in the proposition completely before the reader, must be included. The sin of incompleteness is, of course, far less common than its opposite of overcrowding and irrelevancy; but its effects are none the less injurious to the work, and the vice itself, therefore, none the less carefully to be guarded against.1 A judicious Brevity may leave one's readers or hearers wishing that the book, the sermon, the lecture had been longer: Incompleteness leaves the mind unsatisfied, as a piece of music leaves the ear, when it closes upon any chord but that of the tonic. One cannot help feeling that the writer has pledged himself to more than he has fulfilled, or, perhaps, has attempted more than he was able to accomplish. 1 Appendix, p. 335. V. FIGURES OF SPEECH.1 290. "A Figure of Speech is a deviation from the plain and ordinary mode of speaking, with a view to greater effect;" as, That lamp lighted in Paradise, instead of Love; Saturn, quiet as a stone, for Saturn motionless. So ; The vanward clouds of evil days.-To sit upon an Alp as on a throne.—Tragedy! O, sir, nothing of the kind!—For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow I fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola. "A casement ... 3 diamonded with panes of quaint device Innumerable, of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep damasked wings." 291. It is a question, perhaps, whether the many "artifices of style gradually accumulated" by rhetoricians under the head of Figures of Speech admit of strict classification. "Such an accumulation," says Mr. Minto, “ 'could hardly be other than heterogeneous ;" and even Prof. Bain, who attempts only "the most common figures," and whose division is based on the "three simple modes of working" to which "all our intellectual powers are reducible," leaves one group of figures unclassified. Some points, however, have been made towards a classification; and by combining these points, all the most important figures can be grouped under certain well-defined heads. 292. (1) "A limited number of figures" are deviations from the ordinary modes of speech in the "use of single words." Thus, lamp, clouds, diamonded, stains and damasked, in the examples cited above,' all contain figures of this sort. They are easily distinguishable both from the formal similitudes there cited, quiet as a stone, upon an Alp as on a throne, and from such peculiar sentence-structures as are observable in the fifth and sixth examples of that paragraph. Now, for these singleword figures Mr. Minto has proposed to reserve the name 12 170, above. 4 Manual, p. 14. 2 Bain, Part I. 5 Part I., 2, 40 ff. 3 De Quincey's sister, long dead. trope-" at present, a kind of general synonym for a figure of speech," but defined by the ancients in a narrower sense,1 and undoubtedly a useful word when properly restricted in meaning. Prof. Day, twenty years before Minto published his Manual, used the term in the same meaning; and Aristotle's word metaphor, as opposed to simile, included just about the same group of figures. The advantage of the plan lies in its giving a convenient common designation to a small class of figures much used by certain writers who do not affect the longer similitudes; -by De Quincey, for instance, who (on this understanding) is rich in tropes, as opposed to Macaulay, who is rich in similes,3 and to Carlyle, who abounds in exclamations, etc. The figures a writer uses often give valuable suggestions as to the character of his mind and the sources of his information; and, hence, a convenient nomenclature must be of great service in rhetorical criticism. 293. (2) Another ancient term was re-proposed for modern use by John Quincy Adams,1—namely the Greek word schemata, or (as Mr. Adams boldly wrote it) schemes. Cicero says the word denoted figures that affect the sentence or the whole discourse,—in other words, figures that have to be stated at length. Such are the Simile, the Allegory, etc.,-another group that it is convenient to be able to name in a single word. Mr. Adams's word schemes is, unfortunately, too closely associated with its modern meaning to permit its being used here; but the Greek plural answers every practical purpose. 294. (3) All figures of speech may be divided into two classes;5(a) Figures of Diction, in which the deviation from the ordinary mode of speech is in the language; (b) Figures of Thought, in which it is in the form of the sentence. In figures of class (a), the language cannot be altered without destroying or at least changing the figure; in class (b), so long as the form of expression is retained, the figure remains. Thus, the sentence "Out, out, hyæna!" contains two figures,-a meta 1 Appendix, p. 336. 6 2 Poetic, xxi. (Seè, also, Ritter's note, Buckley's translation of Aristotle in Bohn's Classical Library.)-Hence, plainly, the modern and erroneous use of metaphorical to characterize a style noticeable for its habitual use of such figures. (Minto, p. 15.) 3 Minto, ut cit. 4 Lectures, II. xxx. 5 Also an ancient distinction, and recognized by Mr. Adams, ut cit. Milton, Samson Agonistes, 748. phor in hyena (that is, Dalila), and the exclamation. But, had Milton written, Be gone, wild beast! there would still have been a metaphor in wild beast,1 though it would have been a different metaphor; whereas the sentence-form, the exclamation, would have remained untouched. The phrase figures of thought is valuable also as a term of reference; for, like tropes and schemata, it names a well-defined group of figures for which it is a convenient designation. In characterizing Carlyle above,2 it was said, he abounds in exclamations, etc. : it may now be said, he abounds in figures of thought. 295. There results, then, the following classification ;— Figures of Speech. (1) Of Diction. (2) Of Thought. (a) Tropes. (b) Schemata. (1) (a) The chief Tropes are, (a) Metaphor, implied comparison; as, The barky fingers of the elm; (6) Metonymy, the substitution of an accompaniment for the thing it accompanies; as, The shepherd, with his home-spun lass; (7) Synecdoche, a similar substitution of a part for the whole, or vice versa; as, Truth forever on the scaffold; wrong forever on the throne; (d) Personification, the attributing of life or even human feelings and purposes to an inanimate object; as, The sleepless Ocean. (1) (6) The chief Schemata are, (a) Simile, comparison in terms, i. e., stated at length; as, Such stuff as dreams are made of; (B) Allegory, detailed comparison of objects that but remotely resemble each other; as, the comparing of lower animals with men in Æsop's Fables; (7) Antithesis, the explicit contrasting of things already opposed in meaning; as, The petition originated, not with the King, not with the parliament, not with the people, but with a section of the clergy themselves;3 1 Such word-phrases are, in effect, single words, and, therefore, tropes. From the present point of view, they are essentially different from such phrases as quiet as a stone, or gently, like dew upon the grass. 22 292. 3 Froude. (Cited by Bain.) 1 (d) Epigram, "conflict or contradiction between the form of the language and the meaning really conveyed;' as Bread is bread, (meaning, it is unusually high-priced); (ε) Irony, the unmistakable saying of what is not meant, in order the more clearly or forcibly to say what is intended; as, A pretty plight; (5) Hyperbole, exaggeration designed only to make a deeper impression; as, The infinite magnificence of heaven; (7) Euphemism, the softening of a harsh or indelicate expression, or the substitution for it of one that is euphonious or delicate; as, When Stephen had said this, he fell asleep. (2) The most important Figures of Thought are,— (a) Interrogation, affirmation or denial strengthened by being thrown into the form of a question; as, Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing? (3) Exclamation, a mode of expression dictated by “sudden and intense emotion;" as, How wonderful is Death,-Death and his brother Sleep! (y) Apostrophe, an address to an absent or imaginary auditor, as if he were present; as, Come, pensive nun, devout and pure! 2 296. A much longer list might easily be made; but, as Prof. A. S. Hill has well said, "The figures of speech are the very stuff of human language"; and many so called figures are not in any strong sense deviations from the ordinary mode of speech, but only devices of the sentence or the paragraph, or even downright violations of Syntax. Asyndeton, for example, is simply an omission of connectives; Ellipsis, the omission of other easily supplied words-perhaps, merely for Brevity's sake. Anacolouthon, the failure of a sentence to follow the lead of its beginning, is absolutely a vice-certainly a vicious mannerism-in some speakers, however rare it may be in writing. To include everything called a figure by the ancient or other writers who have emphasized this topic, would be only to collect an interminable catalogue of mere names. The ambition to make such lists was the fatal disease of mediæval rhetoricians, as well as of some more recent writers.3 1 Bain. 2 Milton's invocation to Melancholy. 3 For instance, John Sterling, D.D., whose System of Rhetoric, (London, 1795, pp. 25) is simply a double list of ninety-four figures of speech, first in English heroic couplets, with English examples and a translation of the technical terms; secondly, in Latin hexameters, with Latin examples and the derivation of the technical terms from the Greek. |