believed by the reader or the hearer. It is usually the off spring of a momentary conviction produced by sudden sur prise on the part of the speaker and writer.

1. He told us that a part of the road from Salinas, in Persia, to Julamerk, was so frightful to travel, that a fat, spirited horse would in a single day suffer so much from terror that before night he would be as thin as a knife-blade. -DR. GRANT's Nestorians.

Outstripped the winds with speed upon the plain,
Flew o'er the field, nor hurt the bearded grain;

She swept the seas, and, as she skimmed along,

Her flying foot unbathed in billows hung."-DRYDEN, Æn., b. vii.

HYPOTYPOSIS.

§ 639. HYPOTYPOSIS, from the Greek úrоrúпwois, under an image. A description of a thing in strong and lively colors, so that the past, the distant, and the future are represented as present. It is sometimes called vision.

1. Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? come, let
Me clutch thee!-Macbeth.

2. Even now the devastation is begun,

And half the business of destruction done;

Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,

I see the rural virtues leave the land,

Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail,
That idly waiting, flaps with every gale,

Downward they move a melancholy band,

Pass from the shore, and darken all the land;
Contented toil, and hospitable care,

And kind connubial tenderness are there.-GOLDSMITH.

3. I seem to myself to behold this city, the ornament of the earth and the capital of all nations, suddenly involved in one conflagration. I see before me the slaughtered heaps of citizens, lying unburied in the midst of their ruined coun

try. The furious countenance of Cethegus rises to my view, while with a savage joy he is triumphing in your miseries. -CICERO.

4. Greece cries to us by the convulsed lips of her poisoned dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully.-E. EVERETT.

5. I see before me the Gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his drooped head sinks gradually low;
And through his side the last drops ebbing flow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now

The arena swims around him—he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not: his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;

He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday!

All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,

And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire !-BYRON.

IRONY.

§ 640. IRONY, from the Greek ɛipwvía, from ɛipwv, a dissembler in speech, is a mode of speech expressing a sense contrary to that which the speaker intends to convey.

1. And it came to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them, and said, "Cry aloud; for he is a God: either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked."-1 Kings, xviii., 27.

2. The persons who have suffered from the cannibal philosophy of France are so like the Duke of Bedford, that nothing but his Grace's not probably speaking so good French could enable us to find out any difference. A great many of them had as pompous titles, and were of full as illustrious a race; some few of them had fortunes as ample; several of them, without meaning the least disparagement to the Duke of Bedford, were as wise, and as virtuous, and as valiant, and as well educated, and as complete in all the lineaments of

men of honor as he is. And to all this they had added the powerful outguard of a military profession, which in its na ture renders men somewhat more cautious than those who have nothing to attend to but the lazy enjoyment of undis turbed possessions. But security was their ruin. They are dashed to pieces in the storm, and our shores are covered with the wrecks.-BURKE.

3. Delightful Bowles, still blessing, and still bless'd,
All like thy strain; but children like it best.
Now to soft themes thou seemest to confine
The lofty numbers of a harp like thine,
Awake a louder and a louder strain,
Such as none heard before, or will again!
Where all discoveries jumbled from the flood,
Since first the leaky ark reposed in mud,

By more or less are sung in every book,

From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook;

Bowles, in thy memory let this precept dwell,"

Stick to thy sonnets, man-at least they sell.-BYRON.

LITOTES.

§ 641. LITOTES, Greek λrós, slender, is diminution, a fig. ure in which, by denying the contrary, more is intended than is expressed; as, "The man is no fool," that is, he is wise. 1. To thee I call, but with no friendly voice, And add thy name, O Sun, to tell thee how

I hate thy beams.-MILTON.

2. One of the few the immortal names

That were not born to die.-HALLECK.

METALEPSIS.

§ 642. METALEPSIS, from the Greek μɛráλŋpis, participa tion, is the continuation of a trope in one word through a succession of significations, or it is the union of two or more tropes in one word.

1. "Napoleon was living"-Napoleon is dead.

2. "Fuit Illium et ingens gloria Dardanidum"-Troy and the glory of the Trojans is no more.

METAPHOR.

§ 643. METAPHOR, from the Greek μerapópa, a transferring, is the use of a word in a sense which is beyond its

original meaning. It is the transferring of a word from the object to which it properly belongs, and applying it to another to which that object bears some resemblance or analogy. It shows similitude without the sign of comparison.

1. The moral and political system of Hobbes was a palace of ice transparent, exactly proportioned, majestic, admired by the unwary as a delightful dwelling; but gradually undermined by the central warmth of human feeling, before it was thawed into muddy water by the sunshine of true Philosophy.-SIR JAMES MACINTOSH.

2. The Gospel, formerly a Forester, now became a Citizen; and leaving the woods wherein it wandered, the hills and holes wherein it hid itself before, dwelt quietly in populous places.-FULLER'S Church History, p. 23.

3. Burke thus describes the fall from power of Lord Chatham, and the rise of Charles Townsend:

Even then, before this splendid orb was entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, and for his hour became Lord of the ascendant.

4. Short-lived, indeed, was Irish Independence. I sat by her cradle; I followed her hearse.-GRATTAN.

5. There is no such thing as happiness in this world. The sole distinction is, that the life of a happy man is a picture, with a silver ground studded with stars of jet; while, on the other hand, the life of a miserable man is a dark ground with a few stars of silver.-NAPOLEON.

METONYMY.

§ 644. METONYMY, from Greek μɛrwvvμía, a change of name, is a figure by which one word is put for another; as the cause for the effect, or the effect for the cause; the container for the contained; the sign for the thing signified. The relation is always that of causes, effects, or adjuncts. 1. Substituting the cause for the effect:

A time there was, ere England's Griefs began,

When every rood of ground maintained its man.-GOLDSMITH.

2. Substituting the effect for the cause:
Can gray hairs make folly venerable ?-JUNIUS.

3. Substituting the container for the contained:
"The Toper loves his bottle." The Highwayman says,
"Your Purse or your life!"

4. Substituting the sign for the thing signified:
"He carried away the palm."

5. Substituting the abstract for the concrete term:
We wish that Labor may look up here, and be proud in
the midst of its toil. We wish that Infancy may learn the
purpose of its creation from maternal lips; and that weary
and withered Age may behold and be solaced by the recollec
tions which it suggests.-DAniel Webster.

6. There Honor comes, a pilgrim Gray,

To deck the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall a while repair

To dwell a weeping hermit there.-COLLINS.

PARABLE.

§ 645. PARABLE, Greek πapaboλý, from mapabaλλw, to compare, is an Allegorical representation or relation of something real in life or nature, from which a moral is drawn. See the Parable of the Poor Man and his Lamb, 2 Sam., xii.; the Parable of the Ten Virgins, Matt., xxv.

PARALEIPSIS.

$646. PARALEIPSIS, Greek napáλepiç, omission, is a figure by which a speaker pretends to pass by what at the same time he really mentions.

1. "I might say many things of his liberality, kindness to his domestics, his command in the army, and moderation during his office in the province; but the honor of the state presents itself to my view, and, calling me to it, advises me to omit these lesser matters."

2. "I do not speak of my adversary's scandalous venality and rapacity; I take no notice of his brutal conduct; I do not speak of his treachery and malice."

PARONOMASIA.

§ 647. PARONOMASIA, from the Greek napá, near, ana ovopa, a name, is a pun or a play upon words, in which the same