to whom it is addressed.

(c). It must be used only when the feelings of the hearer have been sufficiently excited to be prepared to sympathise with the exaggeration.

(d). It must not be unduly prolonged.

(e). It must not be used in any composition where scientific accuracy is expected.

13. A peculiar figure, called Iitotes, which is exactly the reverse of Hyperbole, is often made use of. Litotes is a mode of expression by which we increase the force of an idea by the use of plain, simple language which seems to lessen our meaning. To Japanese students of a European language, the idiom included under this figure presents many difficulties. Examples follow, which should be carefully studied one by one, as they present many shades of meaning;

"These are not the words of a child."

"I would not dissuade a student from metaphysical inquiry."

"He did not deny his fault.'

"It was not without reason thought that &c."

"The history of the successors of Theodosius bears no small analogy to that of the successors of Aurungzebe.”

(Macaulay.)

"Nothing could have happened more pleasing to the subtle and ambitious Dupleix." (Macaulay).

"More than usual care had been bestowed on his education."

"Nothing is trivial in the narration of history which assists the reality of its scene." (I. D'Israeli).

"It is no less true that &c."

“This opinion will not appear entirely without foundation.” "This was no very formidable beginning."

"It is not so with the Pilgrim's Progress.'
"It was by no common merit that &c."

CLIMAX.

14. Clima.c is the arrangement of a succession of words, phrases, clauses, or sentences, in such a way that the weakest may stand first, and that each in turn, to the end of the sentence, may rise in importance, and make a deeper impression on the mind than that which preceded it. The word Climax is derived from a Greek term meaning "ladder." The principle of rising in this way by successive degrees applies, not only to the sentence, but to the paragraph, and to the entire composition: A play, or a romance, increases in excitement by degrees to the final catastrophe; and so ought an oration. The following are examples of Climax ;"It is an outrage to bind a Roman citizen; to scourge him is an atrocious crime; to put him to death is almost a parricide; but to crucify him-what shall I call it ?"

(Cicero).

"For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singingbirds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape, perfume the air." The climax in this piece (from the Song of Solomon') consists in the gradual passage from the general to the particular. "I impeach him (Warren Hastings) in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has abused. I impeach him in the name of our holy religion, which he has

disgraced. I impeach him in the name of the English constitution, which he has violated and broken. I impeach him in the name of the Indian millions, whom he has sacrificed to injustice. I impeach him by the name and by the best rights of human nature, which he has stabbed to the heart." This passage is thus criticized by Professor Bain ;–

"The third sentence should have been second; there Iwould then have been a natural connexion between the third and fourth. The fourth derives its strength from speciality, while the fifth can merit the highest place only by the width of its comprehension, which redeems the abstractness of the subject the rights of human nature.” The celebrated novelist, Miss Braddon, has ignored the rules of climax by accusing the framers of the English Church Prayer Book of mammon worship in arranging the petition that the nation may be preserved "in wealth, peace, and godliness."

45. Varieties of Climax are

(a). Climax of sound, which consists in arranging a

series of words or expressions according to the length,
that is, so that the shortest may come first. A fine
effect is produced by combining the climax of sense
with that of sound. Thus;
;-

"The best portion of a good man's life,

His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love." (Wordsworth).

(b). The term Climax is also applied by some to sen-
tences in which, for the sake of emphasis, an expres-
sion as repeated in different members. Thus ;—
"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed;

46.

By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,

By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned."

(Pope).

(c). Anticlimax is the arrangement of words, &c., in
the opposite order to that prescribed by Climax, that
is, so that they successively decrease in importance.
Anticlimax is generally used to throw ridicule on a
subject. Thus ;-

"I'll give my jewels for a set of beads;
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage;
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown;
My figured goblets for a dish of wood;
My sceptre for a palmer's walking-staff;
My subjects for a pair of carved saints;
And my large kingdom for a little grave—

A little, little grave--an obscure grave." (Shakspere). As to the cause of the mental pleasure received from the arrangement called Climax, Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks ;

"Every perception received, and every conception realized, entailing some amount of waste-or, as Liebig would say, some change of matter in the brain; and the efficiency of the faculties subject to this waste being thereby temporarily, though often but momentarily, diminished; the resulting partial inability must affect the acts of perception and conception that immediately succeed. And hence we may expect that the vividness with which images are realized will, in many cases, depend on the order of their presentation: even when one order is as convenient to the understanding as the other. There are sundry facts which alike illustrate this, and are explained by it. Climax is one of them. The marked effect obtained by placing last the most

striking of any series of images, and the weakness--often the ludicrous weakness--produced by reversing this arrangement, depends on the general law indicated. As immediately after looking at the sun we cannot perceive the light of a fire, while by looking at the fire first and the sun afterwards we can perceive both; so, after receiving a brilliant, or weighty, or terrible thought, we cannot appreciate a less brilliant, less weighty, or less terrible one, while, by reversing the order, we can appreciate each."

INTERROGATION.

47. Interrogation is the asking of questions, not for the purpose of expressing doubt or obtaining information, but in order to assert strongly the speaker's own opinion. The very fact of feeling that one is being appealed to by a question rouses the attention; while the evident conviction of the questioner that only one answer is possible tends greatly to strengthen his position. A positive question denies an opinion, while a negative interrogation affirms. This figure is especially employed in oratory, but should only be used when the minds of the speaker aud his audience have been brought to a certain pitch of excitement. Examples;

"Who is the man that......has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savage?" (Chatham.)

"Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha can fill a coward's grave?

Wha sae base as be a slave ?

(Burns.)