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95. The more stirring effects should be relieved by alternating with what gives little excitement.

A bold figure, a strong image, an impressive object, exert their full force when the composition is in other respects quiet and unexciting.

In Gray's Bard, the couplet,

"Give ample room and verge enough

The characters of hell to trace,"

exemplifies the effect of a single strong word set among others of a quieter tenor. Pope is blamed for excess of epigrams and other strong figures. Young's Night Thoughts are too much on one key. The Essays of Macaulay want relief to their brilliancy. Carlyle's French Revolution is saved by its great originality from palling upon the attention: this is the prerogative of the highest genius.

Apart from great originality, the strength of a composition may be sustained by employing all the figures in due alternation; now a simile or a metaphor, at another time a metonymy, then a contrast, again an epigram, an hyperbole, an interrogation, or a climax; and no one figure should recur disproportionately. Variety may also be attended to in the number of words, as in alternating the terse with the elegantly diffuse; and likewise in the arrangement, by well-timed inversions.

The effect of an occasional sparkle of imagination—as a simile or an epigram—in a discourse addressed to the sober reason, is grateful and exhilarating. When an emphatic expression comes from a man habitually sober and measured in his language, the effect is doubly telling.

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96. The putting of what is Specific and Concrete for what is General or Abstract, is a recognized means of strength.

The superior force of concrete and specific terms has been seen under the figures, and also in explaining Simplicity. Examples are abundant in poetry. Every stanza of Gray's Elegy is in point.

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97. The description of the External or Object World is more conducive to strength than the description of states of the mind.

It is a law of our nature that much attention directed upon the feelings of the mind has a debilitating effect; while, on the contrary, to be taken out of self, and made to regard external things, is inspiriting. In referring to humanity, the names implying its outward and bodily aspects are, as far as practicable, to be chosen. Better say, "Men (human beings, we) are disposed to over-rate distant good," than "the mind is disposed," "our feelings exaggerate," &c. (See Description.)

98. Every aid to the easy understanding of what is meant, contributes to strength.

All kinds of difficulty and labor, intellectual as well as bodily, are depressing; the relief from labor is cheering. Any device that easily and vividly suggests a picture, is a means of strength. An incoherent crowd of images oppresses the mind; order in the array, mutual harmony, and paucity of number, give the cheerful feeling of intellectual relief. The first stanzas of the Elegy of Gray are perhaps overcrowded. Hohenlinden is a nearer approach to perfection, in the proper number of ideas and images.

Notice has already been taken of Brevity and the Arrangement of Words, as sources of Strength.

99. The peculiar effect known as Soaring, or taking a flight, demands keeping in the language, a climax in the thought, and a cadence falling to the close.

See p. 91, and examples in Appendix.

100. The quality of strength and the sublime may appear in scientific composition, although not the direct aim of science.

The vast objects and powers of Nature are handled in science as well as in poetry. Geography embraces the sublime features of the earth, Astronomy the heavens. But the peculiar

force of science consists in the discovery of general laws, which embrace in a short statement a wide range of knowledge. Such enlargements of human insight and power may have the character that we are considering. The law of universal gravity is sublime.

101. The modes and effects of strength are commensurate with the variety of powers in the physical, the moral, and the intellectual world, whether cited on their own account, or adduced in illustration of something else.

One great aim of composition is to heighten some actual subject by the force of comparisons, allusions, and impressive circumstances and groupings; as, a scene of nature, an abode of mankind, an event in history. In some instances, a purely fictitious theme is worked up from borrowed materials, as in Paradise Lost.

102. The poet enhances the sublime of Nature by opening up new and impressive aspects of personality.

This is sometimes called Interpretation, as if it were the evoking of hidden meanings in the aspect of things. We should rather consider it as an agreeable illusion, brought about by superadding foreign attributes.

The department of Nature-poetry is best represented in modern times. Reference may be made to Thomson, Cowper, Beattie, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and, among American poets, to Bryant.

The noble lines of Coleridge on Mount Blanc exemplify the
The following from Wordsworth is more akin to

sublime. Pathos:—

"Then up I rose

And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash

And merciless ravage; and the shady nook

Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,

Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being."

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103. In contrast to the sentiment of Power, there is a class of emotions allied to inaction, repose, and the passive side of our nature. They may flourish even under the consciousness of weakness. The generic title of these emotions is Tender Feeling.

The word feeling is sometimes used in a restricted sense, to mean tender feeling, or tenderness. Love and the warm affections are displays of tender emotions. Pathos and the Pathetic are other designations of the same quality.

Considered as a large source of human pleasure, these emotions are important. They are a bond of mutual attraction, and increase by being shared; they manifest themselves as a soothing and cheering influence in the depths of misery and depression.

104. The Tender Feelings are awakened by objects of special affection, by displays of active goodness, by humane sentiments, by pain and misery, and by pleasures, especially such as are gentle rather than acute. In highly pathetic situations, several of these modes are combined.

We have here to do with these influences, not in the actual, but as expressed in language; and the illustration of them will be determined accordingly.

(1.) As to what relates to the strong special affections of mankind. Richter says, "Unhappy is the man whose mother does not make all mothers interesting." Inasmuch as the generality of human beings have experienced some of the special attachments of family, friendship, and country, any allusion that strongly reminds them of these relationships has a tender influence. Such allusions form a principal ingredient in all kinds of poetry. The love talc is indispensable to the drama and the Romance.

(2.) Acts of goodness awaken the tender sentiment both in

the recipient and in the beholder. Hence the charm of narratives illustrative of compassion, beneficence, and philanthropy. The spectacle of devotedness has in every age exercised a fascination over men's minds. Of the ideal pictures indulged in by poets, this is the most frequent. The relation of protector and protected is dwelt upon even to excess.

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Burke's picture of Howard is touching :—“" He has visited all Europe, . to dive into the depths of dungeons; to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries."

(3.) The mere expression of kindly and humane sentiments. works in the same way. These sentiments are the echo and approval of active goodness, and lose their power only when offered as a substitute for the actions themselves.*

(4.) Pain, misery, calamity,—" all the ills that flesh is heir to "—stir the depths of our tender nature. The words pity, compassion, mean tenderness at the prompting of distress. It is most natural that the pains of the affections should awaken the feeling. The fate of mortality common to all, and its untimely arrival and untoward circumstances in the case of the greater number, keep us in constant readiness for the tender outburst. The passing away of generation after generation, the sinking into forgetfulness, the long and last farewell,—are the

* One of the most touching passages in ancient poetry is that contained in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book xv.), where the poet, in describing the tenets of the Pythagoreans, dwells upon their feeling of the sacredness of animal life. After adverting to the deserved punishment of the wild beast for his ravages and spoliation, he exclaims, "What have ye done to be so treated, ye gentle sheep, made to provide for men, ye that bear nectar in the full teat, that give us your wool for covering, and are more helpful in life than in death? What has the ox done, a guileless innocent beast, made to endure toil ? " "Unmindful he, and not worthy to be repaid with crops, who could kill the tiller of his fields, as soon as the weight of the crooked plough was removed; who struck with the axe that neck worn with labor, which had so often renewed the hard field and given so many harvests!" (116-126).

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