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their natural order, after the verbs laid open and depends; but, as they come before these verbs, and are separated from them by many other words, a long pause after each is indispensably necessary, though in no edition of this grammar that I have seen is there any pause marked.

Apostrophe.

APOSTROPHE, or Occasional Address, is a figure in which we interrupt the current of our discourse, and turn to another person, or to some other object different from that to which our address was at first directed. This figure is seldom used; but when, in a violent commotion, the speaker turns himself on all sides, and appeals to the living and the dead, to angels and to men, to rocks, groves, and rivers, for the justice of his cause, or calls upon them to sympathize with his joy, grief, or resentment.

The tone of voice to be employed in pronouncing this figure, is as various as the passions it assumes; but as these passions are generally very vehement, a higher and louder tone of voice is generally necessary in the apostrophe than in that part of the oration that precedes it. When we address inanimate things, especially if they are supposed to be distant, the voice must rise in height and loudness, as if the speaker were resolved to make them hear him. In this manner we may presume Cicero pronounced that fine apostrophe in his oration for Milo, when, speaking of the death of Clodius, he

says:

O ye judges! it was not by human counsel, nor by any thing less than the immediate care of the immortal gods, that this event has taken place. The very divinities themselves, who beheld that monster fall, seemed to be moved, and to have in

flicted their vengeance upon him. I appeal to, I call to witness, you, O ye hills and groves of Aiba! you, the demolished Alban altars! ever accounted holy by the Romans, and coëval with our religion, but which Clodius, in his mad fury, having first cut down and levelled the most sacred groves, had sunk under heaps of common buildings; I appeal to you, I call you to witness, whether your altars, your divinities, your powers, which he had polluted with all kinds of wickedness, did not avenge themselves when this wretch was extirpated? And thou, O holy Jupiter! from the height of thy sacred mount, whose lakes, groves, and boundaries, he had so often contaminated with his detestable impurities:-and you, the other deities, whom he had insulted, at length opened your eyes to punish this enormous offender. By you, by you, and in your sight, was the slow, but the righteous and merited vengeance executed upon him.

In pronouncing this passage, it is evident that the speaker must raise his voice at I appeal, &c. and, with a force and rapidity of bordering on enthusiasm, continue the voice in this pitch till the invocation of Jupiter, who, as the supreme being, is supposed to be present, and to be too sacred to be addressed with the same violence. as inanimate objects; for which reason the speaker must lower his tone into a solemn monotone, and continue in his lower tone with increasing force to the end.

Asyn'deton and Polysyn'deton.

ASYNDETON and Polysyndeton or Omission and Redundance of Copulatives, are figures by which the thought and language are strengthened and invigorated either by leaving out or repeating the conjunctive particles. The learned Dr. Ward says, that "the Asyndeton leaves out the "connecting particles, to represent either the

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celerity of an action or the haste and eager"ness of the speaker: and that the Polysyndeton "adds a weight and gravity to an expression,

"and makes what is said to appear with an air "of solemnity, and, by retarding the course of "the sentence, gives the mind an opportunity to consider and reflect upon every part distinctly."

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System of Oratory, vol. ii. pp. 50, 51.

That these figures are very properly employed to signify swiftness or slowness of thought or action it cannot be denied; but that they are not always so employed is evident from a thousand examples. But though we frequently omit the particles, for the sake of a greater variety and compactness of style, and to avoid a too tedious repetition, yet we ought never to introduce them but where the thought requires it, and where they seem to accumulate force and emphasis to a subject.

There is an example of both these figures in a passage of Demosthenes, which may serve to explain these observations.

For as to naval power, and the number of forces, and revenues, and a plenty of martial preparations, and, in a word, as to other things that may be esteemed the strength of a state, these are all both more and greater than in former times; but all these things are rendered useless, inefficacious, abortive, through the power and corruption. Philippic iii.

In the first part of this sentence, the repetition. of the conjunction and seems to add to the strength of the particulars it enumerates, and cach particular demands a deliberate and emphatic pronunciation in the rising inflexion; but the last part of the sentence, without the particles, being expressive of the impatience and regret of the speaker, requires a swifter pronunciation of the particulars.

In the exordium to Cicero's Second Oration

gainst Catiline, we have an instance of the Asyndeton which is much celebrated.

At length, at length, O Romans! have we driven, or dispatched, or forced into a voluntary retreat, Lucius Catiline, intoxicated with insolence, breathing out guilt, impiously meditating the destruction of his country, and threatening you and this city with all the calamities of fire and sword. He is gone, he is vanished, he is escaped, he is sallied out.

The latter member of this passage, which forms the figure Asyndeton, must be pronounced with a swiftness expressive of the flight of Catiline; but this swiftness should rather be in the pronunciation of the words themselves than in omitting the pauses between them: for it may be laid down as a good general rule, that whereever there is a particle omitted there must always be a pause; and though in the present example the pauses should not be so long as in solemn and deliberate pronunciation, yet it ought to be quite as perceptible, and bear the same proportion to the time taken up in delivering the words.

These figures partake of the nature of the Aparithmesis, or Enumeration, and require the same inflexion of voice on each particular, as in the Series or Climax; but as was before observed, though the Polysyndeton, or repetition of particles, generally requires a solemn, deliberate, and emphatic pronunciation on each particular, the Asyndeton, or omission of particles, does not always require a greater swiftness and precipitancy.

I shall illustrate both these positions by examples from the Scripture:

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law.

In pronouncing this passage, we find it necessary to pause considerably after each word, that each may be distinctly apprehended; nothing like swiftness or precipitancy is required here, but a calmness and deliberation suited to the sense of the text: but, in the following passage from Romans, viii. 35, every particular requires a degree of emphasis.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribu lation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us.

Here the members of the sentence, being interrogations beginning with a verb, require the rising inflexion approaching to a monotone, with a considerable stress upon each, but particularly on the last, where the voice must slide much higher than on the rest; but each portion in the succeeding beautiful climax must have the falling inflexion, except the last, at

creature:

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life; nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers; nor things present, nor things to come; nor height nor depth: nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This passage contains five portions of words, each portion, except the last, forming a class of words associated either by their similitude or opposition each of these classes, except the last, requires the falling inflexion, with some degree of emphasis on the last word. The voice must be low, firm, and deliberate, upon the first portion at life, and increase its force, loudness, and elevation, by the smallest degrees; and in the same inflexion on powers, come, and depth: on

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