"Hath not a Jew eyes," asks Shylock, "hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?" This is stronger than the statement, “A Jew hath eyes," etc. "Lives there who loves his pain?"— Par. Lost, 4. 888. 8. The Parenthesis is common everywhere. “For I this night . (Such night till this I never passed) have dreamed, 9. Finally, the most abrupt contrast arises when the construction comes suddenly to an end, is broken off violently, and a new sentence begins in a new direction. The famous Vergilian example is where Neptune rebukes the winds, and begins to threaten, but leaves the threat unfinished: 66 66 Quos ego-sed motos præstat componere fluctus." Had ye been there - for what could that have done?" "But her eyes— How could he see to do them?" - Lycidas. -Merch. of Ven. III. 2. § 3. FIGURES OF COMBINATION. Here the effect is made by the arrangement and mutual relations of the different parts of the sentence. There is no repetition; there is no turning from the proper tense or number; but the joining of the parts differs from that of common speech. I. Chief of these figures is Antithesis. Two expressions are placed in close relation, so that each throws the other into strong relief. Sometimes we have two verses; sometimes the antithesis is shut in a single verse. In prose, the figure should be sparingly used; a case of undue abundance is John Lyly's Euphues and his England (1579) which riots in antithesis and alliteration. But sparingly used, antithesis has a pleasant effect. Keats says (Endymion) he will 66 Stammer where old Chaucer used to sing." "Have eyes to wonder but lack tongues to praise." "His back was turned, but not his brightness hid.” "Saw undelighted all delight.” — Par. Lost, 4. 286. "New laws from him who reigns new minds may raise This figure was carried to excess in the formal poetry of Dryden and Pope. Still the theme may often excuse the figure. So in Pope's masterpiece : 66 Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, Pope is very fond of parallel constructions: — "Hang o'er the box and hover round the ring." "When music softens and when dancing fires." "On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore So Dr. Johnson: "All Marlborough hoarded or all Villiers spent." So Swift and many other poets of the Eighteenth Century. Another use of the antithesis is to sharpen satire. It brings incongruous things together as if they were congruous. 66 Pope: 'Forget her prayers or miss a masquerade.” "Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball.” Another use is to point a moral. Dryden : "Resolved to ruin or to rule the state." "But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, "He left not faction, but of that was left.” The antithesis is much used in the Epigram: — "On parent's knees, a naked new-born child, Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled So live, that, sinking in thy long last sleep, Calm thou may'st smile, while all around thee weep." A peculiar antithesis is the sneer of Richard after he has murdered the king: 66 What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted." The antithesis generally brings out an opposition in the meaning -as in the foregoing examples. But there is a similar figure which brings out a likeness—a sort of parallel. Thus Chaucer: "When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept." The great merit of the antithesis is the same as the merit of its chief masters, Dryden and Pope, - conciseness and clearness. It presents an idea in brief but forcible expression. But its faults are also the faults of Pope and Dryden, lack of naturalness, a tendency to labored manner, a striving after effect. In poor hands (imitators of Pope) it becomes intolerable. 2. The antithesis is not necessarily a contradiction. But there is a figure (something like the hyperbole among tropes) where a seeming contradiction in terms brings out vividly the general idea. When the contradictory terms are brought sharply together, the figure is called Oxymoron; when they are not so closely joined, Paradox. Keats is a poet fond of such figures: ". . . and then there crept A little noiseless noise among the leaves "A half-heard strain Full of sweet desolation,— balmy pain." To these striking examples we may add : "O heavy lightness, serious vanity!" Milton: Shirley: "And smale fowlës maken melodie "And sleepless lovers just at twelve awake." Mrs. Browning: Divinely the divine.” Example of Paradox is : 66 "He denied Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage.” — Lovelace. 3. Climax and Anticlimax. - The great art in prose or verse is to leave on the reader's mind the most distinct and sharp impression possible (cf. H. Spencer On the Philosophy of Style). To do this, great care must be exercised in the arrangement of thought and expression. The most important part should, as a rule, come last, and thus leave itself in the mind without anything following to mar the impression. So Eve says to Adam: |