So in Homer—

Olympus, the reputed seat

Eternal of the Gods, which never storms

Disturb, rains drench, or snow invades, but calm

The expanse and cloudless shines with purest day.

The following lines, in Bryant, are meant to give the bright side of the prospect of death; but the contrast made use of is painful and discordant.

Then go not, like the quarry slave, at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one that draws the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Milton's Ode on the Nativity celebrates more especially the advent of a reign of universal peace. Contrasts are introduced to heighten the effect. Thus we have the stanza (iv.) beginning-

No war, or battle's sound,

Was heard the world around

where the revolting details of war are covered by expressions that give the side that has always imposed upon mankind. So the contrasts in xvii., xviii., xix., are so far redeemed by the language of grandeur and sublimity as not to be repulsive.

In the connected couple of Odes, 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,' Milton undertook the poetical working out of an extremely difficult contrast, namely, the gay, lively, light, exuberant type of innocent human enjoyment, with what he calls divinest Melancholy,' of whose meaning, however, he has no steady conception. In the introduction to 'L'Allegro,' he devotes, by way of contrast, ten lines to a description of loathed melancholy,' that is almost pure, unmingled horror and misery, poetically exaggerated to the utmost pitch. Though the terms are in nowise loathsome or revolting, the contrast is quite unnecessary as an aid to the effect of the delineation of mirth and joy. The 'Il Penseroso,' on the other hand, instead of giving the opposite of pleasure, in the sense of misery, is merely another type of enjoyment-the solemn, sedate and tranquil modes of happiness. To this, the poet supplies an introductory contrast, setting forth the vain and delusive side of the 'L'Allegro' type.

In addition to the three foregoing classes of Figures and corresponding to the three great powers of the Intellect, we may single out, as involving principles of importance, the Epigram, Condensed Sentence, Innuendo, Irony, Interrogation, Exclamation, Apostrophe, Hyperbole, Climax.

EPIGRAM.

1. The Epigram is an apparent contradiction in language, which, by causing a temporary shock, rouses

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our attention to some important meaning underneath.*

'The child is father of the man,' is an epigram. The language contradicts itself; yet the meaning is discernible, and is impressed by the momentary shock of contradiction.

The plurality of meanings attaching to a great number of our words is the groundwork of this figure. Hence the description of it as a 'play upon words'.

When it is said 'every man wishes to live long, but no one wishes to be old,' there is a manifest self-contradiction under the ordinary meaning of 'old,' which is simply length of life. But the word has also acquired, by contiguous association, the meaning 'infirm,' 'feeble,' decrepit,' and this is what the saying points to, in which sense it expresses a fact.

There is a long-standing play upon the word 'ancients,' whereby it is made seemingly to contradict itself, in indicating the moderns. We, who live now, are ancients in the sense of being furthest removed from the infancy of society, and so possessing the longest range of historical experience.

There are numerous ways of playing upon the word 'nothing'. Besides meaning 'nothing' in the absolute sense, it is often used to express a real something of such worthless character, or of such small quantity, as to be no better than nothing. Thus, it was said by Bentham, 'when you aim at nothing, you hit it': a way of reproving an aimless style. It was remarked by an Oxford Head of a college, regarding the old days when the curriculum was very narrow, 'when we had nothing to do, we did it well'. In like manner-'When you have nothing to say, say it'.

'The king is dead, long live the king.'

'Life would be tolerable, but for its amusements.'

'Our antagonist is our helper.'

Grote says of the legendary age-'it was a past that never was present'.

'We cannot see the wood for trees:' immersed among the trees, we cannot survey the wood as a whole.

'Failures are the pillars of success.'

Men may rise on stepping-stones

Of their dead selves, to higher things. (Tennyson.)

'The weakest reasons are the most dangerous' (Burke), the

* Epigram, properly meaning an inscription, was used by the Greeks for a short piece of verse placed on a public monument, and was afterwards extended to any short poem expressing precisely and forcibly a single interesting thought. Among the Romans, Epigrams assumed a satirical character and a pointed form; and in modern times, the name is still used for short poems of satirical and pointed nature. But the name, Epigram, and still more the adjective, Epigrammatic, have become further extended to any ingenious and pointed sayings in prose or verse. In the above application of it, the name designates the play upon words that is the most distinctive feature of these sayings not included under other designations, such as Balance and Antithesis.

implication being that the hearers are in such a prejudiced condition as to be satisfied with weak reasons; to move them in any other direction is then hopeless.

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Language is the art of concealing thought;' applied to the mystifications of diplomacy.

A man of pleasure is a man of pain.' We are accustomed, in descriptions of love, to the phrase 'sweet pain'. The thought is thus put by Thomson —–

These are the charming agonies of love,

Whose misery delights.

It is a doctrine maintained by Mr Herbert Spencer that 'Decoration precedes dress,' which is an impossibility in the ordinary sense of decoration-namely, fine clothes.

'Defend me from my friends,'-that is, from unwise or ill-considered assistance on their part.

'What's everybody's business, is nobody's.'

'Little things are great to little men.'

'Private vices are public benefits.'

Many epigrams are founded on the peculiar figure of using a word for its meaning in the highest degree of excellence. As in Charles Lamb's-books, which are no books'.

'Everything was better than another.'

He that complies against his will

Is of his own opinion still.

Swift was too proud to be vain'.

To tell the whole is not to tell everything.'

'More honoured in the breach than the observance.'

Leslie Stephen says of Johnson that he was troubled with rather an excessive allowance of human nature'. The allusion is to the American saying, There is a great deal of human nature in man'; 'human nature' being used in the sense of humanity on its weak and erring aspects.

"Verbosity is cured by a wide vocabulary.' This intimates a truth under the guise of a self-contradiction. By the command of a wide vocabulary, we can make so happy a selection as to give our meaning in few words.

Hesiod, illustrating the desirableness of simplicity of life, remarks, 'How much is the half greater than the whole'.

'I am content, and I don't like my situation' is an epigram by Goethe, insinuating that a certain remaining want, to inflame activity and inspire hope, is better than having every craving gratified at

once.

'By indignities men come to dignities,' is a characteristic saying of Bacon.

'Some people are too foolish to commit follies.'

A soul of goodness in things evil.'

'The better is the enemy of the good,' is a German proverb,

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intended to reprove aspirations after the impracticable. It is a various rendering of the homely saying, 'more haste, worse speed'. 'One secret in education is to know how wisely to lose time' (Herbert Spencer).

'Irresistible logic of facts.' Logic is the form of reasoning, and is the contrast of the facts. Nothing so fallacious as facts, except figures' (Canning).

Pope revels in epigrams.

'Tis all your business, business how to shun.

And most contemptible to shun contempt.

Bacon originated the epigram, 'Nature is to be commanded by obeying'. Pope's version is—

Nature, like liberty, is best restrained

By the same laws which first herself ordained

Again

And now the chapel's silver bell you hear,
That summons you to all the pride of prayer.
See Cromwell damn'd to everlasting fame.

With Tennyson the figure is frequent.

He is all fault who hath no fault at all.
He makes no friend who never made a foe.
Dead for two years before his death was he.
His honour rooted in dishonour stood,

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

Keats, in addressing sleep, calls it 'unconfin'd restraint, imprison'd liberty'.

Shelley expresses the consciousness of strength exhausted and sensation beginning to pass away, by the phrase, 'a sense of senselessness'.

2. Another mode of giving a shock of surprise by word play, is the Identical Assertion.

'What I have written, I have written.'

To say that a thing is what it is, conveys no additional information, and we are surprised that any one should perform such an unmeaning act. We then cast about, and find that there are two senses in the words, and that the subject takes one, and the predicate another. 'What I have written' means simply the inscription as set up by Pilate; the second clause, 'I have written,' is intended to insinuate the further meaning, not necessarily conveyed, that the inscription is written finally, and is not to be amended or

reconsidered. So 'fact is fact'; 'sensation is sensation'; argument is argument'.

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What are you reading? Words.' 'Fresh and fresh'.

The employment of a word in its eminent sense enters largely into this kind of epigram. His coming was an event'; not an event in the ordinary sense, but a rare and exceptional event. 'Who's who' is the title of a book containing the enumeration of all persons of consequence. Nothing succeeds like success'; the attainment of one success is the means of still greater. 'Calling a spade a spade'; giving things their plain names, however unsavoury. 'He calls names,' i.e., bad names. The exceeding sinfulness of sin.' 'His father was born before him ;' he was indebted to his father for unusual advantages. 'I am older than I was;' I am feeling the weight of years.

Richard's himself again;' has regained his full vigour. The way to do a thing is just to do it ;' corresponds to a Latin proverb, for getting out of a difficulty-solvitur ambulando'. Those that are good, are good.' 'Six and half a-dozen.' 'Twenty shillings in the pound; an emphatic statement of paying one's debts in the full. An Hebrew of the Hebrews;' one pre-eminent in the Hebrew characteristics.

"There are histories and histories;' great inequalities in the merits of histories: a very common form of speech.

An emphatic statement of the principle of the equal rights of men is given in Bentham's identical assertion-'everybody to count for one and nobody to count for more than one'.

'A man's a man for a' that'

is the poet's strong assertion of the worth of each man as man, apart from the adventitious circumstances of rank or fortune.

3. A shock of surprise is given by seeming Irrelevance.

When Emerson says, 'where snow falls there is freedom,' he puts together two things that have no obvious connection; the proposition appears, not so much contradictory, as irrelevant and nonsensical. When we reflect a little, we see that he means to describe the influences of tropical heat in debilitating the energies of men, and so preparing them for political slavery.

The gentleman with the foolish teeth,' is an irrelevance, but the author's intention is plain.

A man shipwrecked on an unknown coast, coming to a dead body hanging on a gibbet, is said to have expressed his thankfulness that he was in a civilized country.