SECTION II.

MODES OF EMPHASIS.

Time, i. e., dwelling somewhat longer on certain words, is used as a mode of emphasis to express tender feeling, sublimity, solemnity, admiration, etc. It can only be used with words possessing long quantity.

Examples.

From King Henry VIII. Act III.

So farewell to the little good you bear me.
Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness,
This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;...........
O, how wretched

Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!

Shakespeare.

From Elegiac Stanzas.

Oh, let not tears embalm my tomb,-
None but the dews at twilight given!

Oh, let not sighs disturb the gloom,—

None but the whispering winds of heaven!

Moore.

From King John. Act III.

Constance. Father Cardinal, I have heard you say, That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:

If that be true, I shall see my boy again;

For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday breathe,

There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,

And change the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost;....
And so he'll die; and, rising so again

I shall not know him; therefore, never, never,
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

Shakespeare.

From Adventures of Telemachus. Book XIV.

Telemachus had long been disturbed in the night by dreams in which he saw his father Ulysses. The vision never failed to return at the end of the night, just before the approach of the Aurora, with her prevailing fires, to chase from heaven the doubtful radiance of the stars, and from the earth the pleasing delusion of sleep..... From these pleasing dreams Telemachus always awoke dejected and sorrowful. While one of them was recent upon his mind he cried out: "O my father! O my dear father Ulysses! the most frightful dreams would be more welcome to me than these. Those representations of felicity convince me that thou art already descended to the abodes of those happy spirits whom the gods reward for their virtue with everlasting rest. I think I behold the fields of Elysium! Must I then, O my father, see thee no more forever? How dreadful is the loss of hope!-Fenelon.

Force is used with the sterner emotions and in the expression of impassioned thought.

The following examples offer opportunity for em

phasis by Time and Force.

Let the student indicate

the emphatic words and the means of emphasis.

From Threnodia Augustalis.

Calm was his life and quiet was his death.

Soft as those gentle whispers were

In which the Almighty did appear;

By the still voice the prophet knew him there,

That peace which made thy prosperous reign to shine,
That peace thou leavest to thy imperial line,
That peace, oh happy shade, be ever thine!

Dryden.

From Nature Superior to Science.

In all physical science we can only be the servants and disciples of nature. She must be the absolute mistress, and she will not yield one tittle of power to us. By submission alone to those laws, which she herself has taught us, can we overcome her. Let me now, in order to put this view more strikingly before you, imagine a conversation, such as has often, I dare say, taken place, especially at the commencement of steam locomotion, in almost every part of the world. We will suppose a person, by way of introducing the conversation, saying of the steam engine: "What a wonderful invention; how marvelous: to what a pitch has science been brought; how completely has she mastered nature and her laws! We have destroyed space. we have cheated time, we have invented a piece of mechanism which we have endowed with almost vital power, to which we have given all but intelligence; and how proudly it goes on its way!..........

"Hold!" says one who has been listening to this boastful speech; "hold! look on yon cloud; it is heavy with thunder. See those flashes, which already break through it-those bright lances, each tipped with fire, destructive beyond all the power of man; see their direction towards us! Suppose that by a law of nature, which you have not repealed, one of those strike, and make a wreck of that proud monster.............

"Nay," says a third: "I will not consent to a trial like that ....It is not thus, in a vengeful form, that I will put into contrast that great production of man's ingenuity and the power of nature. No; I will take the most harmless, the most gentle, the most tender thing in her, and I will put that against the other.

What is softer, more beautiful, and more innocent than the dew-drop, which does not even discolor the leaf upon which it lies at morning; what more graceful, when, multiplied it makes its chalice of the rose, adds sweetness to its fragrance, and jewels to its enamel?.... Expose the steam-engine but to the action of this little and insignificant agent and the metal, although you made a compact with it that it should be bright and polished, cares more for the refreshment from those drops of dew than it does for you, and it absorbs them willingly.... Every polished rod, so beautiful and fair, is blotched and gangrened. A few drops from heaven have conquered the proudest work of man's ingenuity and skill. Cardinal Wiseman.

Inflexion is one of the most valuable servants of emphasis; the rules laid down elsewhere govern its use. Pause, or Phrasing, as a mode of emphasis, is reserved for a separate chapter.

Let the student apply the preceding rules to the examples here given.

Examples.

From Coriolanus. Act III.

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still

To banish your defenders; till, at length,
Your ignorance (which finds not till it feels),
Making no reservation of yourselves

(Still your own foes), deliver you, as most
Abated captives, to some nation

That won you without blows. Despising
For you, the city, thus I turn my back;
There is a world elsewhere.

From Mores Catholici.

Shakespeare.

The middle ages were ages of the highest grace to menages of faith--ages when all Europe was Catholic: when vast temples were seen to rise in every place of human concourse, to give glory to God, and to exalt men's souls to sanctity; when houses of holy peace and order were found amidst woods and desolate mountains-on the banks of placid lakes, as well as on the solitary rocks in the ocean; ages of sanctity which witnessed a Bede, an Alcuin, a Bernard. a Francis, and crowds who followed them as they did Christ; ages of vast and beneficent intelligence, in which it pleased the Holy Spirit to display the power of the seven gifts in the lives of an Anselm, a Thomas of Aquinum, and the saintly flocks whose steps a cloister guarded: ages of the highest civil virtue, which gave birth to the laws and institutions of an Edward, a Lewis, a Suger: ages of the noblest art, which beheld a Giotto, a Michael Angelo, a Raffaele, a Domenichino; ages of poetry, which heard an Avitus, a Cædmon, a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Calderon; ages of more than mortal heroism, which produced a Tancred and a Godfrey; ages of majesty, which knew a Charlemagne, an Alfred, and the sainted youth who bore the lily; ages, too, of England's glory, when she appears, not even excluding a comparison with the Eastern empire, as the most truly civilized country on the globe; when the sovereign of the greater portion of the Western world applied to her schools for instructors-when she sends forth her saints to evangelize the nations of the world, and to diffuse spiritual treasure over the whole world-when heroes flock to her court to behold the models of reproachless chivalry, and emperors leave their thrones to adore at the tombs of her martyrs! Kenelm H. Digby.