Did first create your leader, next free choice,
With what besides, in counsel or in fight,
Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss
Thus far at least recover'd, hath much more
Establish'd in a safe, unenvied throne,
Yielded with full consent. The happier state
In heav'n, which follows dignity, might draw
Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim,
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? Where there is then no good
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From faction; for none sure will claim in hell
Precedence; none, whose portion is so small

L. 26 presents a sixth reason (i. e.), none will dispute precedence in sufferings with him. This is not barely hinted at, but introduced by a bold INTERROGATION: "Who here will

envy ?" L. 27.-Whom the highest place exposes, &c. This is one of those bold strokes of imagery for which Milton is distinguished. L. 28. Thunderer. SYNECDOCHE; that is, a part for the whole, for he that can do all things can likewise thunder; and as this exertion of his power is peculiarly alarming, we borrow from it the appellation of the author.

L. 29.-Your bulwark. A METAPHOR. A mound raised to withstand the impetuosity of the sea is a bulwark. It conveys an idea of the evils Satan will have to support, to save his infernal associates from the wrath of the Divinity.

L. 30.-Here is an instance of a beautiful oratorical Sorites, a kind of argument in which, generally, the predicate of one proposition is made the subject of the one that follows, and the subject of the first is also the subject of the last proposition, or conclusion, as when Themistocles argued in regard to his son, a boy of three years old, "My son commands his mother; his mother commands me; I command the Athenians; the Athenians command Greece; Greece commands Europe; Europe commands the whole earth: therefore my son commands the whole earth."

The example before us is not quite so complete, or strictly logica! :

Where there is no good to be gained there can be no strife;
Where there is no strife there can be no faction;

And where there is no faction there must be union.

This sorites ends in 1. 36.

L. 31.-No strife can grow up there from faction. A metaphor, so much the more just, as it may be applied to a noxious weed. L. 32, 33-A persuasive repetition of none.

Of present pain, that with ambitious mind
Will covet more. With this advantage, then,
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in heav'n, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old,
Surer to prosper than prosperity

35

Could have assured us; and by what best way,
Whether of open war or covert guile,

40

We now debate: who can advise, may speak.

MOLOCH'S SPEECH

If the former speech is characteristic, this is not less so. It paints the fierce spirit, who is now fiercer by despair, as Milton beautifully expresses it: the four lines he gives us on this subject are inimitable.

His trust was with the Eternal to be deem'd
Equal in strength, and rather than be less,
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost,
Went all his fear of God, or hell, or worse,
He reck'd not.

My sentence is for open war: of wiles
More unexpert, I boast not them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait
The signal to ascend, sit lingering here
Heav'n's fugitives, and for their dwelling place

51

55

L. 34, 35.-Ambitious mind will covet more. Here one passion borrows an expression from another, that is, ambition has recourse to avarice for the term covet, in order to strengthen the idea.

L. 37.-More than can be in heaven. This is an artful oratorica, consequence, from the supposition that there must be envy in heaven on account of dignity, and none in hell on account of pain.

L. 39, 40.-A rational antithesis and jeu de mots: surer to prosper than prosperity could have assured us.

L. 41.-Open war or covert guile. A second antithesis, concise and simple.

L. 51.-An abrupt exordium, well suiting the stern spirit who utters it. The contrast and alliteration of war and wiles owe much of their beauty to their conciseness.

L. 55. A grand image. Millions that stand in arms. Sullenness generally proposes its arguments in disdainful interrogations. "Shall the rest sit lingering here," &c.

Accept this dark, opprobrious den of shame,
The prison of his tyranny who reigns
By our delay? No, let us rather choose,
Arm'd with hell-flames and fury, all at once

O'er heav'n's high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms

Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise
Of his infernal engine he shall hear

Infernal thunder, and for lightning see

Black fire and horror shot with equal rage

Among his angels, and his throne itself

Mix'd with Tartarean sulphur, and strange fire,
His own invented torments. But perhaps
The way seems difficult and steep, to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe.
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,
That in our proper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat: descent and fall
To us is adverse.

70

75

L. 58.-Den of shame. Shame is here personified. The prison of his tyranny, that is, which his tyranny has made: an example of ellipsis.

L. 61.—Arm'd with hell-flames and fury. A bold catachresis. See p. 103.

L. 63.-The idea of turning his tortures into arms is nobly diabolical. Here the effect is put for the cause by metonymy.

L. 67.-See black fire and horror shot. There is a catachresis in the sense of the word black, as it is here applied to fire, there being an allusion to the revolving smoke with which the fire is enveloped. To shoot horror is a metonymy, as it gives the effect for the cause. L. 69.-Tartarean. Allusion to the hell of the Gentiles. See ch. xxxvii., pt. ii.

Strange fire. Allusion to the Sacred Scriptures. They offered strange fire before the Lord.-Levit.

L. 71, 72.-To scale with upright wing. A striking image. The metaphor is taken from fortification.

L. 73.-The sleepy drench of that forgetful lake. Allusion to the River Lethe.

L. 75.-There is a beautiful simile in these words artfully conveyed to the mind without expressing it; we conceive the infernal spirits to resemble pyramids of fire, whose proper motion is to ascend.

CHAPTER IV.

DEFINITIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS.

IN the discussion and exhibition of truth, the shortest and clearest way is to begin with a good definition or description of the thing before you. Obscurity, contradiction, and, of course, much wrangling, even error itself, will almost always disappear, if you take care previously to fix the state of the question, and explain the point which you mean to establish. One single judicious definition throws light upon a whole speech, a dissertation, and even a whole work. False reasoning and absurd contentions generally spring from error in, or the omission of, a definition or description.

A good logical definition explains the thing that it defines in terms more clear than those in which it is conveyed. There must not be a single word of it without its use: it must comprehend all the thing that is to be defined, and that thing only; that is to say, that under what light soever you consider an object, its definition should agree to it, and to it alone.

The rules of an oratorical or poetical definition are the same as those of a logical definition; that is, both must give a clear and distinct idea of the things they define; but the orator and the poet, in place of confining themselves to the nature of objects, consider them sometimes in their causes, and sometimes in their effects. Thus it is, that by means of accessory ideas you will observe their definitions skirted with all the brilliancy of imagination.

Take, for example, a translation of Cicero's definition of praise it is oratorical :

"Praise is the well-merited applause for upright actions and public-spirited achievements, approved of not only by the good in particular, but by the world in general."

As a logician, Cicero would have reduced it to this: "Praise is honorable mention frequently made of a person." But as an orator, he is equally exact, and much more interesting, by the harmonious display of the causes of praise, and of those by whom it is given.

The following is a charming definition of thought:

"The hermit's solace in his cell,

The fire that warms the poet's brain;

The lover's heaven or his hell,

The madman's sport, the wise man's pain."

There are three different oratorical ways of defining.

The first, is to convey the thing to be defined to the understanding, by stripping it of its properties and qualifications.

Thus, Tully, in his oration for Cluentius, defines a mother by demanding,

"Is this a mother? A woman unsexed by cruelty and stained with murder; a woman, whose passions hurried through every species of turpitude; whose wretched folly is such that you can not give her the name of man, whose violence is such that she can not be called a woman, and whose barbarity is so great that nobody will dare to call her a mother?"

A second way of defining oratorically, is to divest the object of all that is foreign to it, and dress it in its own properties.

Thus Tully, again :

"For I do believe that men of your great birth and high views, however the credulous may suspect the contrary, have never set your hearts upon money, the contempt of the first in rank as well as of the first in power; nor property wrested from the lawful owners; nor excessive power, the abhorrence of the Roman people; but what you all thirsted after was the love of your fellow-citizens, and the glory of the Republic."

The third way of defining, is by expressing the contrary or opposite, as well as the inherent qualities.

"The very name of peace is sweet; peace itself is salutary. But there is a world of difference between peace and bondage. Peace is tranquil liberty; bondage the worst of all evils. We should not only rise in arms against it, but die the worst of deaths sooner than yield to it."

In the first of the above examples a mother is defined by those qualifications which directly oppose and destroy the softer ideas that nature has attached to that endearing name. This made for the orator's purpose. Had he simply defined Sapia to have been the woman who gave birth to Cluentius, he would not have rendered her the object of public execration, as he has most effectually done.

In the second example Tully defines a true lover of his country, by informing us what a man of this description would do, and what he would avoid doing, for the sake of his country.

In the third example he displays the nature of peace, by happily contrasting it with the very worst effect of an opposite situation, bondage.

The strictness required in logical definitions renders them extremely uncommon; hence the necessity of frequently having recourse to descriptions, which do not, like