cipal source of emphasis; for if, as in the last instance, we find the words will bear this opposition to their common signification, we may be sure they are emphatical; this will be still more evident from another example:

By the faculty of a lively and picturesque imagination, a man in a dungeon is capable of entertaining himself with scenes and landscapes, more beautiful than any that can be found in the whole compass of nature. Spectator, No. 411.

If we read this passage without that emphasis which the word dungeon requires, we enervate the meaning, and scarcely give the sense of the author; for the import plainly is that a lively imagination, not merely absent from beautiful scenes, but even in a dungeon, can form scenes more beautiful than any in nature.

But if emphasis does not improve, it always vitiates the sense; and, therefore, should be always avoided where the use of it is not evident: this will appear by - placing an emphasis on a word in a sentence which does not require it:

I have several letters by me from people of good sense, who lament the depravity or poverty of taste the town is fallen into with relation to plays and public spectacles. Spectator, No. 208.

Now, if we lay a considerable degree of emphasis upon the words good sense, it will strongly suggest that the people here mentioned are not common or ordinary people, which, though not opposite to the meaning of the writer, does not seem necessary either to the completion or embellishment of it; for as particularly marking these people out as persons of good sense, seems to obviate an objection that they might possibly be fools, and as it would not be very wise to suppose this objection, it would show as little wisdom to endeavour to preclude it by a more than ordinary stress; the plain words of the author, therefore, without any emphasis on them, sufficiently show his meaning.

From these observations, the following definition of emphasis seems naturally to arise: emphasis, when applied to particular words, is that stress we lay on words, which are in contradistinction to other words either ex

pressed or understood. And hence will follow this general rule: Wherever there is contradistinction in the sense of the words, there ought to be emphasis in the pronunciation of them; the converse of this being equally true, Wherever we place emphasis, we suggest the idea of contradistinction.

Having thus ascertained the nature of Emphasis, we are next to consider the inflections it requires. Much of this subject indeed has been anticipated in speaking of Antithesis; and in the exceptions to the foregoing rules the peculiarities of emphatic sentences are mostly explained. Some farther remarks however on these topics have been reserved for this place.

EMPHATIC INFLECTION.

It was noticed under Rule XXIV. that where the last member of a sentence was negative, in opposition to a positive expression in the first, the usual order of inflections was inverted, the last member taking the rising, and the first the falling inflection. An instance of this occurs in the following sentence:

When a Persian soldier was reviling Alexander the Great, his officer reprimanded him by saying: Sir, you were paid to fight Alexander, and not to rail at him.

Here we find fight and rail are the two emphatic words which correspond to each other, and that the positive member which affirms something, adopts the falling inflection on fight, and the negative member which excludes something, has the rising inflection on rail. Something like this will be found to take place where only one part of an Antithesis is expressed:

By the faculty of a lively and picturesque imagination, a man in a dungeon is capable of entertaining himself with scenes and landscapes, more beautiful than any that can be found in the whole compass of nature.

Here we find the emphatical word dungeon, requiring the falling inflection; and if we draw out the sentence at length, supplying the words suggested by the sense, we shall find it consist of the same positive and negative parts as the former, and that the positive part as

sumes the falling, and the negative the rising inflection in both.

EXAMPLES.

When a Persian soldier was reviling Alexander the Great, his offieer reprimanded him by saying; Sir, you were paid to fight Alexander, and not to rail at him.

By the faculty of a lively and picturesque imagination, a man in a dungeon and not merely absent from beautiful scenes, is capable of entertaining himself with scenes and landscapes, more beautiful than any that can be found in the whole compass of nature.

Now, whatever be the reason why the positive member of a sentence should adopt the emphasis with the falling inflection, and the negative member the rising; it is certain, that this appropriation of emphatic inflection, to a positive or negative signification, runs through the whole system of pronunciation. Agreeably to this arrangement, we constantly find good readers finish negative sentences with the rising inflection, where ordinary readers are sure to use the falling inflection, and to drop the voice; and, perhaps, this different pronunciation forms one of the greatest differences between good and bad readers: Thus, in the following sentence from the Oration of Demosthenes on the Crown, translated by Dr. Leland:

Observe then, Eschines; our ancestors acted thus in both these Instances; not that they acted for their benefactors, not that they saw no dánger in these expeditions. Such considerations never could induce them to abandon those who fled to their protéction. No, from the nobler motives of glory and renown, they devoted their services to the distressed.

There are few good readers who will not pronounce the two first sentences of this passage so as to terminate them with the rising inflection; and this manner of reading them we find agreeable to the paraphrase suggested by the falling inflection adopted in the several clauses of the last sentence; by which all the sentences of this passage form parts of one thought, and are reduced to the definition of emphasis already given; as, They acted from the nobler motives of glory and renown, and not inferior motives.

Wherever, therefore, a negative sentence, or member of a sentence, is in opposition to a positive sentence, or member of a sentence, we find it usually adopt the rising inflection: And even where there is no correspondent positive member or sentence expressed, if the negative member or sentence would admit of a positive, and the sense of this positive is agreeable to the general tenor of the composition; in this case, likewise, we find the negative member or sentence adopt the rising inflection. Thus, in the same oration, Demosthenes, speaking of the public works he had erected, says,

As to those public works, so much the object of your ridicule, they undoubtedly demand a due share of honour and applause; but I rate them far beneath the great merit of my administration. It is not with stones nor bricks that I have fortified the city. It is not from works like these that I' derive my reputation Would you know my methods of fortifying? Examine, and you will find them in the arms, the towns, the territories, the harbours I have secured; the navies, the troops, the armies I have ràised.

The two middle negative sentences of this passage have not any correspondent positive sentences preceding or following them; but the rising inflection on these sentences suggests a meaning so compatible with the mind of the speaker, that we cannot doubt of its being the true one; for it is equivalent to saying, It is not with works like these that I have fortified the city, but with something much better. This will receive a farther illustration from another passage of the same orator.

For if you now pronounce, that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned, it must be thought that yourselves have acted wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But it cannot be. No, my countrymen! It cannot be you have acted wrong, in encountering danger bravely, for the liberty and safety of all Gréece. No! by those generous souls of ancient times, who were exposed at Marathon! By those who stood arrayed at Plataèa! By those who encountered the Persian fleet at Salamis! who fought at Artemisium! By all those illustrious sons of Athens, whose remains lie deposited in the public monuments! All of whom received the same honourable interment from their country: Not those only who prevailed, not those only who where victórious. And with reason. What was the part of gallant men they all performed; their success was such as the supreme director of the world dispensed to each.

The two last members of the first sentence we find naturally adopt their specific inflections; that is, the positive member, the falling on wrong, and the negative the rising on fortune. The succeeding sentence has a negation in it that suits the rising inflection much better than the falling, and therefore Greece has very properly the rising inflection; and the latter members, not those only who prevailed, not those only who were victorious, will not admit of the falling inflection without an evident prejudice to the sense.

From these observations, we may derive the following rule.

RULE XLI.

Whenever a sentence is composed of a positive and negative part, if this positive and negative imports that something is affirmed in one part and something denied in the other, the positive must have the falling, and the negative the rising inflection.

EXAMPLES FOR PRACTICE.

Virtue, to become either vigorous or useful, must be habitually active; not breaking forth occasionally with a transient lustre, like the blaze of a comét; but regular in its returns, like the light of day: not like the aromatic gale, which sometimes feasts the sensé; but like the ordinary breeze, which purifies the air, and renders it healthful.

True ease in writing comes from àrt, not chancé :
As those move easiest, who have learned to dance.
One shall rise

Of proud ambitious heart, who, not content
With fair equality, fraternal state,

Will arrogate dominion undeserved

Over his brethren, and quite dispossess

Concord and law of Nature from the earth;

Hunting (and mèn, not beasts shall be his game)
With war and hostile snare, such as refuse
Subjection to his empire tyrannous.

GENERAL EMPHASIS.

Par. Lost, B. xii.

Hitherto emphasis has been considered as appropriated to a particular word in a sentence, the peculiar sense of which demanded an increase of force, and an inflection correspondent to that sense; but there is beside this, an emphatic force, which, when the composition is very animated, and approaches to a close, we