cover) is marked by identity of pitch and cadence.

Antithesis is so important and powerful a figure of rhetoric that you must go back and re-consider all this till you are master of it in elocution.

Having done so, exercise your voice aloud in the following practice on antithesis.

Practice on Antithesis.

When reason is against a man, he will be against
BACON.

reason.

Words are the counters of wise men, the money of fools.

A fool with judges, among fools a judge.

Non ut edam vivo, sed ut vivam edo.

HOBBES.

CowPER.

QUINTILIAN.

Persecution is not wrong because it is cruel, but cruel

because it is wrong.

He who dreads new remedies must abide old evils.

BACON.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.

This is the condemnation; that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

He must increase, but I must decrease.

John iii.

Ibid.

Not by wit but by wisdom, not by learning but by

law, not by words but by worth, not by ridicule but by

J

reason, not by fancy but by faith, are the minds of men permanently influenced and governed. Met-ipse.

Observe that antithesis is always emphatic; that is, it requires stress on the inflections marking the opposition.

EXPRESSIVE ANTITHESIS.

When antithesis is intended to be very marked or pointed for effect, as in ridicule, or in a pointed jest, or to give it a satirical turn, or to epigrammatise it, as it were, the contrast of pitch must be by the fifth upwards and downwards, and it has the determinate cadence. Thus :

It is related that in a little sparring-match (verbal, of course) which took place between Brougham and Scarlett, on a Nisi Prius trial, Scarlett insisted that certain important words, viz., 'of and concerning,' were in the information. Brougham was equally confident that they were not.

Mr. Justice Bayley read the passage from the record, which proved Brougham correct: on which Scarlett said: 'Well, they were in my copy. I was equally confident with you.' To which Brougham replied: 'Yes, but there was this difference: you were confident and wrong; I was confident and right.'

In uttering this epigrammatic retort, its point would be half-lost unless the antithetic words were marked with fifths in opposition.

ι

Examples of Epigrammatic Antithesis

requiring the upward and downward fifth in contrast, and determinate cadence with force.

If you said so, then I said so.

SHAKSPEARE.

We shall not merely answer, we shall retort.

"Tis not in mortals to command success;

We will do more, we will deserve it.

I said an older soldier, not a better.

ADDISON.

SHAKSPEARE.

Truly it is a good thing to die well, but a better to live well.

I judge you by what you do, not by what you say.

If we are uncourteous enough to say rude things, we ought at least to be prepared for a sharp retort, and also be cool enough to bear it.

OTHERS, not marked, mark for yourself:

There is a well-dressed mob and an ill-dressed mob. The vapid affectation of the one is more intolerable than the gross insolence and brutality of the other.

HAZLITT.

Some men call themselves men of sentiment. They have so much sentiment that they have little feeling. Sterne was one of these, who wept over a suffering donkey, and was insensible to the poverty of a parent.

K

To him, a dead ass was a finer subject of sympathy than a liring mother.

Sylla, before dying, epigrammatised his own character, saying, that no man had ever gone beyond him in doing good to his friends, or hurt to his enemies.

ARBITRARY EMPHASIS OVERRULING THE LAW OF ANTITHESIS.

There are cases, however, where the antithesis existing in the words used is not marked by antithesis of inflection. This is under the power of arbitrary emphasis; by which, to make a reproach, a reproof, or an indignant expression of feeling, strong and telling, the downward inflection with force is placed upon each contrasted word or phrase of the antithesis.

We have a fine example of this in Christ's indignant reproof to the money-changers whom he expels from the Temple :

My house is a house-of-prayer, but ye have made it a den-of-thieves. Luke xix.

Both these phrases, in reading, should receive radical stress, with downward pitch or inflection, to mark the indignation of the speaker; and the second phrase should have the determinate cadence of the fifth.

And this from Milton comes under the same

force:

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven!

So again:

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak, is to be read under the same force. For arbitrary emphasis being subjective, as has been explained, overrides the common law of necessary emphasis, by the introduced force of the speaker's intent, or purpose, or will.

That, indeed, is the character and force of all arbitrary emphasis, which you recollect is the second category under which emphasis (See pp. 83, 140.)

comes.

AMPLIFICATION, OR EMPHATIC ENUMERATION.

Amplification by a succession of phrases in similar construction, increasing the force of the primary idea by repetition of the form.

This rhetorical figure is a perpetual source of difficulty to the unpractised reader or speaker, whose confused and uncertain manner, stumbling over the different members of the amplification as they arise in bewildering succession, painfully exemplifies the force of Dr. Whately's happy illustration of the false step on