Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1776 edition. Excerpt: ... chap. ix. The great 'variety of Composition illustrated by an example, --Of the third kind of figures of the fense.--Some of these named, such as Interrogation--Antithesis--Simile --Allegory--Many more of such figures have no name.--The use of them in composition.--Examples of them from Virgil's Georgicsy and Dr Armstrong's Poem on Health.--Praise of that Poem.--Conclusion of what relates to the Figures of Speech.--Apology for the Author's being so minute in explaining them. the reader, who is not learned in the critical aft, if he has had the patience to accompany me so far in what I have said concerning all those niceties of composition, will be surprised to find that there is so much variety in this matter; and he will be still more surprised to be told, that the variety is Vol. iii. S not yet exhausted; and that, besides all the several forms and figures of composition which I have explained, relating both to the sense and the sound, there remain others without name or number, which serve to vary and adorn the composition, as well as those that have heen already mentioned. In order to help him to conceive this variety, I will take a period of some length, and show him the different ways in which it may be composed. The example I (hall use is a period that I have mentioned more than once before, viz. that of Milton in Satan's first speech in the council of devils, in the.second book of Paradise Lost j and I will take in the whole passage, containing an argument which shews, as much as any thing in the whole work, Milton's rhetorical faculty; for by it he endeavours to prove, that hell is, at least in some respects, better than heaven: Me tho' just right, and the fix'd laws of Heaven Did first create your leader; next, free choice j..
