Languages & literature > Abridgement of lectures on rhetoric

APOSTROPHE.
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spares of the body, as if they were animated, is not a-
greeable to the dignity of paffion. For this reafon the
following paflage in Pope’s Eloifa to Abelard is liable
to cenfure.
Dear fatal name, reft ever unreveal’d.
Nor pafs thefe lips, in holy filence feal’d.
Hide it, my heart, within that clofe difguife,
Where, mix'd with Gods, his lov’d idea lies ;
O, write it not,my hand;—his name appears
Already written—blot it out, my tears.
Here the name of Abelard is firft perfonified ; which,
as the name of a perlbn often Hands for the perfon him-
felf, is expofed to no objedtion. Next Eloifa perfonifies
her own heart ; and, as the heart is a dignified part of
the human frame, and is often put for the mind, this
alfo may pafs without cenfure. But, when file addref-
fes her hand, and tells it not to write his name, this is
forced and unnatural. Yet the figure becomes Hill
worfe, when fhe exhorts her tears to blot out, what her
hand had written. The two laft lines are indeed alto¬
gether unfuitable to the tendernefs, which breathes
through the reft of that inimitable poem.
Apostrophe is an addrefs to a real perlbn ; but
one, who is either abfent or dead, as if he were
prefeut, and liftening to us. This figure is in boldnefs
a degree lower, than perfonification *, fince it requires
Ms effort of imagination to fuppole perfons prefeat, who