Languages & literature > Abridgement of lectures on rhetoric

COMPARISON.
soB
are dead or abfent, than to animate infenfible beings,
and dire£t our difcourfe to them. The poems of Offian
abound in beautiful inftances of this figure. “ Weep on
« the rocks of roaring winds, O Maid of Iniftore.
“ Bend thy fair head over the waves, thou fairer, than
“ the ghoft of the hills, when it moves in a funbeam at
“ noon over tire filence of Morven. He is fallen. Thy
“ youth is low ; pale beneath the fword of Cuchullin.’,
COMPARISON, ANTITHESIS, INTERROGA¬
TION, EXCLAMATION, akd other FIGURES
of SPEECH.
A Comparifon or fimile is, when the refemblance
between two obje&s is expreifed in form, and ufually
purfued more fully, than the nature of a metaphor ad¬
mits. ' As when we fay, “ The aftions of princes are
“ like thofe great rivers, the courfe of which every ®ne
“ beholds, but their fprings have been feen by few.”
This fhort inftance will fhow that a happy comparifon is
a fort of fparkling ornament, which adds luftre and
beauty to difcourfe.
All comparifons may be reduced under two heads ;
explaining and mlellijhing comparifons. For, when a
writer compares an objedt widr any other^thing, it al¬
ways is, or ought to be, with a view to make us under-