Languages & literature > Abridgement of lectures on rhetoric

CLIMAX.
”5
It conlifts in an artful exaggeration of all the circum-
ftances of fome objedt or adtion, which we wi(h to place
in a ftrong light. It operates by a gradual rife of one
circumftance above another, till our idea is raifed to the
higheft pitch. We fliall give an inftance of this figure,
from a printed pleading of a celebrated Lawyer in a
charge to the jury in the cafe of a woman, who was
accufed of murdering her own child.. “ Gentlemen, if
“ one man had any how fiain another ; if an adverfary
“ had killed his oppofer ; or a woman occafioned the
“ death of her enemy ; even thefe criminals would have
“ been capitally punifhed 'by the Cornelian law. But,
“ if this guiltlefs infant, who could make no enemy,
“ had been murdered by its own nurfe ; what punifh-
“ ments would not the mother have demanded ? With
“ what cries and exclamations would fhe have ftunned
“ your ears ? What fhall we fay then, when a woman,
“ guilty of homicide ; a mother, of the muder of her
“ innocent child, hath comprifed all thofe mifdeeds in
“ one fingle.crime ; a crime, in its own nature, detefla-
“ ble ; in a woman prodigious ; in a mother incredi-
“ ble ; and perpetrated againft one, whofe age called
“ for compaffion ; whofe near relation claimed affe&ion;
“ and whofe innocence deferved the higheft favor
Such regular climaxes however, though they have great
beauty ; yet at the fame time have the appearance of
art and ftudy ; and therefore, though they may be ad¬
mitted into formal harangues; yet they are not the