the world of the dead, the spirits of the chiefs and kings of the earth are represented as awaiting him: "All they shall speak and say unto him, Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, the noise of thy viols. The worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down which didst weaken the nations!"

Immaterial things are often apostrophized; and in those instances the objects addressed are also treated according to their proper nature. Cowper:

"Domestic happiness! thou only bliss

Of Paradise that has survived the fall!

Though few now taste thee unimpaired and pure,
Or tasting long enjoy thee; too infirm,
Or too incautious, to preserve thy sweets
Unmixed with drops of bitter, which neglect
Or temper shed into thy crystal cup.

Thou art the nurse of virtue; in thine arms
She smiles, appearing, as in truth she is,
Heaven-born, and destined to the skies again."

Thus

It is happiness that is addressed and described throughout, and as happiness, though taste, tasting, sweets, and nurse, are used by a metaphor; while

shedding drops of bitter into her crystal cup is used, by a hypocatastasis, for an analogous act by which happiness is impaired by neglect, ill temper or other means. So music also:

"O music! thy celestial claim
Is still resistless, still the same

And faithful as the mighty sea

To the pale star that o'er its realms presides,
The spell-bound tides

Of human passion rise and fall with thee."

MOORE.

Here music is addressed simply as music, not as a person; and the sensibility of the passions to its influence is compared to that of the ocean to the moon, by which its tides are raised and depressed.

"O memory! thou fond deceiver,

Still importunate and vain;

To former joys recurring ever,

And turning all the past to pain;

Thou like the world, the oppressed oppressing,

Thy smiles increase the wretch's woe,
And he who wants each other blessing,

In thee must ever find a foe."

GOLDSMITH.

All that is here affirmed is appropriate to

memory, considered as a faculty or power, not as a person. Deceiver and smiles are used by a metaphor; and its influence on the wretched is compared to that of the world, which tramples down those who are already the victims of misfor

tune.

The figure is thus a direct address, in a speech or narrative, to a person or object present or absent, for the purpose of a more emphatic description, or a bolder presentation of a subject. The agency, or condition, ascribed to the person or object addressed, is such as is suitable to its nature. The acts ascribed to the people of Jerusalem are such as they had exerted. The interrogatories and exclamations addressed by the spirits in Hades to the king of Babylon are in accordance with his history and condition. And so of happiness, of music, and of light, in the passage quoted on the next page; and of night on the page following that.

The figure gives, by the dramatic form which it employs, far greater force and emphasis to the thoughts which it utters, and the facts which it describes. The agents or objects apostrophized are addressed as though in the presence of the speaker, and listening to the narrative of their lives, the description of their character, or the laments that are uttered over them. The figure is often used by

the poets and orators. Thus Milton's apostrophe to light is eminently beautiful:

"Hail, holy light! offspring of heaven, first-born,

Or of the eternal, co-eternal beam,

May I express thee unblam'd, since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light

Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee!
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather, pure etherial stream,
Whose fountain who can tell? Before the sun,

Before the heavens, thou wert; and at the voice

Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest

The rising world of waters, dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

Escaped the stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn; while in my flight,
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphéan lyre,
I sang of Chaos and eternal Night.
Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Through hard and rare; thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp. But thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd."

PARADISE LOST, b. iii.

Young apostrophizes night:

"O majestic night!

Nature's great ancestor! Day's elder born!
And fated to survive the transient sun!
By mortals and immortals seen with awe!
A starry crown thy raven brow adorns;

An azure zone thy waist; clouds in heaven's loom,
Wrought through varieties of shape and shade,
In ample folds of drapery divine,

Thy flowing mantle form, and heaven throughout
Voluminously pour thy pompous train."

Byron apostrophizes the ocean thus:

YOUNG.

"Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests! In all time,

Calm or convulsed, in breeze, in gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime!

The image of eternity! the throne

Of the invisible !"

Thomson addresses the shades and thickets by the figure:

"Welcome, ye shades! ye bowery thickets, hail!

Ye lofty pines! ye venerable oaks !

Ye ashes wild resounding o'er the steep!

Delicious is your shelter to the soul