Emphasis of the Rising Octave. This is the most earnest expression of interrogative intonation, and is never used in grave discourse. Its appropriate expression is that of sneer or raillery. The rise is concrete when it occurs on long syllables; when on short or immutable syllables, it is formed by a change of radical pitch. 1. Concrete. Moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not say, A cur can lend three thousand ducats? 2. A king's son? You Prince of Wales? Emphasis of Downward Third. 1. Does beauteous Tamar view, in this clear fount, Herself, or heaven? 2. You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife.. Examples of Downward Fifth. 1. Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not seems. 2. Before the sun, before the heavens, thou wert. Example of Downward Octave. Art thou that traitor angel? art thou he Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith till then Drew after him the third part of heaven's sons, And reckonest thou thyself with spirits of heaven, The Waves of the Voice are also often employed to give emphasis, particularly in the expression of irony and scorn. EXAMPLES-WAVES. 1. O upright judge! Mark, Jew! a learned judge! 2. The atrocicus crime of being a young man. 3. but he paused upon the brink! SECTION LII. EMPHASIS OF MOVEMENT. Emphasis of movement is a sudden change, on certain words and phrases, from the prevailing movement. EXAMPLES. Slow Movement. 1. Not among the prisoners-Missing! That was all the message said. 2. "Cyrus Drew!"—then a silence fell— This time no answer followed the call. Rapid Movement. 3. His person partook the character of his mind: if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount, space no opposition that he did not spurn; and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity! The whole continent of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs and the miracle of their execution. Great care will be required on the part of the public speaker to guard against too frequent emphasis. When there are many words in a passage strongly significant of emotion or passion, a temptation arises to load the delivery with emphasis. It must be borne in mind that too frequent emphasis destroys the effect of emphasis, which consists essentially in distinguishing the most significant words and phrases from the others with which they stand immediately connected. Again, great care will be required to guard against the restriction of the voice to but one or two of the many modes of emphasis, and the excessive use of the particular mode employed, so that coloring becomes caricaturing. "Many readers and speakers seem to have no practical notion of any other mode of emphasizing a word, but by throwing upon it a decided stress of voice, and their delivery is characterized by a perpetual occurrence of ictus upon ictus, stroke upon stroke, of heavy enunciation that soon wearies the ear, and at the same time fails of its designed effect. There being no distinction, there is, so far, no emphasis. A perfect command should be acquired over all the varieties of emphatic expression, so that without effort, as it were, spontaneously, the delivery shall proceed, colored, as the ever-varying shades of thought and feeling shall require, with correspondingly various modifications of the utterance. "The other fault, of exaggerating every instance of emphatic expression, is not less common. Many seem to have no notion of degrees or shades of coloring in emphasis. To emphasize is ever to raise to a certain fixed degree of prominence in the delivery. They have no conception how a skillful painter brings out a feature by a single delicate stroke of his pencil, and when they wish to emphasize at all, they daub and caricature. Where a skillful speaker or reader will start the tear of his hearer by a single semitone or a tremor upon a sin gle word, they rave and rant with violent labor of voice, and only stun or disgust at last instead of exciting an emotion. Trying to shade a parenthetical expression, such readers can only reduce the volume of voice to almost whispering notes, and lower the pitch a third or a fifth, to spring back again with a violent skip and an explosion upon the leading part of the expression, painfully jerking and rending the nerves of hearing, while yet they utterly fail of their object to exhibit the just relations of the thought." SECTION LIII. CLIMAX. Climax is an utterance gradually increasing in inteusity, and changing in pitch and movement. No definite rules can be given as to the degree of intensity or the changes in pitch and movement. Only the sentiment can determine this. Generally the changes will be from a middle or low to a high pitch, and from a moderate or slow to a rapid movement; yet this rule will often be reversed. Sometimes the Climax will be heightened by a change in the quality of voice, as in the eleventh example, in which each repetition of the word never demands a more aspirate quality. The Climax is employed in the delivery of those sentences only which rise as it were step by step in importance, dignity and force. EXAMPLES. 1. It is a religion by which to live, a religion by which to die; a religion that cheers in darkness, relieves in perplexity, and guides the inquirer to that blessed land “where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." 2 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. 3. Add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. 4. Was that country a desert? No; it was rich and fertile, cultivated and populous. Friendship was its inhabitant; love was its inhabitant; liberty was its inhabitant; all bounded by the stream of the Rubicon. 5. Of all God made upright, and in their nostrils breathed a living soul, most prone, most earthy, most debased; of all that sell eternity for time, none bargain on so easy terms with death. 6. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How in. finite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! 7. I tell you, though you, though the whole world, though an angel from heaven, were to declare the truth of it, I would not believe it. 8. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and there they will remain forever. 9. But every-where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heaven, that other senti ment, dear to every American heart-Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable. 10. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. 11. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop remained in my country I never would lay down my arms; no, never, never, never. 12. I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, strong provoca tions, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up to leave you in your lazy dignities. 13. Days, months, years, and ages shali circle away, And still the vast waters above thee shall roll; Earth loses thy pattern forever and ay; Q sailor boy, sailor boy, peace to thy soul! |