d melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!"

Though chiefly confined to poetry, exclamation is frequent in fervid
prose, and Carlyle's works fairly bristle with exclamation points.

(4) _Apostrophe_ is a direct address to the absent as present, the
inanimate as living, or the abstract as personal. It is closely allied
to personification, with which it is often associated. This figure is
expressive of intense emotion. The following passage from "King Lear"
will serve for illustration:

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!"

(5) _Vision_ is a description of absent things as present. It is suited
only to animated discourse in either prose or poetry. In the midst of
the argument of Milton's "Areopagitica" we find this splendid outburst
portraying the future of England: "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and
puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and
shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her, as an eagle, mewing
her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday
beam; purging and scaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself
of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking
birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at
what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year
of sects and schisms."

(6) _Hyperbole_ is an exaggerated form of statement, and is used to
magnify or diminish an object. It is quite natural, under the impulse of
strong emotion or imagination, to use exaggerated statements, and
frequently it serves to lend piquancy and force to style. But this
tendency is dangerous, and should be kept under restraint. As a rule it
is best to see and describe things as they are. The following from
"Julius Caesar" will serve as an example of hyperbole:

"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep