ion, may be represented by the
figure 8.
Let us justify this valuation by citing these two lines of Racine:
"The wave comes on, it breaks, _and_ vomits
'neath our eyes,
Amid the floods of foam, a monster
grim and dire."
The ordinary reader would allow the conjunction _and_ to pass
unperceived, because the word is not sonorous, and we accord oratorical
effects only to sonorous words. But the man who sees the meaning fully,
and who adds _and_, has said the whole. The other words are important,
but everything is implied in this conjunction.
Racine has not placed _and_ here to disjoin, but to unite.
We give another example of the conjunction:
Augustus says to Cinna:
"Take a chair Cinna, _and_ in all things heed
Strictly the law that I lay down for thee."
Let us suppress the isolation and silence of the conjunction, and there
is no more color.
Augustus adds:
"Hold thy tongue captive, _and_ if silence deep
To thy emotion do some violence"--
Suppress the silence and isolation of the conjunction _and_, and how
poor is the expression!
In the fable of "The Wolf and the Dog:"
"Sire wolf would gladly have attacked and slain
him, _but_ it would have been necessary to give battle,
_and_ it was now almost morning."
The entire significance lies in the silence which follows the
conjunctions.
We speak of a sympathetic conjunction, and also of one denoting surprise
or admiration; but this conjunction differs from the interjection, only
in this respect: it rests upon the propositions and unites its terms.
Like the interjection, it is of a synthetic and elliptic nature; it
groups all the expressions it unites as interjectives. It is, then, from
this point of view, exclamative.
In the fable of "The Wolf and the Lamb," the wolf says:
"This must be some one of your own race, _for_
you would not think of sparing me, you shepherds
_and_ you dogs."
Here is an interjective conjunction. Suppress the complaint after _for_,
and there is no more effect. The conjunction is the _soul_ of the
discourse.
In the exclamation in "Joseph Sold by his Brethren," we again find an
interjective conjunction.
"Alas.......... _and_
The ingrates who would sell me!"
Here the conjunction _and_ yields little to the interjection _alas_. It
has fully as much value.
_The Interjection in Relation to its Degree of Value._
The interjection has 9
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