ilarly in many passages of Thucydides.
XXVI
Equally dramatic is the interchange of persons, often making a reader
fancy himself to be moving in the midst of the perils described--
"Unwearied, thou wouldst deem, with toil unspent,
They met in war; so furiously they fought."[1]
and that line in Aratus--
"Beware that month to tempt the surging sea."[2]
[Footnote 1: _Il._ xv. 697.]
[Footnote 2: _Phaen._ 287.]
2
In the same way Herodotus: "Passing from the city of Elephantine you
will sail upwards until you reach a level plain. You cross this region,
and there entering another ship you will sail on for two days, and so
reach a great city, whose name is Meroe."[3] Observe how he takes us, as
it were, by the hand, and leads us in spirit through these places,
making us no longer readers, but spectators. Such a direct personal
address always has the effect of placing the reader in the midst of the
scene of action.
[Footnote 3: ii. 29.]
3
And by pointing your words to the individual reader, instead of to the
readers generally, as in the line
"Thou had'st not known for whom Tydides fought,"[4]
and thus exciting him by an appeal to himself, you will rouse interest,
and fix attention, and make him a partaker in the action of the book.
[Footnote 4: _Il._ v. 85.]
XXVII
Sometimes, again, a writer in the midst of a narrative in the third
person suddenly steps aside and makes a transition to the first. It is a
kind of figure which strikes like a sudden outburst of passion. Thus
Hector in the _Iliad_
"With mighty voice called to the men of Troy
To storm the ships, and leave the bloody spoils:
If any I behold with willing foot
Shunning the ships, and lingering on the plain,
That hour I will contrive his death."[1]
The poet then takes upon himself the narrative part, as being his proper
business; but this abrupt threat he attributes, without a word of
warning, to the enraged Trojan chief. To have interposed any such words
as "Hector said so and so" would have had a frigid effect. As the lines
stand the writer is left behind by his own words, and the transition is
effected while he is preparing for it.
[Footnote 1: _Il._ xv. 346.]
2
Accordingly the proper use of this figure is in dealing with some urgent
crisis which will not allow the writer to linger, but compels him to
make a rapid change from one person to another. So in Hecataeus: "Now
Ceyx took t
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