It is pretended that amplification is a fine figure of rhetoric; perhaps, however, it would be more reasonable to call it a defect. In saying all that we should say, we do not amplify; and if after saying this we amplify, we say too much. To place a good or bad action in every light is not to amplify; but to go farther than this is to exaggerate and become wearisome.

Prizes were formerly given in colleges for amplification. This was indeed teaching the art of being diffuse. It would, perhaps, have been better to have given the fewest words, and thus teach the art of speaking with greater force and energy. But while we avoid amplification, let us beware of dryness.

I have heard professors teach that certain passages in “Virgil” are amplifications, as, for instance, the following:

Nox erat, et placidum carpebant fessa soporem

Corpora per terras, silv?que et saeva quierunt

?quora; quum medio volvuntur sidera lapsu;

Quum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pietaeque volucres;

Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis

Rura tenant, somno positae sub nocte silenti

Lenibant curas, et corda oblita laborum:

At non infelix animi Ph?nissa.

’Twas dead of night, when weary bodies close

Their eyes in balmy sleep and soft repose:

The winds no longer whisper through the woods,

Nor murmuring tides disturb the gentle floods;

The stars in silent order moved around,

And peace, with downy wings, was brooding on the ground.

The flocks and herds, and parti-colored fowl,

Which haunt the woods and swim the weedy pool,

Stretched on the quiet earth securely lay,

Forgetting the past labors of the day.

All else of Nature’s common gift partake;

Unhappy Dido was alone awake.

— Dryden.

If the long description of the reign of sleep throughout all nature did not form an admirable contrast with the cruel inquietude of Dido, these lines would be no other than a puerile amplification; it is the words At non infelix animi Ph?nissa —“Unhappy Dido,” etc., which give them their charm.

That beautiful ode of Sappho’s which paints all the symptoms of love, and which has been happily translated into every cultivated language, would doubtless have been less touching had Sappho been speaking of any other than herself; it might then have been considered as an amplification.

The description of the tempest in the first book of the “?neid” is not an amplification; it is a true picture of all that happens in a tempest; there is no idea repeated, and repetition is the vice of all which is merely amplification.

The finest part on the stage in any language is that of Phèdre (Ph?dra). Nearly all that she says would be tiresome amplification if any other was speaking of Ph?dra’s passion.

Athenes me montra mon superbe ennemie;

Je le vis, je rougis, je plais, à sa vue;

Un trouble s’éleva dans mon ame éperdue;

Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler,

Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et br?ler;

Je reconnus Venus et ses traits rédoubtables,

D’un sang qu’elle poursuit tormens inévitables.

Yes; — Athens showed me my proud enemy;

I saw him — blushed — turned pale; —

A sudden trouble came upon my soul —

My eyes grew dim — my tongue refused its office —

I burned — and shivered; — through my trembling frame

Venus in all her dreadful power I felt,

Shooting through every vein a separate pang.

It is quite clear that since Athens showed her her proud enemy Hippolytus, she saw Hippolytus; if she blushed and turned pale, she was doubtless troubled. It would have been a pleonasm, a redundancy, if a stranger had been made to relate the loves of Ph?dra; but it is Ph?dra, enamored and ashamed of her passion — her heart is full — everything escapes her:

Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error.

Je le vis, je rougis, je palis, à sa vue.

I saw him — blushed — turned pale. —

What can be a better imitation of Virgil?

Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler;

Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et br?ler;

My eyes grew dim — my tongue refused its office;

I burned — and shivered;

What can be a finer imitation of Sappho?

These lines, though imitated, flow as from their first source; each word moves and penetrates the feeling heart; this is not amplification; it is the perfection of nature and of art.

The following is, in my opinion, an instance of amplification, in a modern tragedy, which nevertheless has great beauties. Tydeus is at the court of Argos; he is in love with a sister of Electra; he laments the fall of his friend Orestes and of his father; he is divided betwixt his passion for Electra and his desire of vengeance; while in this state of care and perplexity he gives one of his followers a long description of a tempest, in which he had been shipwrecked some time before.

Tu sais ce qu’en ces lieux nous venions entreprendre;

Tu sais que Palamède, avant que de s’y rendre,

Ne voulut point tenter son retour dans Argos,

Qu’il n’e?t interroge l’oracle de Délos.

à de si justes soins on souscrivit sans peine;

Nous part?mes, comblés des bienfaits de Thyrrène;

Tout nous favorisait; nous voyageames longtems

Au gré de nos désirs, bien plus qu’au gré des vents;

Mais, signala?t bient?t toute son inconstance,