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.”[63]
and that line in Aratus—
“Beware that month to tempt the surging sea.”[64]
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.”[65] 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. 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,”[66]
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.
[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.”[67]