The following is an excellent example of personification and antithesis combined:
"Talent convinces; Genius but excites:
That tasks the reason; this the soul delights.
Talent from sober judgment takes its birth,
And reconciles the pinion to the earth;
Genius unsettles with desires the mind,
Contented not till earth be left behind."
In the following extract from Johnson's "Life of Pope," individual peculiarities are contrasted by means of antitheses:
"Of genius—that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates—the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigor Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer, since Milton, must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said that, if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call or gather in one excursion was all that he sought and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and leveled by the roller."
There are forms of antithesis in which the contrast is only of a secondary kind.
Any. This word is sometimes made to do service for at all. We say properly, "She is not any better"; but we can not properly say, "She does not see any," meaning that she is blind.
Anybody else. "Public School Teachers are informed that anybody else's is correct."—"New York Times," Sunday, July 31, 1881. An English writer says: "In such phrases as anybody else, and the like, else is often put in the possessive case; as, 'anybody else's servant'; and some grammarians defend this use of the possessive case, arguing that somebody else is a compound noun." It is better grammar and more euphonious to consider else as being an adjective, and to form the possessive by adding the apostrophe and s to the word that else qualifies; thus, anybody's else, nobody's else, somebody's else.
Anyhow. "An exceedingly vulgar phrase," says Professor Mathews, in his "Words: Their Use and Abuse." "Its use, in any manner, by one who professes to write and speak the English tongue with purity, is unpardonable." Professor Mathews seems to have a special dislike for this colloquialism. It is recognized by the lexicographers, and I think is generally accounted, even by the careful, permissible in conversation, though incompatible with dignified diction.
Anxiety of Mind. See [Equanimity of Mind].
Apostrophe. Turning from the person or persons to whom a discourse is addressed and appealing to some person or thing absent, constitutes what, in rhetoric, is called the apostrophe. The following are some examples: