"For this, my Lords, is a law not written upon tables, but impressed upon our hearts;—a law which we have not learned, or heard, or read, but eagerly caught and imbibed from the hand of Nature;—a law to which we have not been train'd, but originally form'd; and with the principles of which we have not been furnished by education, but tinctured and impregnated from the moment of our birth."
In these forms of expression every circumstance is so aptly referred to some other circumstance, that the regular turn of them does not appear to have been studied, but to result entirely from the sense. The same effect is produced by contrasting opposite circumstances; as in the following lines, where it not only forms a measured sentence, but a verse:
Eam, quam nihil accusas, damnas,
Her, whom you ne'er accus'd, you now condemn;
(in prose we should say condemnas) and again,
Bene quam meritam esse autumas, dicis male mereri,
Her merit, once confess'd, you now deny; and,
Id quod scis, prodest nihil; id quod nescis, obest,
From what you've learnt no real good accrues,
But ev'ry ill your ignorance pursues.
Here you see the mere opposition of the terms produces a verse; but in prosaic composition, the proper form of the last line would be, quod scis nihil prodest; quod nescis multum obest. This contrasting of opposite circumstances, which the Greeks call an Antithesis, will necessarily produce what is styled rhetorical metre, even without our intending it. The ancient Orators, a considerable time before it was practised and recommended by Isocrates, were fond of using it; and particularly Gorgias, whose measured cadences are generally owing to the mere concinnity of his language. I have frequently practised it myself; as, for instance, in the following passage of my fourth Invective against Verres: