5. The foregoing fentences are not interrogative, and therefore thould be terminated. by a period. To give them the interrogative form, they should be expreffed in this

manner:

YOUR father faid to me, When have you heard from Madras ?

When, faid your fifter, do you think my brother will be in town?

The Cyprians faid to me, Why do you weep?

I propofed this question to him: Wherein does the authority of the king confift?

Queftion. Whether ought anger to be fuppreffed entirely, or only confined within the bounds of moderation *?

*See LowTH's Grammar, p. 144. edit. 1783, where a very proper diftinction is made between explicative, or declarative, and interrogative sentences.

2

Defire

Defire your learned friend to answer this question: Why did the Greeks join a verb of the fingular number to a plural noun of the neuter gender?

In this form the foregoing fentences are direct questions, and require a point of interrogation after them.

6. Though the former mode of expreffion is more usual, and perhaps more easy and familiar, it is very obfervable, that the latter is the form, conftantly employed by the facred writers.

EXAMPLE.

THIS is the record of John, when the Jews fent priests and Levites from Jerufalem, to ask him, who art thou? And he confeffed, and denied not; but confeffed, I am not the Chrift. And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he faith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No *.

* John i. 19, 20, 21.
F 3

This

This is an idiom of the oriental style, and feems to give us a more lively and animated reprefentation, than our ordinary method of relating the fubftance of a converfation in the third person.

CHAP.

CHA P. VH.

Of an EXCLAMATION.

"EX

XCLAMATION is the voice of nature, when fhe is agitated, amazed, or transported.

"In reading, it requires an elevation of the voice, as the term exclamation implies; and fuch a pause, as may feem to give room for à momentary reflection *."

In the higher poetry, in which all the fentiments and paffions of the human mind are ufually defcribed with energy and pathos, a point of exclamation is not improperly used after words or fentences, which express any kind of emotion.

* Introd. to the Study of polite Literature.

1. A note of exclamation after an addrefs, a gratulation, invocation, fupplication, &c.

O STAY! oh pride of Greece! Ulyffes, ftay! cease thy course, and listen to our lay *!

Hail, Dian, hail!-The huntrefs of the groves
So fhines majestic, and so stately moves ↑.

Come, ever welcome, and thy fuccour lend !
Oh, ev'ry facred name in one-my friend!

O Jove fupreme! whom men and gods revere !
And thou, whofe luftre gilds the rolling fphere §!

Oh! let foft pity touch thy gen'rous mind [[!

2. Expreffions of joy, tranfpert, love, admiration, &c.

LIGHT of my eyes! he comes! unhop'd-for joy ¶ !