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, silvæque et saeva quierunt_ _Æquora; quum medio volvuntur sidera lapsu;_ _Quum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pietaeque volucres;_ _Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis_ _Rura tenant, somno positae sub node silenti_ _Lenibant curas, et corda oblita laborum:_ _At non infelix animi Phœnissa._ '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 Phœnissa_--"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 "Æneid" 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_ (Phædra). Nearly all that she says would be tiresome amplification if any other was speaking of Phædra's passion.