A FIGURE, the means or instrument conceived to be the agent. When we survey a number of connected objects, that which makes the greatest figure employs
chiefly our attention; and the emotion it raises, if lively, prompts us even to exceed nature in the conceptions we form of it. Take the following examples.
For Neleus' son Alcides' rage had slain.
A broken rock the force of Pirus threw.
In these instances, the rage of Hercules and the force of Pirus, being the capital circumstances, are so far exalted as to be conceived the agents that produce the effects.
In the following instances, hunger being the chief circumstance in the description, is itself imagined to be the patient.
Whose hunger has not tasted food these three days.
Jane Shore.
As when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill. Paradise lost.
As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's civil day
Wav'd round the coast, appell'd a pitchy cloud
Of locusts. Paradise lost.