IMAGE, in Rhetoric, also signifies a lively description of any thing in discourse.
Images in discourse are defined by Longinus, to be, in general, any thoughts proper to produce expressions, and which present a kind of picture to the mind.
But, in the more limited sense, he says, images are such discourses as come from us, when, by a kind of enthusiasm, or an extraordinary emotion of the soul, we seem to see the things whereof we speak, and present them before the eyes of those who hear us.
Images, in rhetoric, have a very different use from what they have among the poets: the end principally proposed in poetry is, astonishment and surprize; whereas the thing chiefly aimed at in prose, is to paint things naturally, and to show them clearly. They have this, however, in common, that they both tend to move, each in its kind.
These images, or pictures, are of vast use, to give weight, magnificence, and strength, to a discourse. They warm and animate it; and when managed with art, according to Longinus, seem, as it were, to tame and subdue the hearer, and put him in the power of the speaker.