APOSTROPHE, in Rhetoric, a figure by which a person who is either absent or dead is addressed as if he were present and attentive to us. This figure is, in boldness, a degree lower than the address to personified objects (See PERSONIFICATION); since it requires a less effort of imagination to suppose persons present who are dead or absent, than to animate insensible beings and direct our discourse to them. The poems of Ossian abound with the most beautiful instances of this figure. "Weep on the rocks of roaring winds, O Maid of Inistore! Bend thy fair head over the waves, thou fairer than the ghost of the hills when it moves in a sunbeam at noon over the silence of Morven! He is fallen! Thy youth is low: pale beneath the sword of Cuchullin!"