Chapter XXVII

Sometimes, again, a writer in the midst of a narrative in the third
person suddenly steps aside and makes a transition to the first. It is a
kind of figure which strikes like a sudden outburst of passion. Thus
Hector in the Iliad

"With mighty voice called to the men of Troy
To storm the ships, and leave the bloody spoils:
If any I behold with willing foot
Shunning the ships, and lingering on the plain,
That hour I will contrive his death."

The poet then takes upon himself the narrative part, as being his proper
business; but this abrupt threat he attributes, without a word of
warning, to the enraged Trojan chief. To have interposed any such words
as "Hector said so and so" would have had a frigid effect. As the lines
stand the writer is left behind by his own words, and the transition is
effected while he is preparing for it.

Accordingly the proper use of this figure is in dealing with some urgent
crisis which will not allow the writer to linger, but compels him to
make a rapid change from one person to another. So in Hecataeus: "Now
Ceyx took this in dudgeon, and straightway bade the children of Heracles
to depart. 'Behold, I can give you no help; lest, therefore, ye perish
yourselves and bring hurt upon me also, get ye forth into some other
land.'"

There is a different use of the change of persons in the speech of
Demosthenes against Aristogeiton, which places before us the quick turns
of violent emotion. "Is there none to be found among you," he asks, "who
even feels indignation at the outrageous conduct of a loathsome and
shameless wretch who,--vilest of men, when you were debarred from
freedom of speech, not by barriers or by doors, which might indeed be
opened," etc. Thus in the midst of a half-expressed thought he makes
a quick change of front, and having almost in his anger torn one word
into two persons, "who, vilest of men," etc., he then breaks off his
address to Aristogeiton, and seems to leave him, nevertheless, by the
passion of his utterance, rousing all the more the attention of the
court.

The same feature may be observed in a speech of Penelope's--

"Why com'st thou, Medon, from the wooers proud?
Com'st thou to bid the handmaids of my lord
To cease their tasks, and make for them good cheer?
Ill fare their wooing, and their gathering here!
Would God that here this hour they all might take
Their last, their latest meal! Who day by day
Make here your muster, to devour and waste
The substance of my son: have ye not heard
When children at your fathers' knee the deeds
And prowess of your king?"