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SYSTEM of ORATORY.

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GRESHAM COLLEGE.

LECTURE

H

XXVIII.

Of a Synecdoche and Irony.

XXVIII.

AVING already treated upon LECT. two of the four principal tropes, namely, a Metaphor and Metonymy, I now propofe to confider the other two that remain, which are a Synecdoche and Irony. For as these do not require fo large an explication as the former, what is necessary to be said of both may be brought within the compass of one discourse.

I SHALL begin with a Synecdoche, which is the more extenfive and frequent of the two. And in difcourfing on this trope, I shall first endeavour to explain the nature of it in general, with the several species into which it is commonly divided; and VOL. II.

B

then

XXVIII.

LECT then treat upon each of those species feparately, and illuftrate them with proper examples.

A SYNECDOCHE then is, A trope by which either the whole of a thing is put for

part of it, or a part for the whole. So that the two things, whofe ideas are prefented to the mind in this trope, are internally related to each other, by which, as has been fhewn already, it is diftinguished from all the other tropes. In a Synecdoche the word retains its proper fenfe, and the expreffion is elliptical, as will appear by the feveral fpecies of it, wherein the ellipfis in moft of the examples is very obvious, and may with no great difficulty be fupplied. Now a thing may be confidered as an whole in three different refpects, which logicians call an univerfal, effential, and integral whole. An univerfal whole is any genus with regard to its feveral fpecies, as: an animal with respect to mankind and brutes ; or philofophy with refpect to the several arts and fciences comprised under it. An effential whole confifts of matter and form, as a man of body and foul. And an integral whole is any body or quantity,. with refpect to the feveral parts of which

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