Now, as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect independently of the things about which they are exerted, so there are words, and certain dispositions of words, which being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, and always used by those who are under the influence of any passion, touch and move us more than those which far more clearly and distinctly express the subject-matter.

We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description.

The truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that it could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the speaker did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a strong and lively feeling in himself.

Then, by the contagion of our passions, we catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably might never have been struck out by the object described.

Words, by strongly conveying the passions by those means which we have already mentioned, fully compensate for their weakness in other respects.