action.3 And by pointing your words to the individual reader, instead of to the readers generally, as in the line
"Thou had'st not known for whom Tydides fought,"[1]
and thus exciting him by an appeal to himself, you will rouse interest, and fix attention, and make him a partaker in the action of the book.
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."[2]
