We do not sufficiently distinguish, in our observations upon language,
between a clear expression and a strong expression. These are frequently
confounded with each other, though they are in reality extremely
different. The former regards the understanding; the latter belongs to
the passions. The one describes a thing as it is; the latter describes
it as it is felt. 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.