of the
approaching scarcity of provisions; _he_ showed how they might
replenish their exhausted stock &c."

*17. The object is sometimes placed before the verb for emphasis.*
This is most common in antithesis. "_Jesus_ I know, and _Paul_ I know;
but who are ye?" "_Some_ he imprisoned, _others_ he put to death."

Even where there is no antithesis the inversion is not uncommon:

"Military _courage_, the boast of the sottish German, of the frivolous
and prating Frenchman, of the romantic and arrogant Spaniard, he
neither possesses nor values."

This inversion sometimes creates ambiguity in poetry, _e.g._ "The son
the father slew," and must be sparingly used in prose.

Sometimes the position of a word may be considered appropriate by
some, and inappropriate by others, according to different
interpretations of the sentence. Take as an example, "Early in the
morning the nobles and gentlemen who attended on the king assembled in
the great hall of the castle; and here they began to talk of what a
dreadful storm it had been the night before. But Macbeth could
scarcely understand what they said, for he was thinking of something
worse." The last sentence has been amended by Professor Bain into
"_What they said_, Macbeth could scarcely understand." But there
appears to be an antithesis between the guiltless nobles who can think
about the weather, and the guilty Macbeth who cannot. Hence, "what
they said" ought not, and "Macbeth" ought, to be emphasized: and
therefore "Macbeth" ought to be retained at the beginning of the
sentence.

The same author alters, "The praise of judgment Virgil has justly
contested with him, but his invention remains yet unrivalled," into
"Virgil has justly contested with him the praise of judgment, but no
one has yet rivalled his invention"--an alteration which does not seem
to emphasize sufficiently the antithesis between what had been
'contested,' on the one hand, and what remained as yet 'unrivalled' on
the other.

More judiciously Professor Bain alters, "He that tells a lie is not
sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to
invent twenty more to maintain one," into "for, to maintain one, he
must invent twenty more," putting the emphatic words in their emphatic
place, at the end.

*18. Where several words are emphatic, make it clear which is the most
emphatic.* Thus, in "The state was made, under the pretence of serving
it, in reality the prize of their contention t