264. Of all the figures of speech, none comes so near to painting as metaphor. Its peculiar effect is to give light and strength to description; to make intellectual ideas, in some sort, visible to the eye, by giving them colour, and substance, and sensible qualities. In order, however, to produce this effect, a delicate hand is required; for, by a very little inaccuracy, we are in hazard of introducing confusion, in place of promoting perspicuity. (Art. 257.)

Illus. Several rules, therefore, are necessary to be given for the proper management of metaphor. But, before entering on these, we shall give one instance of a very beautiful metaphor, that we may shew the figure to full advantage. We shall take our instance from Lord Bolingbroke's Remarks on the History of England. Just at the conclusion of his work, he is speaking of the behaviour of Charles I. to his last parliament: "In a word," says he, " about a month after their meeting, he dissolved them; and, as soon as he had dissolved them, he repented; but he repented too late of his rashness. Well might he repent; for the vessel was now full. and this last drop made the waters of bitterness overflow."- "Here," he adds, we draw the curtain, and put an end to our remarks."

66

Analysis. Nothing could be more happily thrown off. The metaphor, we see, is continued through several expressions. The vessel is put for the state or temper of the nation already full, that is, provoked to the highest by former oppressions and wrongs; this last drop, stands for the provocation recently received by the abrupt dissolution of the parliament; and the overflowing of the waters of bitterness, beautifully expresses all the effects of resentment let loose by an exasperated people.

Scholia. Nothing forms a more spirited and dignified conclusion_of a subject than a figure of this kind happily placed at the close. We see the effect of it in this instance. The author goes off with a good grace; and leaves a strong and full impression of his subject on the reader's mind. A metaphor has frequently an advantage above a formal comparison. How much would the sentiment here have been enfeebled, if it had been expressed in the style of a regular simile, thus: "Well might he repent; for the state of the nation, loaded with grievances and provocation, resembled a vessel that was now full, and this superadded provocation, like the last drop infused, made their rage and resentment, as waters of bitterness, overflow." It has infinitely more spirit and force as it now stands, in the form of a metaphor. "Well might he repent; for the vessel was now full; and this last drop made the waters of bitterness overflow."

265. The first rule to be observed in the conduct of metaphors, is, that they be suited to the nature of the subject of which we treat: neither too many, nor too gay; nor too elevated for it; that we neither attempt to force the subject, by means of them, into a degree of elevation which is not congruous to it; nor, on the other hand, allow it to sink beJow its proper dignity. (Art. 258. Illus. 3.)

Illus. 1. This is a direction which belongs to all figurative language,

and should be ever kept in view. Some metaphors are allowable, nay, beautiful in poetry, which it would be absurd and unnatural to employ in prose; some may be graceful in orations, which would be very improper in historical or philosophical composition.

2. We must remember that figures are the dress of our sentiments. 3. As there is a natural congruity between dress and the character or rank of the person who wears it, a violation of this congruity never fails to be injurious to the person; the same holds precisely as to the application of figures to sentiment.

4. The excessive or unseasonable employment of them is mere foppery in writing. It gives a boyish air to composition; and instead of raising a subject, in fact, diminishes its dignity. For, as in life, true dignity must be founded on character, not on dress and appearance, so the dignity of composition must arise from sentiment and thought, not from ornament. The affectation and parade of ornament, detract as much from an author, as they do from a man. (Art. 128.)

Corol. 1. Figures and metaphors, therefore, should, on no occasion, be stuck on too profusely; nor should they ever be such as refuse to accord with the strain of our sentiment.

2. Nothing can be more unnatural, than for a writer to carry on a strain of reasoning, in the same sort of figurative language which he would use in description. When he reasons, we look only for perspicuity; when he describes, we expect embellishment; when he divides, or relates, we desire plainness and simplicity.

Scholia. One of the greatest secrets in composition is, to know when to be simple. This always gives a heightening to ornament, in its proper place. The right disposition of the shade makes the light and colouring strike the more. "He is truly eloquent who can discourse of humble subjects in a plain style, who can treat important ones with dignity, and speak of things which are of a middle nature, in a temperate strain. For one who, upon no occasion, can express himself in a calm, orderly, distinct manner, when he begins to be on fire before his readers are prepared to kindle along with him, has the appearance of raving like a madman among persons who are in their senses, or of reeling like a drunkard, in the midst of sober company." This admonition should be particularly attended to by young practitioners in the art of writing, who are apt to be carried away by an undistinguishing admiration of what is showy and florid, whether in its place or not.t

266. The second rule which we give, respects the choice of objects, from whence metaphors, and other figures, are to be drawn.

*❝Is enim est eloquens, qui et humilia subtiliter, et magna graviter, ct mediocria temperate, potest dicere. Nam qui nihil potest tranquille, nihil leniter, nihil definite, distincte, potest dicere, is, cum non præparatis auribus inflammare rem cæpit, furere apud sanos, et quasi inter sobrios bacchari temulentus videtur." Cicero.

What person of the least taste can bear the following passage in an historian? He is giving an account of the famous act of parliament against irregular marriages in England: "The bill," says he, " underwent a great number of alterations and amendments, which were not effected without violent contest." This is plain ianguage, suited to the subject; and we naturally expect, that he should go on in the same strain, to tell us, that after these contests, it was carried by a great majority of voices, and obtained the royal assent. But how does he express himself in finishing the period?" At length, however, it was floated through both houses on the tide of a great majority, and steered into the safe harbour of royal approbation." Nothing can be more puerile than such language. Smollett's History of England, quoted in the Critical Review for Oct. 1761, p. 251.

Illus. 1. The field for figurative language is very wide. All nature, to speak in the style of figures, opens its stores to us, and admits us to gather, from all sensible objects, whatever can illustrate intellectual or moral ideas. Not only the gay and splendid objects of sense, but the grave, the terrifying, and even the gloomy and dismal, may, on different occasions, be introduced into figures with propriety.

2. But we must beware of ever using such allusions as raise in the mind disagreeable, mean, vulgar, or dirty ideas. Even when metaphors are chosen in order to vilify and degrade any object, an author should study never to be nauseous in his allusions. But, in subjects of dignity, it is an unpardonable fault to introduce mean and vulgar metaphors.

Obs. 1. In the treatise on the Art of Sinking, in Dean Swift's works, there is a full and humorous collection of instances of this kind, wherein authors, instead of exalting, have contrived to degrade their subjects by the figures which they employed.

2. Authors of greater note than those which are there quoted, have at times fallen into this error. Archbishop Tillotson, for instance, is sometimes negligent in his choice of metaphors; as, when speaking of the day of judgment, he describes the world, as " cracking about the sinners' ears.'

3. Shakspeare, whose imagination was rich and bold, in a much greater degree than it was delicate, often fails here.

Example. The following is a gross transgression; in his Henry V., having mentioned a dunghill, he presently raises a metaphor from the steam of it; and on a subject too, that naturally led to much nobler ideas:

And those that leave their valiant bones in France,
Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,
They shall be famed; for there the sun shall greet them,
And draw their honours reeking up to heaven.

Act IV. Scene 8.

267. In the third place, as metaphors should be drawn from objects of some dignity, so particular care should be taken that the resemblance, which is the foundation of the metaphor, be clear and perspicuous, not far-fetched, nor difficult to discover. The transgression of this rule makes what is called harsh or forced metaphors, which are always displeasing, because they puzzle the reader, and instead of illustrating the thought, render it perplexed and intricate.

Illus. With metaphors of this kind Cowley abounds. He, and some of the writers of his age, seemed to have considered it as the perfection of wit, to hit upon likenesses between objects which no other person could have discovered; and, at the same time, to pursue those metaphors so far, that it requires some ingenuity to follow them out, and comprehend them. This makes a metaphor resemble an enigma; and is the very reverse of Cicero's rule on this head: "Every metaphor should be modest, so that it may carry the appearance of having been led, not of having forced itself into the place of that word whose room it occupies; that it may seem to have come thither of its own accord, and not by constraint."*

"Verecunda debet esse, translatio; ut deducta esse in alienum locum non irruisse, atque ut voluntario non vi venisse videatur." De Oratore, lib. iii. e. 53.

2. To be new, and not vulgar, is a beauty. Trite and common resemblances should indeed be avoided in our metaphors. But when they are fetched from some likeness too remote, and lying too far out of the road of ordinary thought, then, besides their obscurity, they have also the disadvantage of appearing laboured, and, as the French call it, "recherché." Metaphors, like all other ornaments, lose their whole grace, when they do not seem natural and easy.*

3. It is but a bad and ungraceful softening, which writers sometimes use for a harsh metaphor, when they palliate it with the expression, as it were. This is but an awkward parenthesis; and metaphors, which need this apology of an as it were, would, generally, have been better omitted. (See Art. 166.) Metaphors, too, borrowed from any of the sciences, especially such of them as belong to particular professions, are almost always faulty by their obscurity. (Art. 84. Illus.)

268. In the fourth place, it must be carefully attended to, in the conduct of metaphors, never to jumble metaphorical and plain language together: never to construct a period so, that part of it must be understood metaphorically, part literally this always produces a most disagreeable confusion.

Example 1. Long to my joys my dearest lord is lost,

His country's buckler, and the Grecian boast;
Now from my fond embrace by tempests torn,
Our other column of the state is borne,

Nor took a kind adieu, nor sought consent.* Odyssey IV. 962.

Analysis. Here, in one line, her son is figured as a column; and in the next, he returns to be a person, to whom it belongs to take adieu, and to ask consent. This is inconsistent. The poet should either have kept himself to the idea of man, in the literal sense; or if he figured him by a column, he should have ascribed nothing to him but what belonged to it. He was not at liberty to ascribe to that column the actions and properties of a man. Such unnatural mixtures render the image indistinct; leaving it to waver, in our conception, between the figurative and the literal sense.

Example 2. Pope, elsewhere, addressing himself to the king, savs,

To thee the world its present homage pays,
The harvest early, but mature the praise.

Analysis. This, though not so gross, is a fault, however, of the same kind. It is plain, that had not the rhyme misled him to the choice of an improper phrase, he would have said,

The harvest early, but mature the crop :

and so would have continued the figure which he had begun. Whereas by dropping it unfinished, and by employing the literal word, praise,

*In the original, there is no allusion to a column, and the metaphor is regularly supported:

Η πριν μεν ποσιν ἐσθλον απώμεσα θουμολέοντα

Παντοιης αρετῆσι κεκασμένον ἐν Δαναοίσι

Εσθλον, του κλεος ευρυ καθ ̓ Ελλαδα και μεσον Αργοε
Νυν δ' αν παιδ' αγαπητον ανηρείψαντο θύελλαι

Ακλεα εκ μεγαρου, ουδ' ὁρμηθεοτος ακουσα.

A. 734.

when we were expecting something that related to the harvest, the figure is broken, and the two members of the sentence have no proper correspondence with each other:

The harvest early, but mature the praise.

Example 3. The works of Ossian abound with beautiful and correct metaphors: such as that on a hero: "In peace, thou art the gale of spring; in war, the mountain storm." Or this, on a woman; "She was covered with the light of beauty; but her heart was the house of pride."

Exception. They afford, however, one instance of the fault we are now censuring; "Trothal went forth with the stream of his people, but they met a rock: for Fingal stood unmoved; broken they rolled back from his side: nor did they roll in safety; the spear of the king pursued their flight."

Analysis. At the beginning, the metaphor is very beautiful. The stream, the unmoved rock, the waves rolling back broken, are expressions employed in the proper and consistent language of figure; but in the end, when we are told, "they did not roll in safety, because the spear of the king pursued their flight," the literal meaning is improperly mixed with the metaphor; they are, at one and the same time, presented to us as waves that roll, and men that may be pursued and wounded with a spear.

269. In the fifth place, never make two different metaphors meet on one object. This is what is called mixed metaphor, and is indeed one of the grossest abuses of this figure; such as Shakspeare's expression, " to take arms against a sea of troubles." This makes a most unnatural medley, and confounds the imagination entirely.

"We must

Illus. Quinctilian has sufficiently guarded us against it. be particularly attentive to end with the same kind of metaphor with which we have begun. Some, when they begin the figure with a tempest, conclude it with a conflagration; which forms a shameful inconsistency." Example 1.

The charm dissolves apace,

And as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses

Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason. Tempest.

Analysis. What an inconsistent group of objects is brought together in this passage, which professes to describe persons recovering their judgment after the enchantment, that held them, was dissolved! So many ill-sorted things are here joined, that the mind can see nothing clearly; the morning stealing upon the darkness, and at the same time, melting it; the senses of men chasing fumes, ignorant fumes, and fumes that mantle.

Example 2. So again in Romeo and Juliet:

"Id imprimis est custodiendum, ut quo genere cœperis translationis, hoc finias. Multi autem cum initium a tempestate sumserunt, incendio aut ruina finiunt; quæ est inconsequentia rerum fœdissima."