The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Chapter XVIII: Beauty of Language 1
• Chapter XIX: Comparisons
• Chapter XX: Figures
• Chapter XXI: Narration and Description
• Chapter XXII: Epic and Dramatic Composition
• Chapter XXIII: The Three Unities
• Chapter XXIV: Gardening and Architecture
• Chapter XXV: Standard of Taste
• Appendix
• Books Written By the Same Author Printed For J. Bell and W. Creech, Edinburgh; G. Robinson and T. Cadell, London.

CHAPTER XX

Figures

The endless variety of expressions brought under the head of tropes and figures by ancient critics and grammarians, makes it evident, that they had no precise criterion for distinguishing tropes and figures from plain language. It was accordingly my opinion, that little could be made of them in the way of rational criticism; till discovering, by a sort of accident, that many of them depend on principles formerly explained, I gladly embrace the opportunity to show the influence of these principles where it would be the least expected. Confining myself therefore to such figures, I am luckily freed from much trash; without dropping, as far as I remember, any trope or figure that merits a proper name. And I begin with Prosopopoeia or personification, which is justly intitled to the first place.<228>

SECTION I

Personification.

The bestowing sensibility and voluntary motion upon things inanimate, is so bold a figure, as to require, one should imagine, very peculiar circumstances for operating the delusion: and yet, in the language of poetry, we find variety of expressions, which, though commonly reduced to that figure, are used without ceremony, or any sort of preparation; as, for example, thirsty ground, hungry church-yard, furious dart, angry ocean. These epithets, in their proper meaning, are attributes of sensible beings: what is their meaning, when applied to things inanimate? do they make us conceive the ground, the church-yard, the dart, the ocean, to be endued with animal functions? This is a curious inquiry; and whether so or not, it cannot be declined in handling the present subject.

The mind, agitated by certain passions, is prone to bestow sensibility upon things inanimate.* This is an additional instance of the influence of passion upon our opinions and belief.† I give examples. Antony, mourning over the body of Cae-<229>sar murdered in the senate-house, vents his passion in the following words:

Antony.

• O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
• That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
• Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
• That ever lived in the tide of time.

Julius Caesar, act 3. sc. 4.1

Here Antony must have been impressed with a notion, that the body of Caesar was listening to him, without which the speech would be foolish and absurd. Nor will it appear strange, considering what is said in the chapter above cited, that passion should have such power over the mind of man. In another example of the same kind, the earth, as a common mother, is animated to give refuge against a father’s unkindness:

Almeria.

• O Earth, behold, I kneel upon thy bosom,
• And bend my flowing eyes to stream upon
• Thy face, imploring thee that thou wilt yield!
• Open thy bowels of compassion, take
• Into thy womb the last and most forlorn
• Of all thy race. Hear me, thou common parent;
• —I have no parent else.—Be thou a mother,
• And step between me and the curse of him,
• Who was—who was, but is no more a father;
• But brands my innocence with horrid crimes;
• And for the tender names of child and daughter,
• Now calls me murderer and parricide.

Mourning Bride, act 4. sc. 7.<230>

Plaintive passions are extremely solicitous for vent; and a soliloquy commonly answers the purpose: but when such a passion becomes excessive, it cannot be gratified but by sympathy from others; and if denied that consolation in a natural way, it will convert even things inanimate into sympathising beings. Thus Philoctetes complains to the rocks and promontories of the isle of Lemnos;* and Alcestes dying, invokes the sun, the light of day, the clouds, the earth, her husband’s palace, &c.† Moschus, lamenting the death of Bion, conceives, that the birds, the fountains, the trees, lament with him. The shepherd, who in Virgil bewails the death of Daphnis, expresseth himself thus:

• Daphni, tuum Poenos etiam ingemuisse leones
• Interitum, montesque feri sylvaeque loquuntur.

Eclogue, v. 27.2

Again:

• Illum etiam lauri, illum etiam flevere myricae.
• Pinifer illum etiam sola sub rupe jacentem
• Maenalus, et gelidi fleverunt saxa Lycaei.

Eclogue, x. 13.3

Again:

• Ho visto al pianto mio
• Responder per pietate i sassi e l’onde;<231>
• E sospirar le fronde
• Ho visto al pianto mio.
• Ma non ho visto mai,
• Ne spero di vedere
• Compassion ne la crudele, e bella.

Aminta di Tasso, act 1. sc. 2.4

That such personification is derived from nature, will not admit the least remaining doubt, after finding it in poems of the darkest ages and remotest countries. No figure is more frequent in Ossian’s works; for example,

• The battle is over, said the King, and I behold the blood of my friends.
• Sad is the heath of Lena, and mournful the oaks of Cromla.

Again:

King Richard having got intelligence of Bolingbroke’s invasion, says, upon landing in England from his Irish expedition, in a mixture of joy and resentment,

• ———I weep for joy
• To stand upon my kingdom once again.
• Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,
• Though rebels wound thee with their horses hoofs.
• As a long parted mother with her child
• Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting;<232>
• So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
• And do thee favour with my royal hands.
• Feed not thy sovereign’s foe, my gentle earth,
• Nor with thy sweets comfort his rav’nous sense:
• But let thy spiders that suck up thy venom,
• And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way;
• Doing annoyance to the treach’rous feet,
• Which with usurping steps do trample thee.
• Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies;
• And, when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,
• Guard it, I pr’ythee, with a lurking adder;
• Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch
• Throw death upon thy sovereign’s enemies.
• Mock not my senseless conjuration, Lords:
• This earth shall have a feeling; and these stones
• Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king
• Shall faulter under foul rebellious arms.

Richard II. act 3. sc. 2.5

After a long voyage, it was customary among the ancients to salute the natal soil. A long voyage being of old a greater enterprise than at present, the safe return to one’s country after much fatigue and danger, was a delightful circumstance; and it was natural to give the natal soil a temporary life, in order to sympathise with the traveller. See an example, Agamemnon of Aeschilus, act 3. in the beginning. Regret for leaving a place one has been accustomed to, has the same effect.* <233>

Terror produceth the same effect: it is communicated in thought to every thing around, even to things inanimate:

Speaking of Polyphemus,

• Clamorem immensum tollit, quo pontus et omnes
• Intremuere undae, penitusque exterrita tellus
• Italiae

Aeneid. iii. 672.6

• ———As when old Ocean roars,
• And heaves huge surges to the trembling shores.

Iliad ii. 249.

Racine, in the tragedy of Phedra, describing the sea-monster that destroyed Hippolytus, conceives the sea itself to be struck with terror as well as the spectators:

A man also naturally communicates his joy to all objects around, animate or inanimate:

• ———As when to them who sail<234>
• Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
• Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
• Sabean odour from the spicy shore
• Of Arabie the Blest; with such delay
• Well pleas’d, they slack their course, and many a league
• Cheer’d with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.

Paradise Lost, b. 4.

I have been profuse of examples, to show what power many passions have to animate their objects. In all the foregoing examples, the personification, if I mistake not, is so complete as to afford conviction, momentary indeed, of life and intelligence. But it is evident from numberless instances, that personification is not always so complete: it is a common figure in descriptive poetry, understood to be the language of the writer, and not of the persons he describes: in this case, it seldom or never comes up to conviction, even momentary, of life and intelligence. I give the following examples.

• First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,
• Regent of day, and all th’ horizon round
• Invested with bright rays; jocund to run
• His longitude through heav’n’s high road: the gray
• Dawn and the Pleiades before him danc’d,
• Shedding sweet influence. Less bright, the moon,
• But opposite, in levell’d west was set
• His mirror, with full face borrowing her light<235>
• From him; for other light she needed none.

Paradise Lost, b. 7. l. 370.*

• Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
• Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.

Romeo and Juliet, act 3. sc. 7.8

• But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
• Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

Hamlet, act 1. sc. 1.

It may, I presume, be taken for granted, that, in the foregoing instances, the personification, either with the poet or his reader, amounts not to a conviction of intelligence: that the sun, the moon, the day, the morn, are not here understood to be sensible beings. What then is the nature of this personification? I think it must be referred to the imagination: the inanimate object is imagined to be a sensible being, but without any conviction, even for a moment, that it really is so. Ideas or fictions of imagination have power to raise emotions in the mind;† and when any thing inanimate is, in imagination, supposed to be a sensible<236> being, it makes by that means a greater figure than when an idea is formed of it according to truth. This sort of personification, however, is far inferior to the other in elevation. Thus personification is of two kinds. The first, being more noble, may be termed passionate personification: the other, more humble, descriptive personification; because seldom or never is personification in a description carried to conviction.

The imagination is so lively and active, that its images are raised with very little effort; and this justifies the frequent use of descriptive personification. This figure abounds in Milton’s Allegro, and Penseroso.

Abstract and general terms, as well as particular objects, are often necessary in poetry. Such terms however are not well adapted to poetry, because they suggest not any image: I can readily form an image of Alexander or Achilles in wrath; but I cannot form an image of wrath in the abstract, or of wrath independent of a person. Upon that account, in works addressed to the imagination, abstract terms are frequently personified: but such personification rests upon imagination merely, not upon conviction.

• Sed mihi vel Tellus optem prius ima dehiscat;
• Vel Pater omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
• Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam,
• Ante pudor quam te violo, aut tua jura resolvo.

Aeneid. iv. l. 24.9 <237>

Thus, to explain the effects of slander, it is imagined to be a voluntary agent:

• ——— No, ’tis Slander;
• Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue
• Out-venoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath
• Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie
• All corners of the world, kings, queens, and states,
• Maids, matrons: nay, the secrets of the grave
• This viperous Slander enters.

Shakespear, Cymbeline, act 3. sc. 4.

As also human passions: take the following example:

• ——— For Pleasure and Revenge
• Have ears more deaf than adders, to the voice
• Of any true decision.

Troilus and Cressida, act 2. sc. 4.10

Virgil explains fame and its effects by a still greater variety of action.* And Shakespeare personifies death and its operations in a manner singularly fanciful:

• ——— Within the hollow crown
• That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
• Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
• Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
• Allowing him a breath, a little scene<238>
• To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;
• Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
• As if his flesh, which walls about our life,
• Were brass impregnable; and humour’d thus,
• Comes at the last, and with a little pin
• Bores through his castle-walls, and farewell king.

Richard II. act 3. sc. 4.11

Not less successfully is life and action given even to sleep:

King Henry.

• How many thousands of my poorest subjects
• Are at this hour asleep! O gentle Sleep,
• Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
• That thou no more wilt weigh my eye-lids down,
• And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
• Why rather, Sleep, ly’st thou in smoky cribs,
• Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
• And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
• Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great,
• Under the canopies of costly state,
• And lull’d with sounds of sweetest melody?
• O thou dull god, why ly’st thou with the vile
• In loathsome beds, and leav’st the kingly couch,
• A watch-case to a common larum-bell?
• Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
• Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains
• In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
• And in the visitation of the winds,
• Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
• Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
• With deaf’ning clamours in the slippery shrouds,<239>
• That, with the hurly, Death itself awakes?
• Can’st thou, O partial Sleep, give thy repose
• To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
• And, in the calmest and the stillest night,
• With all appliances and means to boot,
• Deny it to a king? Then, happy low! lie down;
• Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Second part, Henry IV. act 3. sc. 1.12

I shall add one example more, to show that descriptive personification may be used with propriety, even where the purpose of the discourse is instruction merely:

• Oh! let the steps of youth be cautious,
• How they advance into a dangerous world;
• Our duty only can conduct us safe.
• Our passions are seducers: but of all,
• The strongest Love. He first approaches us
• In childish play, wantoning in our walks:
• If heedlessly we wander after him,
• As he will pick out all the dancing-way,
• We’re lost, and hardly to return again.
• We should take warning: he is painted blind,
• To show us, if we fondly follow him,
• The precipices we may fall into.
• Therefore let Virtue take him by the hand:
• Directed so, he leads to certain joy.

Southern.13

Hitherto success has attended our steps: but whether we shall complete our progress with equal success, seems doubtful; for when we look back<240> to the expressions mentioned in the beginning, thirsty ground, furious dart, and such like, it seems no less difficult than at first, to say whether there be in them any sort of personification. Such expressions evidently raise not the slightest conviction of sensibility: nor do I think they amount to descriptive personification; because, in them, we do not even figure the ground or the dart to be animated. If so, they cannot at all come under the present subject. To show which, I shall endeavour to trace the effect that such expressions have in the mind. Doth not the expression angry ocean, for example, tacitly compare the ocean in a storm to a man in wrath? By this tacit comparison, the ocean is elevated above its rank in nature; and yet personification is excluded, because, by the very nature of comparison, the things compared are kept distinct, and the native appearance of each is preserved. It will be shown afterward, that expressions of this kind belong to another figure, which I term a figure of speech, and which employs the seventh section of the present chapter.

Tho’ thus in general we can distinguish descriptive personification from what is merely a figure of speech, it is, however, often difficult to say, with respect to some expressions, whether they are of the one kind or of the other. Take the following instances.<241>

• The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,
• When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
• And they did make no noise; in such a night,
• Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan wall,
• And sigh’d his soul towards the Grecian tents
• Where Cressid lay that night.

Merchant of Venice, act 5. sc. 1.

• ——— ——— I have seen
• Th’ ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
• To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds.

Julius Caesar, act 1. sc. 6.14

With respect to these and numberless other examples of the same kind, it must depend upon the reader, whether they be examples of personification, or of a figure of speech merely: a sprightly imagination will advance them to the former class; with a plain reader they will remain in the latter.

Having thus at large explained the present figure, its different kinds, and the principles upon which it is founded; what comes next in order, is, to show in what cases it may be introduced with propriety, when it is suitable, when unsuitable. I begin with observing, that passionate personification is not promoted by every passion indifferently. All dispiriting passions are averse to it; and remorse, in particular, is too serious and severe to be gratified with a phantom of the mind. I cannot<242> therefore approve the following speech of Enobarbus, who had deserted his master Antony:

• Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon,
• When men revolted shall upon record
• Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did
• Before thy face repent ———
• Oh sovereign mistress of true melancholy,
• The poisonous damp of night dispunge upon me,
• That life, a very rebel to my will,
• May hang no longer on me.

Antony and Cleopatra, act 4. sc. 7.15

If this can be justified, it must be upon the Heathen system of theology, which converted into deities the sun, moon, and stars.

Secondly, After a passionate personification is properly introduced, it ought to be confined to its proper province, that of gratifying the passion, without giving place to any sentiment or action but what answers that purpose; for personification is at any rate a bold figure, and ought to be employed with great reserve. The passion of love, for example, in a plaintive tone, may give a momentary life to woods and rocks, in order to make them sensible of the lover’s distress; but no passion will support a conviction so far stretched, as that these woods and rocks should be living witnesses to report the distress to others:<243>

• Ch’ i’ t’ami piu de la mia vita,
• Se tu nol sai, crudele,
• Chiedilo à queste selve
• Che te’l diranno, et te’l diran con esse
• Le fere loro e i duri sterpi, e i sassi
• Di questi alpestri monti,
• Ch’ i’ ho si spesse volte
• Inteneriti al suon de’ miei lamenti.

Pastor Fido, act 3. sc. 3.16

No lover who is not crazed will utter such a sentiment: it is plainly the operation of the writer, indulging his inventive faculty without regard to nature. The same observation is applicable to the following passage:

• In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire
• With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales
• Of woful ages, long ago betid:
• And ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief,
• Tell them the lamentable fall of me,
• And send the hearers weeping to their beds.
• For why! the senseless brands will sympathise
• The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,
• And in compassion weep the fire out.

Richard II. act 5. sc. 1.

One must read this passage very seriously to avoid laughing. The following passage is quite extravagant: the different parts of the human body are too intimately connected with self, to be personified by the power of any passion; and after con-<244>verting such a part into a sensible being, it is still worse to make it be conceived as rising in rebellion against self:

Cleopatra.

• Haste, bare my arm, and rouse the serpent’s fury.
• Coward flesh ———
• Wouldst thou conspire with Caesar, to betray me,
• As thou wert none of mine? I’ll force thee to’t.

Dryden, All for Love, act 5.

Next comes descriptive personification; upon which I must observe, in general, that it ought to be cautiously used. A personage in a tragedy, agitated by a strong passion, deals in warm sentiments; and the reader, catching fire by sympathy, relisheth the boldest personifications: but a writer, even in the most lively description, taking a lower flight, ought to content himself with such easy personifications as agree with the tone of mind inspired by the description. Nor is even such easy personification always admitted; for in plain narrative, the mind, serious and sedate, rejects personification altogether. Strada, in his history of the Belgic wars, has the following passage, which, by a strained elevation above the tone of the subject, deviates into burlesque.

Neither do I approve, in Shakespear, the speech of King John, gravely exhorting the citizens of Angiers to a surrender; though a tragic writer has much greater latitude than a historian. Take the following specimen:

• The cannons have their bowels full of wrath;
• And ready mounted are they to spit forth
• Their iron-indignation ’gainst your walls.

Act 2. sc. 3.18

Secondly, If extraordinary marks of respect to a person of low rank be ridiculous, no less so is the personification of a low subject. This rule chiefly regards descriptive personification; for a subject can hardly be low that is the cause of a violent passion; in that circumstance, at least, it must be of importance. But to assign any rule other than taste merely, for avoiding things below even descriptive personification, will, I am afraid, be a hard task. A poet of superior genius, possessing the power of inflaming the mind, may take liberties that would be too bold in others. Homer appears not extravagant in animating his darts and arrows: nor Thomson in animating the seasons, the winds, the rains, the dews; he even<246> ventures to animate the diamond, and doth it with propriety:

• ——— That polish’d bright
• And all its native lustre let abroad,
• Dares, as it sparkles on the fair-one’s breast,
• With vain ambition emulate her eyes.

But there are things familiar and base, to which personification cannot descend. In a composed state of mind, to animate a lump of matter even in the most rapid flight of fancy, degenerates into burlesque:

• How now! What noise! that spirit’s possessed with haste,
• That wounds th’ unresisting postern with these strokes,

Shakespear, Measure for Measure, act 4. sc. 6.19

• ——— Or from the shore
• The plovers when to scatter o’er the heath,
• And sing their wild notes to the list’ning waste.

Thomson, Spring, l. 23.

Speaking of a man’s hand cut off in battle:

• Te decisa suum, Laride, dextera quaerit:
• Semianimesque micant digiti; ferrumque retractant.

Aeneid. x. 395.20

The personification here of a hand is insufferable, especially in a plain narration: not to mention that such a trivial incident is too minutely described.<247>

The same observation is applicable to abstract terms, which ought not to be animated unless they have some natural dignity. Thomson, in this article, is licentious; witness the following instances out of many:

• O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills!
• On which the power of cultivation lies,
• And joys to see the wonders of his toil.

Summer, l. 1435.

• Then sated Hunger bids his brother Thirst
• Produce the mighty bowl:21
• Nor wanting is the brown October, drawn
• Mature and perfect, from his dark retreat
• Of thirty years; and now his honest front
• Flames in the light refulgent.

Autumn, l. 516.

Thirdly, It is not sufficient to avoid improper subjects: some preparation is necessary, in order to rouse the mind; for the imagination refuses its aid, till it be warmed at least, if not inflamed. Yet Thomson, without the least ceremony or preparation, introduceth each season as a sensible being:

• From brightening fields of aether fair disclos’d,
• Child of the sun, refulgent Summer comes,
• In pride of youth, and felt through Nature’s depth.
• He comes attended by the sultry hours,
• And ever fanning breezes, on his way;
• While from his ardent look, the turning Spring<248>
• Averts her blushful face, and earth and skies
• All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves.

Summer, l. 1.

• See Winter comes, to rule the vary’d year,
• Sullen and sad with all his rising train,
• Vapours, and clouds, and storms.

Winter, l. 1.

This has violently the air of writing mechanically without taste. It is not natural that the imagination of a writer should be so much heated at the very commencement; and, at any rate, he cannot expect such ductility in his readers. But if this practice can be justified by authority, Thomson has one of no mean note: Vida begins his first eclogue in the following words:

• Dicite, vos Musae, et juvenum memorate querelas;
• Dicite; nam motas ipsas ad carmina cautes
• Et requiesse suos perhibent vaga flumina cursus.22

Even Shakespear is not always careful to prepare the mind for this bold figure. Take the following instance

• ——— Upon these taxations,
• The clothiers all, not able to maintain
• The many to them ’longing, have put off
• The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers; who,
• Unfit for other life, compell’d by hunger,
• And lack of other means, in desp’rate manner<249>
• Daring th’ event to th’ teeth, are all in uproar
• And Danger serves among them.

Henry VIII. act 1. sc. 4.23

Fourthly, Descriptive personification, still more than what is passionate, ought to be kept within the bounds of moderation. A reader warmed with a beautiful subject, can imagine, even without passion, the winds, for example, to be animated: but still the winds are the subject; and any action ascribed to them beyond or contrary to their usual operation, appearing unnatural, seldom fails to banish the illusion altogether: the reader’s imagination too far strained, refuses its aid; and the description becomes obscure, instead of being more lively and striking. In this view, the following passage, describing Cleopatra on shipboard, appears to me exceptionable.

• The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
• Burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold,
• Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
• The winds were love-sick with ’em.

Antony and Cleopatra, act 2. sc. 3.24

The winds in their impetuous course have so much the appearance of fury, that it is easy to figure them wreaking their resentment against their enemies, by destroying houses, ships, &c.; but to figure them love-sick, has no resemblance to them in any circumstance. In another passage, where<250> Cleopatra is also the subject, the personification of the air is carried beyond all bounds:

• ——— The city cast
• Its people out upon her; and Antony
• Inthron’d i’ th’ market-place, did sit alone,
• Whistling to th’ air, which but for vacancy,
• Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
• And made a gap in nature.

Antony and Cleopatra, act 2. sc. 3.25

The following personification of the earth or soil is not less wild:

• She shall be dignify’d with this high honour,
• To bear my Lady’s train; lest the base earth
• Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss;
• And of so great a favour growing proud,
• Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower,
• And make rough winter everlastingly.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, act 2. sc. 7.26

Shakespear, far from approving such intemperance of imagination, puts this speech in the mouth of a ranting lover. Neither can I relish what follows:

• Omnia quae, Phoebo quondam meditante, beatus
• Audit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros,
• Ille canit.

Virgil. Buc. vi. 82.27

The cheerfulness singly of a pastoral song, will<251> scarce support personification in the lowest degree. But admitting, that a river gently flowing may be imagined a sensible being listening to a song, I cannot enter into the conceit of the river’s ordering his laurels to learn the song: here all resemblance to any thing real is quite lost. This however is copied literally by one of our greatest poets; early indeed, before maturity of taste or judgement:

• Thames heard the numbers as he flow’d along,
• And bade his willows learn the moving song.

Pope’s Pastorals, past. 4. l. 13.

This author, in riper years, is guilty of a much greater deviation from the rule. Dullness may be imagined a deity or idol, to be worshipped by bad writers; but then some sort of disguise is requisite, some bastard virtue must be bestowed, to make such worship in some degree excusible. Yet in the Dunciad, Dullness, without the least disguise, is made the object of worship. The mind rejects such a fiction as unnatural; for dullness is a defect, of which even the dullest mortal is ashamed:

• Then he: Great tamer of all human art!
• First in my care, and ever at my heart;
• Dullness! whose good old cause I yet defend,
• With whom my muse began, with whom shall end,
• E’er since Sir Fopling’s periwig was praise,
• To the last honours of the Bull and Bays!<252>
• O thou! of bus’ness the directing soul!
• To this our head, like bias to the bowl,
• Which, as more pond’rous, made its aim more true,
• Obliquely wadling to the mark in view:
• O! ever gracious to perplex’d mankind,
• Still spread a healing mist before the mind:
• And, lest we err by Wit’s wild dancing light,
• Secure us kindly in our native night.
• Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence,
• Guard the sure barrier between that and sense;
• Or quite unravel all the reas’ning thread,
• And hang some curious cobweb in its stead!
• As, forc’d from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,
• And pond’rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky;
• As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe,
• The wheels above urg’d by the load below:
• Me Emptiness and Dullness could inspire,
• And were my elasticity, and fire.

B. i. 163.

The following instance is stretched beyond all resemblance: it is bold to take a part or member of a living creature, and to bestow upon it life, volition, and action: after animating two such members, it is still bolder to make one envy the other; for this is wide of any resemblance to reality:

• ——— De nostri baci
• Meritamenti sia giudice quella,
• Che la bocca ha più bella.
• Tutte concordemente
• Elesser la bellissima Amarilli;
• Ed’ ella i suoi begli occhi<253>
• Dolcemente chinando,
• Di modesto rossor tutta si tinse,
• E mostrò ben, che non men bella è dentro
• Di quel che sia di fuori;
• O fosse, che’l bel volto
• Avesse invidia all’ onorata bocca,
• E s’adornasse anch’ egli
• Della purpurea sua pomposa vesta,
• Quasi volesse dir, son bello anch’io.

Pastor Fido, act 2. sc. 1.28

Fifthly, The enthusiasm of passion may have the effect to prolong passionate personification: but descriptive personification cannot be dispatched in too few words: a circumstantiate description dissolves the charm, and makes the attempt to personify appear ridiculous. Homer succeeds in animating his darts and arrows: but such personification spun out in a French translation, is mere burlesque:

• Et la fléche en furie, avide de son sang,
• Part, vole à lui, l’atteint, et lui perce le flanc.29

Horace says happily,

Observe how this thought degenerates by being divided, like the former, into a number of minute parts:<254>

• Un sou rempli d’erreurs, que le trouble accompagne
• Et malade à la ville ainsi qu’ à la campagne,
• En vain monte à cheval pour tromper son ennui,
• Le Chagrin monte en croupe, et galope avec lui.31

A poet, in a short and lively expression, may animate his muse, his genius, and even his verse: but to animate his verse, and to address a whole epistle to it, as Boileau doth,* is insupportable.

The following passage is not less faulty:

• Her fate is whisper’d by the gentle breeze,
• And told in sighs to all the trembling trees;
• The trembling trees, in ev’ry plain and wood,
• Her fate remurmer to the silver flood;
• The silver flood, so lately calm, appears
• Swell’d with new passion, and o’erflows with tears;
• The winds, and trees, and floods, her death deplore,
• Daphne, our grief! our glory! now no more.

Pope’s Pastorals, iv. 61.

Let grief or love have the power to animate the winds, the trees, the floods, provided the figure be dispatched in a single expression: even in that case, the figure seldom has a good effect; because grief or love of the pastoral kind, are causes rather too faint for so violent an effect as imagining the winds, trees, or floods, to be sensible beings. But when this figure is deliberately spread out,<255> with great regularity and accuracy, through many lines, the reader, instead of relishing it, is struck with its ridiculous appearance.

SECTION II

Apostrophe.

This figure and the former are derived from the same principle. If, to humour a plaintive passion, we can bestow a momentary sensibility upon an inanimate object, it is not more difficult to bestow a momentary presence upon a sensible being who is absent:

• Hinc Drepani me portus et illaetabilis ora
• Accipit. Hic, pelagi tot tempestatibus actus,
• Heu! genitorem, omnis curae casusque levamen,
• Amitto Anchisen: hic me pater optime fessum
• Deseris, heu! tantis nequicquam erepte periclis.
• Nec vates Helenus, cum multa horrenda moneret,
• Hos mihi praedixit luctus; non dira Celaeno.

Aeneid. iii. 707.32

Speaking of Fingal absent,

This figure is sometimes joined with the former: things inanimate, to qualify them for listening to a passionate expostulation, are not only personified, but also conceived to be present:

• Et si fata Deûm, si mens non laeva fuisset,
• Impulerat ferro Argolicas foedare latebras:
• Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres.

Aeneid. ii. 54.33

This figure, like all others, requires an agitation of mind. In plain narrative, as, for example, in giving the genealogy of a family, it has no good effect:

• ——— Fauno Picus pater; isque parentem
• Te, Saturne, refert; tu sanguinis ultimus auctor.

Aeneid. vii. 48.35 <259>

SECTION III

Hyperbole.

In this figure, by which an object is magnified or diminished beyond truth, we have another effect of the foregoing principle. An object of an uncommon size, either very great of its kind or very little, strikes us with surprise; and this emotion produces a momentary conviction that the object is greater or less than it is in reality:* the same effect, precisely, attends figurative grandeur or littleness; and hence the hyperbole, which expresses that momentary conviction. A writer, taking advantage of this natural delusion, warms his description greatly by the hyperbole: and the reader, even in his coolest moments, relishes the figure, being sensible that it is the operation of nature upon a glowing fancy.

It cannot have escaped observation, that a writer is commonly more successful in magnifying by a hyperbole than in diminishing. The reason is, that a minute object contracts the mind, and fetters its power of imagination; but that the mind, dilated and inflamed with a grand object, moulds<260> objects for its gratification with great facility. Longinus, with respect to a diminishing hyperbole, quotes the following ludicrous thought from a comic poet: “He was owner of a bit of ground no larger than a Lacedemonian letter.”* But, for the reason now given, the hyperbole has by far the greater force in magnifying objects; of which take the following examples:

• Illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret
• Gramina: nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas.

Aeneid. vii. 808.36

• ——— Atque imo barathri ter gurgite vastos
• Sorbet in abruptum fluctus, rursusque sub auras
• Erigit alternos, et sidera verberat undâ.

Aeneid. iii. 421.37

• ——— Horificis juxta tonat Aetna ruinis,
• Interdumque atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem,
• Turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla:
• Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit.

Aeneid. iii. 571.38 <261>

Speaking of Polyphemus,

• ——— Ipse arduus, altaque pulsat
• Sidera.

Aeneid. iii. 619.39

• ——— When he speaks,
• The air, a charter’d libertine, is still.

Henry V. act 1. sc. 1.

• Now shield with shield, with helmet helmet clos’d,
• To armour armour, lance to lance oppos’d,
• Host against host with shadowy squadrons drew,
• The sounding darts in iron tempests flew,
• Victors and vanquish’d join promiscuous cries,
• And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise;
• With streaming blood the slipp’ry fields are dy’d,
• And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide.

Iliad iv. 508.

The following may also pass, though far stretched.

• E conjungendo à temerario ardire
• Estrema forza, e infaticabil lena
• Vien che si’ impetuoso il ferro gire,
• Che ne trema la terra, e’l ciel balena.

Gierusalem, cant. 6. st. 46.40

Quintilian* is sensible that this figure is natural: “For,” says he, “not contented with truth, we naturally incline to augment or diminish beyond it; and for that reason the hyperbole is<262> familiar even among the vulgar and illiterate”: and he adds, very justly, “That the hyperbole is then proper, when the subject of itself exceeds the common measure.” From these premisses, one would not expect the following inference, the only reason he can find for justifying this figure of speech, “Conceditur enim amplius dicere, quia dici quantum est, non potest: meliusque ultra quam citra stat oratio.” (We are indulged to say more than enough, because we cannot say enough; and it is better to be above than under). In the name of wonder, why this childish reasoning, after observing that the hyperbole is founded on human nature? I could not resist this personal stroke of criticism; intended not against our author, for no human creature is exempt from error, but against the blind veneration that is paid to the ancient classic writers, without distinguishing their blemishes from their beauties.

Having examined the nature of this figure, and the principle on which it is erected, I proceed, as in the first section, to the rules by which it ought to be governed. And, in the first place, it is a capital fault, to introduce an hyperbole in the description of any thing ordinary or familiar; for in such a case, it is altogether unnatural, being destitute of surprise, its only foundation. Take the following instance, where the subject is extremely familiar, viz. swimming to gain the shore after a shipwreck.<263>

• I saw him beat the surges under him,
• And ride upon their backs; he trode the water;
• Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
• The surge most swoln that met him: his bold head
• ’Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar’d
• Himself with his good arms, in lusty strokes
• To th’ shore, that o’er his wave-borne basis bow’d,
• As stooping to relieve him.

Tempest, act 2. sc. 1.

In the next place, it may be gathered from what is said, that an hyperbole can never suit the tone of any dispiriting passion: sorrow in particular will never prompt such a figure; for which reason the following hyperboles must be condemned as unnatural.

K. Rich.

• Aumerle, thou weep’st, my tender-hearted cousin!
• We’ll make foul weather with despised tears;
• Our sighs, and they, shall lodge the summer-corn,
• And make a dearth in this revolting land.

Richard II. act 3. sc. 6.41

• Draw them to Tyber’s bank, and weep your tears
• Into the channel, till the lowest stream
• Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.

Julius Caesar, act 1. sc. 1.

Thirdly, A writer, if he wish to succeed, ought always to have the reader in his eye: he ought in particular never to venture a bold thought or<264> expression, till the reader be warmed and prepared. For that reason, an hyperbole in the beginning of a work can never be in its place. Example:

• Jam pauca aratro jugera regiae
• Moles relinquent.

Horat. Carm. lib. 2. ode 15.42

The nicest point of all, is to ascertain the natural limits of an hyperbole, beyond which being overstrained it hath a bad effect. Longinus, in the above-cited chapter, with great propriety of thought, enters a caveat against an hyperbole of this kind: he compares it to a bow-string, which relaxes by overstraining, and produceth an effect directly opposite to what is intended. To ascertain any precise boundary, would be difficult, if not impracticable. Mine shall be an humbler task, which is, to give a specimen of what I reckon overstrained hyperboles; and I shall be brief upon them, because examples are to be found every where: no fault is more common among writers of inferior rank; and instances are found even among classical writers; witness the following hyperbole, too bold even for an Hotspur.

Hotspur, talking of Mortimer:

• In single opposition hand to hand,
• He did confound the best part of an hour<265>
• In changing hardiment with great Glendower.
• Three times they breath’d, and three times did they drink,
• Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood;
• Who then affrighted with their bloody looks,
• Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
• And hid his crisp’d head in the hollow bank,
• Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.

First part Henry IV. act 1. sc. 4.43

Speaking of Henry V.

• England ne’er had a king until his time:
• Virtue he had, deserving to command:
• His brandish’d sword did blind men with its beams:
• His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings:
• His sparkling eyes, replete with awful fire,
• More dazzled, and drove back his enemies,
• Than mid-day sun fierce bent against their faces.
• What should I say? his deeds exceed all speech:
• He never lifted up his hand, but conquer’d.

First part Henry VI. act 1. sc. 1.44

• • Se tutti gli alberi del mondo fossero penne,
  • Il cielo fosse carta, il mare inchostro,
  • Non basteriano a descrivere la minima
  • Parte delle vostre perfettioni.45
• • Se tante lingue havessi, e tante voci,
  • Quant’ occhi il cielo, e quante arene il mare,
  • Perderian tutto il suono, e la favella
  • Nel dire a pieno le vostri lodi immensi.

  Guarini.46 <266>

It is observable, that a hyperbole, even the most extravagant, commonly produces some emotion: the present hyperbole is an exception; and the reason is, that numbers, in which the extravagance entirely consists, make no impression upon the imagination when they exceed what can easily be conceived.

Lastly, An hyperbole, after it is introduced with all advantages, ought to be comprehended within the fewest words possible: as it cannot be relished but in the hurry and swelling of the mind, a leisurely view dissolves the charm, and discovers the description to be extravagant at least, and perhaps also ridiculous. This fault is palpable in a sonnet which passeth for one of the most complete in the French language. Phillis, in a long and florid description, is made as far to outshine the sun as he outshines the stars:

• • Le silence regnoit sur la terre et sur l’onde,
  • L’air devenoit serain et l’Olimpe vermeil,
  • Et l’amoureux Zephir affranchi du someil,
  • Ressuscitoit les fleurs d’une haleine féconde.
• • L’Aurore déployoit l’or de sa tresse blonde,
  • Et semoit de rubis le chemin du soleil;
  • Enfin ce Dieu venoit au plus grand appareil
  • Qu’il soit jamais venu pour éclairer le monde.
• • Quand la jeune Phillis au visage riant,
  • Sortant de son palais plus clair que l’orient,<267>
  • Fit voir une lumiere et plus vive et plus belle.
  • Sacré flambeau du jour, n’en soiez point jaloux.
  • Vous parûtes alors aussi peu devant elle,
  • Que les feux de la nuit avoient fait devant vous.

  Malleville.47

There is in Chaucer a thought expressed in a single line, which gives more lustre to a young beauty, than the whole of this much-laboured poem:

SECTION IV

The Means or Instrument conceived to be the Agent.

When we survey a number of connected objects, that which makes the greatest figure employs chiefly our attention; and the emotion it raises, if lively, prompts us even to exceed nature in the conception we form of it. Take the following examples.

• For Neleus’ son Alcides’ rage had slain.
• A broken rock the force of Pirus threw.

In these instances, the rage of Hercules and the<268> force of Pirus, being the capital circumstances, are so far exalted as to be conceived the agents that produce the effects.

In the following instances, hunger being the chief circumstance in the description, is itself imagined to be the patient.

• ——— ——— As when the force
• Of subterranean wind transports a hill.

Paradise Lost.

• ——— As when the potent rod
• Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day
• Wav’d round the coast, upcall’d a pitchy cloud
• Of locusts.

Paradise Lost.

SECTION V

A Figure, which, among related Objects, extends the Properties of one to another.

This figure is not dignified with a proper name, because it has been over-looked by writers. It merits, however, a place in this work; and must be distinguished from those for-<269>merly handled, as depending on a different principle. Giddy brink, jovial wine, daring wound, are examples of this figure. Here are adjectives that cannot be made to signify any quality of the substantives to which they are joined: a brink, for example, cannot be termed giddy in a sense, either proper or figurative, that can signify any of its qualities or attributes. When we examine attentively the expression, we discover, that a brink is termed giddy from producing that effect in those who stand on it. In the same manner a wound is said to be daring, not with respect to itself, but with respect to the boldness of the person who inflicts it: and wine is said to be jovial, as inspiring mirth and jollity. Thus the attributes of one subject are extended to another with which it is connected; and the expression of such a thought must be considered as a figure, because the attribute is not applicable to the subject in any proper sense.

How are we to account for this figure, which we see lies in the thought, and to what principle shall we refer it? Have poets a privilege to alter the nature of things, and at pleasure to bestow attributes upon a subject to which they do not belong? We have had often occasion to inculcate, that the mind passeth easily and sweetly along a train of connected objects; and, where the objects are intimately connected, that it is disposed to carry along the good or bad properties of one to<270> another; especially when it is in any degree inflamed with these properties.* From this principle is derived the figure under consideration. Language, invented for the communication of thought, would be imperfect, if it were not expressive even of the slighter propensities and more delicate feelings: but language cannot remain so imperfect among a people who have received any polish; because language is regulated by internal feeling, and is gradually improved to express whatever passes in the mind. Thus, for example, when a sword in the hand of a coward, is termed a coward sword, the expression is significative of an internal operation; for the mind, in passing from the agent to its instrument, is disposed to extend to the latter the properties of the former. Governed by the same principle, we say listening fear, by extending the attribute listening of the man who listens, to the passion with which he is moved. In the expression, bold deed, or audax facinus, we extend to the effect what properly belongs to the cause. But not to waste time by making a commentary upon every expression of this kind, the best way to give a complete view of the subject, is to exhibit a table of the different relations that may give occasion to this figure. And in viewing the table, it will be observed, that the<271> figure can never have any grace but where the relations are of the most intimate kind.

1. An attribute of the cause expressed as an attribute of the effect.

• Audax facinus.49
• Of yonder fleet a bold discovery make.
• An impious mortal gave the daring wound.
• ——— ——— To my advent’ rous song,
• That with no middle flight intends to soar.

Paradise Lost.

2. An attribute of the effect expressed as an attribute of the cause.

• Quos periisse ambos misera censebam in mari.

Plautus.50

• No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height.

Paradise Lost.

3. An effect expressed as an attribute of the cause.

Jovial wine, Giddy brink, Drowsy night, Musing midnight, Panting height, Astonish’d thought, Mournful gloom.

• Casting a dim religious light.

Milton, Comus.<272>

• And the merry bells ring round,
• And the jocund rebecks sound.

Milton, Allegro.

4. An attribute of a subject bestowed upon one of its parts or members.

Longing arms.

• It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
• That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear.

Romeo and Juliet, act 3. sc. 7.51

• ——— ——— Oh, lay by
• Those most ungentle looks and angry weapons;
• Unless you mean my griefs and killing fears
• Should stretch me out at your relentless feet.

Fair Penitent, act 3.

• ——— ——— And ready now
• To stoop with wearied wing, and willing feet,
• On the bare outside of this world.

Paradise Lost, b. 3.52

5. A quality of the agent given to the instrument with which it operates.

6. An attribute of the agent given to the subject upon which it operates.

• High-climbing hill.

Milton.<273>

7. A quality of one subject given to another.

• Icci, beatis nunc Arabum invides
• Gazis.

Horat. Carm. l. 1. ode 29.53

• When sapless age, and weak unable limbs,
• Should bring thy father to his drooping chair.

Shakespear.54

• By art, the pilot through the boiling deep
• And howling tempest, steers the fearless ship.

Iliad xxiii. 385.

• Then, nothing loath, th’ enamour’d fair he led,
• And sunk transported on the conscious bed.

Odyssey, viii. 337.

8. A circumstance connected with a subject, expressed as a quality of the subject.

Breezy summit.

From this table it appears, that the adorning a cause with an attribute of the effect, is not so agreeable as the opposite expression. The progress<274> from cause to effect is natural and easy: the opposite progress resembles retrograde motion;* and therefore panting height, astonish’d thought, are strained and uncouth expressions, which a writer of taste will avoid.

It is not less strained, to apply to a subject in its present state, an epithet that may belong to it in some future state:

Another rule regards this figure, That the property of one subject ought not to be bestowed upon another with which that property is incongruous:

K. Rich.

• ——— How dare thy joints forget
• To pay their awful duty to our presence?

Richard II. act 3. sc. 6.57

The connection between an awful superior and his submissive dependent is so intimate, that an attribute may readily be transferred from the one to the other: but awfulness cannot be so transferred, because it is inconsistent with submission.<275>

SECTION VI

Metaphor and Allegory.

A Metaphor differs from a simile, in form only, not in substance: in a simile, the two subjects are kept distinct in the expression, as well as in the thought; in a metaphor, the two subjects are kept distinct in the thought only, not in the expression. A hero resembles a lion, and upon that resemblance many similes have been raised by Homer and other poets. But instead of resembling a lion, let us take the aid of the imagination, and feign or figure the hero to be a lion: by that variation the simile is converted into a metaphor; which is carried on by describing all the qualities of a lion that resemble those of the hero. The fundamental pleasure here, that of resemblance, belongs to the thought. An additional pleasure arises from the expression: the poet, by figuring his hero to be a lion, goes on to describe the lion in appearance, but in reality the hero; and his description is peculiarly beautiful, by expressing the virtues and qualities of the hero in new terms, which, properly speaking, belong not to him, but to the lion. This will better be understood by examples. A family connected with a common pa<276>rent, resembles a tree, the trunk and branches of which are connected with a common root: but let us suppose, that a family is figured, not barely to be like a tree, but to be a tree; and then the simile will be converted into a metaphor, in the following manner:

• Edward’s sev’n sons, whereof thyself art one,
• Were sev’n fair branches, springing from one root:
• Some of these branches by the dest’nies cut:
• But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Glo’ster,
• One flourishing branch of his most royal root,
• Is hack’d down, and his summer-leaves all faded,
• By Envy’s hand and Murder’s bloody axe.

Richard II. act 1. sc. 3.58

Figuring human life to be a voyage at sea:

• There is a tide in the affairs of men,
• Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
• Omitted, all the voyage of their life
• Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
• On such a full sea are we now afloat;
• And we must take the current while it serves,
• Or lose our ventures.

Julius Caesar, act 4. sc. 5.59

Figuring glory and honour to be a garland of flowers:

Hotspur.

• ——— Wou’d to heav’n,
• Thy name in arms were now as great as mine!<277>

Pr. Henry.

• I’ll make it greater, ere I part from thee;
• And all the budding honours on thy crest
• I’ll crop, to make a garland for my head.

First part Henry IV. act 5. sc. 9.60

Figuring a man who hath acquired great reputation and honour to be a tree full of fruit:

• ——— Oh, boys, this story
• The world may read in me: my body’s mark’d
• With Roman swords; and my report was once
• First with the best of note. Cymbeline lov’d me;
• And when a soldier was the theme, my name
• Was not far off: then was I as a tree,
• Whose boughs did bend with fruit. But in one night,
• A storm or robbery, call it what you will,
• Shook down my mellow hangings, nay my leaves;
• And left me bare to weather.

Cymbeline, act 3. sc. 3.

I am aware that the term metaphor has been used in a more extensive sense than I give it; but I thought it of consequence, in a disquisition of some intricacy, to confine the term to its proper sense, and to separate from it things that are distinguished by different names. An allegory differs from a metaphor; and what I would choose to call a figure of speech, differs from both. I proceed to explain these differences. A metaphor is defined above to be an act of the imagination, figuring one thing to be another. An allegory requires no such operation, nor is one thing figured to be another: it consists in choosing a subject having properties or circumstances resembling those of the principal subject; and the former is described in such a manner as to represent the latter: the subject thus represented is kept out of view; we are left to discover it by reflection; and we are pleased with the discovery, because it is our own work. Quintilian* gives the following instance of an allegory,

• O navis, referent in mare te novi
• Fluctus. O quid agis? fortiter occupa portum.

Horat. lib. 1. ode 14.61

and explains it elegantly in the following words: “Totusque ille Horatii locus, quo navim pro re-<279>publica, fluctuum tempestates pro bellis civilibus, portum pro pace atque concordia, dicit.”62

A finer or more correct allegory is not to be found than the following, in which a vineyard is made to represent God’s own people the Jews.

In a word, an allegory is in every respect similar to an hieroglyphical painting, excepting only that words are used instead of colours. Their effects are precisely the same: a hieroglyphic raises two images in the mind; one seen, which represents one not seen: an allegory does the same; the representative subject is described; and resemblance leads us to apply the description to the subject represented. In a figure of speech, there is no fiction of the imagination employed, as in a metaphor, nor a representative subject introduced, as<280> in an allegory. This figure, as its name implies, regards the expression only, not the thought; and it may be defined, the using a word in a sense different from what is proper to it. Thus youth, or the beginning of life, is expressed figuratively by morning of life: morning is the beginning of the day; and in that view it is employed to signify the beginning of any other series, life especially, the progress of which is reckoned by days.

Figures of speech are reserved for a separate section; but metaphor and allegory are so much connected, that they must be handled together: the rules particularly for distinguishing the good from the bad, are common to both. We shall therefore proceed to these rules, after adding some examples to illustrate the nature of an allegory. Horace, speaking of his love to Pyrrha, which was now extinguished, expresseth himself thus:

• ——— ——— Me tabulâ facer
• Votivâ paries indicat uvida
• Suspendisse potenti
• Vestimenta maris Deo.

Carm. l. 1. ode 5.63

Again:

• Phoebus volentem praelia me loqui,
• Victas et urbes, increpuit lyrâ:
• Ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor
• Vela darem.

Carm. l. 5. ode 15.64 <281>

Queen.

• Great Lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,
• But chearly seek how to redress their harms.
• What though the mast be now blown overboard,
• The cable broke, the holding-anchor lost,
• And half our sailors swallow’d in the flood;
• Yet lives our pilot still. Is’t meet, that he
• Should leave the helm, and, like a fearful lad,
• With tearful eyes add water to the sea,
• And give more strength to that which hath too much;
• While in his moan the ship splits on the rock,
• Which industry and courage might have sav’d?
• Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!

Third part Henry VI. act 5. sc. 5.65

Oroonoko.

• Ha! thou hast rous’d
• The lion in his den: he stalks abroad,
• And the wide forest trembles at his roar.
• I find the danger now.

Oroonoko, act 3. sc. 2.

My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. He fenced it, gathered out the stones thereof, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a wine-press therein: he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and<282> break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged, but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant.

Isaiah, v. 1.

The rules that govern metaphors and allegories, are of two kinds: the construction of these figures comes under the first kind: the propriety or impropriety of introduction comes under the other. I begin with rules of the first kind; some of which coincide with those already given for similes; some are peculiar to metaphors and allegories.

And, in the first place, it has been observed, that a simile cannot be agreeable where the resemblance is either too strong or too faint. This holds equally in metaphor and allegory; and the reason is the same in all. In the following instances, the resemblance is too faint to be agreeable.

Malcolm.

• ——— But there’s no bottom, none,
• In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,
• Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up
• The cistern of my lust.

Macbeth, act 4. sc. 4.66

The best way to judge of this metaphor, is to convert it into a simile; which would be bad, because<283> there is scarce any resemblance between lust and a cistern, or betwixt enormous lust and a large cistern.

Again:

• He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause
• Within the belt of rule.

Macbeth, act 5. sc. 2.

There is no resemblance between a distempered cause and any body that can be confined within a belt.

Again:

• Steep me in poverty to the very lips.

Othello, act 4. sc. 9.67

Poverty here must be conceived a fluid, which it resembles not in any manner.

Speaking to Bolingbroke banished for six years:

• The sullen passage of thy weary steps
• Esteem a soil, wherein thou art to set
• The precious jewel of thy home-return.

Richard II. act 1. sc. 6.68

Again:

• Here is a letter, lady,
• And every word in it a gaping wound
• Issuing life-blood.

Merchant of Venice, act 3. sc. 3.69 <284>

The following metaphor is strained beyond all endurance: Timur-bec, known to us by the name of Tamerlane the Great, writes to Bajazet Emperor of the Ottomans in the following terms:

Such strained figures, as observed above,* are not unfrequent in the first dawn of refinement: the mind in a new enjoyment knows no bounds, and is generally carried to excess, till taste and experience discover the proper limits.

Secondly, Whatever resemblance subjects may have, it is wrong to put one for another, where they bear no mutual proportion: upon comparing a very high to a very low subject, the simile takes on an air of burlesque; and the same will be the effect, where the one is imagined to be the other,<285> as in a metaphor; or made to represent the other, as in an allegory.

Thirdly, These figures, a metaphor especially, ought not to be crowded with many minute circumstances; for in that case it is scarcely possible to avoid obscurity. A metaphor above all ought to be short: it is difficult, for any time, to support a lively image of a thing being what we know it is not; and for that reason, a metaphor drawn out to any length, instead of illustrating or enlivening the principal subject, becomes disagreeable by over-straining the mind. Here Cowley is extremely licentious: take the following instance.

• Great and wise conqu’ror, who where-e’er
• Thou com’st, doth fortify, and settle there!
• Who canst defend as well as get,
• And never hadst one quarter beat up yet;
• Now thou art in, thou ne’er wilt part
• With one inch of my vanquish’d heart;
• For since thou took’st it by assault from me,
• ’Tis garrison’d so strong with thoughts of thee,
• It fears no beauteous enemy.71

For the same reason, however agreeable long allegories may at first be by their novelty, they never afford any lasting pleasure: witness the Fairy Queen, which with great power of expression, variety of images, and melody of versification, is scarce ever read a second time.<286>

In the fourth place, the comparison carried on in a simile, being in a metaphor sunk by imagining the principal subject to be that very thing which it only resembles; an opportunity is furnished to describe it in terms taken strictly or literally with respect to its imagined nature. This suggests another rule, That in constructing a metaphor, the writer ought to make use of such words only as are applicable literally to the imagined nature of his subject: figurative words ought carefully to be avoided; for such complicated figures, instead of setting the principal subject in a strong light, involve it in a cloud; and it is well if the reader, without rejecting by the lump, endeavour patiently to gather the plain meaning regardless of the figures:

• A stubborn and unconquerable flame
• Creeps in his veins, and drinks the streams of life.

Lady Jane Gray, act 1. sc. 1.

Copied from Ovid,

Let us analyse this expression. That a fever may be imagined a flame, I admit; though more than one step is necessary to come at the resemblance: a fever, by heating the body, resembles fire; and it is no stretch to imagine a fever to be a fire:<287> again, by a figure of speech, flame may be put for fire, because they are commonly conjoined; and therefore a fever may be termed a flame. But now admitting a fever to be a flame, its effects ought to be explained in words that agree literally to a flame. This rule is not observed here; for a flame drinks figuratively only, not properly.

King Henry to his son Prince Henry:

• Thou hid’st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,
• Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart
• To stab at half an hour of my frail life.

Second part Henry IV. act 4. sc. 11.73

Such faulty metaphors are pleasantly ridiculed in the Rehearsal:

Physician.

Sir, to conclude, the place you fill has more than amply exacted the talents of a wary pilot; and all these threatening storms, which, like impregnate clouds, hover o’er our heads, will, when they once are grasp’d but by the eye of reason, melt into fruitful showers of blessings on the people.

Bayes.

Pray mark that allegory. Is not that good?

Johnson.

Yes, that grasping of a storm with the eye is admirable.

Act 2. sc. 1.

Fifthly, The jumbling different metaphors in the same sentence, beginning with one metaphor and ending with another, commonly called a mixt<288> metaphor, ought never to be indulged. Quintilian bears testimony against it in the bitterest terms; “Nam id quoque in primis est custodiendum, ut quo ex genere coeperis translation is, hoc definas. Multi enim, cum initium a tempestate sumpserunt, incendio aut ruina finiunt: quae est inconsequentia rerum foedissima.” L. 8. cap. 6. § 2.74

K. Henry.

• ——— Will you again unknit
• This churlish knot of all-abhorred war,
• And move in that obedient orb again,
• Where you did give a fair and natural light?

First part Henry VI. act 5. sc. 1.75

• Whether ’tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
• The stings and arrows of outrag’ous fortune;
• Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
• And by opposing end them.

Hamlet, act 3. sc. 2.76

In the sixth place, It is unpleasant to join different metaphors in the same period, even where they are preserved distinct: for when the subject is imagined to be first one thing and then another in the same period without interval, the mind is distracted by the rapid transition; and when the imagination is put on such hard duty, its images are too faint to produce any good effect:<289>

• At regina gravi jamdudum saucia cura,
• Vulnus alit venis, et caeco carpitur igni.

Aeneid. iv. 1.77

• ——— Est mollis flamma medullas
• Interea, et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.

Aeneid. iv. 66.78

• Motum ex Metello consule civicum,
• Bellique causas, et vitia, et modos,
• Ludumque fortunae, gravesque
• Principum amicitias, et arma
• Nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus,
• Periculosae plenum opus aleae,
• Tractas, et incedis per ignes
• Subpositos cineri doloso.

Horat. Carm. l. 2. ode 1.79

In the last place, It is still worse to jumble together metaphorical and natural expression, so as that the period must be understood in part metaphorically in part literally; for the imagination cannot follow with sufficient ease changes so sudden and unprepared: a metaphor begun and not carried on, hath no beauty; and instead of light there is nothing but obscurity and confusion. Instances of such incorrect composition are without number. I shall, for a specimen, select a few from different authors.

Speaking of Britain,

• This precious stone set in the sea,
• Which serves it in the office of a wall,<290>
• Or as a moat defensive to a house
• Against the envy of less happier lands.

Richard II. act 2. sc. 1.80

In the first line Britain is figured to be a precious stone: in the following lines, Britain, divested of her metaphorical dress, is presented to the reader in her natural appearance.

• These growing feathers pluck’d from Caesar’s wing,
• Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
• Who else would soar above the view of men,
• And keep us all in servile fearfulness.

Julius Caesar, act 1. sc. 1.

• Rebus angustis animosus atque
• Fortis adpare: sapienter idem
• Contrahes vento nimium secundo
• Turgida vela.

Hor.81

The following is a miserable jumble of expressions, arising from an unsteady view of the subject, between its figurative and natural appearance:

• But now from gath’ring clouds destruction pours,
• Which ruins with mad rage our halcyon hours:
• Mists from black jealousies the tempest form,
• Whilst late divisions reinforce the storm.

Dispensary, canto 3.

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

Pope’s imitation of Horace, b. 2.<291>

• Oui, sa pudeur n’est que franche grimace,
• Qu’une ombre de vertu qui garde mal la place,
• Et qui s’evanouit, comme l’on peut savoir,
• Aux rayons du soleil qu’une bourse fait voir.

Molière, L’Etourdi, act 3. sc. 2.82

• Et son feu, depourvû de sense et de lecture,
• S’eteint à chaque pas, faute de nourriture.

Boileau, L’art poetique, chant. 3. l. 319.83

Dryden, in his dedication of the translation of Juvenal, says,

This fault of jumbling the figure and plain expression into one confused mass, is not less common in allegory than in metaphor. Take the following examples.

• • ——— ——— Heu! quoties fidem,
  • Mutatosque Deos flebit, et aspera
  • Nigris aequora ventis
  • Emirabitur insolens,
  • Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aureâ:
• • Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem
  • Sperat, nescius aurae
  • Fallacis.

  Horat. Carm. l. 1. ode 5.84 <292>

• Pour moi sur cette mer, qu’ ici bas nous courons,
• Je songe à me pourvoir d’ esquif et d’avirons,
• A regler mes desirs, à prévenir l’orage,
• Et sauver, s’il se peut, ma Raison du naufrage.

Boileau, epitre 5.85

Lord Halifax,86 speaking of the ancient fabulists: “They (says he) wrote in signs and spoke in parables: all their fables carry a double meaning: the story is one and entire; the characters the same throughout; not broken or changed, and always conformable to the nature of the creature they introduce. They never tell you, that the dog which snapp’d at a shadow, lost his troop of horse; that would be unintelligible. This is his (Dryden’s) new way of telling a story, and confounding the moral and the fable together.” After instancing from the hind and panther, he goes on thus: “What relation has the hind to our Saviour? or what notion have we of a panther’s Bible? If you say he means the church, how does the church feed on lawns, or range in the forest? Let it be always a church or always a cloven-footed beast, for we cannot bear his shifting the scene every line.”

A few words more upon allegory. Nothing gives greater pleasure than this figure, when the representative subject bears a strong analogy, in all its circumstances, to that which is represented: but the choice is seldom so lucky; the analogy<293> being generally so faint and obscure, as to puzzle and not please. An allegory is still more difficult in painting than in poetry: the former can show no resemblance but what appears to the eye; the latter hath many other resources for showing the resemblance. And therefore, with respect to what the Abbé du Bos* terms mixt allegorical compositions, these may do in poetry; because, in writing, the allegory can easily be distinguished from the historical part: no person, for example, mistakes Virgil’s Fame for a real being. But such a mixture in a picture is intolerable; because in a picture the objects must appear all of the same kind, wholly real or wholly emblematical. For this reason, the history of Mary de Medicis, in the palace of Luxenbourg, painted by Rubens, is unpleasant by a perpetual jumble of real and allegorical personages, which produce a discordance of parts, and an obscurity upon the whole: witness, in particular, the tablature representing the arrival of Mary de Medicis at Marseilles; where, together with the real personages, the Nereids and Tritons appear sounding their shells: such a mixture of fiction and reality in the same group, is strangely absurd. The picture of Alexander and Roxana, described by Lucian, is gay and fanciful; but it suffers by the allegorical figures. It is not in the wit of man to invent an allegorical re-<294>presentation deviating farther from any shadow of resemblance, than one exhibited by Lewis XIV. anno 1664; in which an enormous chariot, intended to represent that of the sun, is dragg’d along, surrounded with men and women, representing the four ages of the world, the celestial signs, the seasons, the hours, &c.; a monstrous composition, suggested probably by Guido’s tablature of Aurora, and still more absurd.

In an allegory as well as in a metaphor, terms ought to be chosen that properly and literally are applicable to the representative subject: nor ought any circumstance to be added that is not proper to the representative subject, however justly it may be applicable properly or figuratively to the principal. The following allegory is therefore faulty:

• Ferus et Cupido,
• Semper ardentes acuens sagittas
• Cote cruentâ.

Horat. l. 2. ode 8.87

For though blood may suggest the cruelty of love, it is an improper or immaterial circumstance in the representative subject: water, not blood, is proper for a whetstone.

We proceed to the next head, which is, to examine in what circumstance these figures are proper, in what improper. This inquiry is not alto-<295>gether superseded by what is said upon the same subject in the chapter of Comparisons; because upon trial it will be found, that a short metaphor or allegory may be proper, where a simile, drawn out to a greater length, and in its nature more solemn, would scarce be relished.

And, first, a metaphor, like a simile, is excluded from common conversation, and from the description of ordinary incidents.

Second, in expressing any severe passion that wholly occupies the mind, metaphor is improper. For which reason, the following speech of Macbeth is faulty.

• Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
• Macbeth doth murder sleep; the innocent sleep;
• Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of Care,
• The birth of each day’s life, sore Labour’s bath,
• Balm of hurt minds, great Nature’s second course,
• Chief nourisher in Life’s feast.—

Act 2. sc. 3.88

The following example, of deep despair, beside the highly figurative style, hath more the air of raving than of sense:

Calista.

• Is it the voice of thunder, or my father?
• Madness! Confusion! let the storm come on,
• Let the tumultuous roar drive all upon me,
• Dash my devoted bark; ye surges, break it;
• ’Tis for my ruin that the tempest rises.<296>
• When I am lost, sunk to the bottom low,
• Peace shall return, and all be calm again.

Fair Penitent, act 4.

The metaphor I next introduce, is sweet and lively, but it suits not a fiery temper inflamed with passion: parables are not the language of wrath venting itself without restraint.

Chamont.

• You took her up a little tender flower,
• Just sprouted on a bank, which the next frost
• Had nip’d; and with a careful loving hand,
• Transplanted her into your own fair garden,
• Where the sun always shines: there long she flourish’d,
• Grew sweet to sense and lovely to the eye,
• Till at the last a cruel spoiler came,
• Cropt this fair rose, and rifled all its sweetness,
• Then cast it like a loathsome weed away.

Orphan, act 4.

The following speech, full of imagery, is not natural in grief and dejection of mind:

Gonsalez.

• O my son! from the blind dotage
• Of a father’s fondness these ills arose.
• For thee I’ve been ambitious, base and bloody:
• For thee I’ve plung’d into this sea of sin;
• Stemming the tide with only one weak hand,
• While t’other bore the crown, (to wreathe thy brow),
• Whose weight has sunk me ere I reach’d the shore.

Mourning Bride, act 5. sc. 6.<297>

There is an enchanting picture of deep distress in Macbeth,* where Macduff is represented lamenting his wife and children, inhumanly murdered by the tyrant. Stung to the heart with the news, he questions the messenger over and over: not that he doubted the fact, but that his heart revolted against so cruel a misfortune. After struggling some time with his grief, he turns from his wife and children to their savage butcher; and then gives vent to his resentment, but still with manliness and dignity:

• O, I could play the woman with mine eyes,
• And braggart with my tongue. But, gentle Heav’n!
• Cut short all intermission; front to front
• Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;
• Within my sword’s length set him.—If he ’scape,
• Then Heav’n forgive him too.

SECTION VII

Figure of Speech.

In the section immediately foregoing, a figure of speech is defined, “The using a word in a sense different from what is proper to it”; and the new or uncommon sense of the word is termed the figurative sense. The figurative sense must have a relation to that which is proper; and the more intimate the relation is, the figure is the more happy. How ornamental this figure is to language, will not be readily imagined by any one who hath not given peculiar attention; and therefore I shall endeavour to unfold its capital beauties and advantages. In the first place, a word used figuratively or in a new sense, suggests at the same time the sense it commonly bears: and thus it has the effect to present two objects; one signified by the figurative sense, which may be termed the principal object; and one signified by the proper sense, which may be termed accessory: the principal makes a part of the thought; the accessory is merely ornamental. In this respect, a figure of speech is precisely similar to concordant sounds in music, which, without contributing to the melody, make it harmonious. I explain myself by examples.<300> Youth, by a figure of speech, is termed the morning of life. This expression signifies youth, the principal object, which enters into the thought: it suggests, at the same time, the proper sense of morning; and this accessory object, being in itself beautiful, and connected by resemblance to the principal object, is not a little ornamental. Imperious ocean is an example of a different kind, where an attribute is expressed figuratively: together with stormy, the figurative meaning of the epithet imperious, there is suggested its proper meaning, viz. the stern authority of a despotic prince; and these two are strongly connected by resemblance. Upon this figurative power of words, Vida descants with elegance:

• Nonne vides, verbis ut veris saepe relictis
• Accersant simulata, aliundeque nomina porro
• Transportent, aptentque aliis ea rebus; ut ipsae,
• Exuviasque novas, res, insolitosque colores
• Indutae, saepe externi mirentur amictus
• Unde illi, laetaeque aliena luce fruantur,
• Mutatoque habitu, nec jam sua nomina mallent?
• Saepe ideo, cum bella canunt, incendia credas
• Cernere, diluviumque ingens surgentibus undis.
• Contra etiam Martis pugnas imitabitur ignis,
• Cum furit accensis acies Vulcania campis.
• Nec turbato oritur quondam minor aequore pugna:
• Confligunt animosi Euri certamine vasto
• Inter se, pugnantque adversis molibus undae.
• Usque adeo passim sua res insignia laetae<301>
• Permutantque, juvantque vicissim: et mutua sese
• Altera in alterius transformat protinus ora.
• Tum specie capti gaudent spectare legentes:
• Nam diversa simul datur è re cernere eadem
• Multarum simulacra animo subeuntia rerum.

Poet. lib. 3. l. 44.90

In the next place, this figure possesses a signal power of aggrandising an object, by the following means. Words, which have no original beauty but what arises from their sound, acquire an adventitious beauty from their meaning: a word signifying any thing that is agreeable, becomes by that means agreeable; for the agreeableness of the object is communicated to its name.* This acquired beauty by the force of custom, adheres to the word even when used figuratively; and the beauty received from the thing it properly signifies, is communicated to the thing which it is made to signify figuratively. Consider the foregoing expression Imperious ocean, how much more elevated it is than Stormy ocean.

Thirdly, This figure hath a happy effect by preventing the familiarity of proper names. The familiarity of a proper name, is communicated to the thing it signifies by means of their intimate connection; and the thing is thereby brought<302> down in our feeling.† This bad effect is prevented by using a figurative word instead of one that is proper; as, for example, when we express the sky by terming it the blue vault of heaven; for though no work of art can compare with the sky in grandeur, the expression however is relished, because it prevents the object from being brought down by the familiarity of its proper name. With respect to the degrading familiarity of proper names, Vida has the following passage:

• Hinc si dura mihi passus dicendus Ulysses,
• Non illum vero memorabo nomine, sed qui
• Et mores hominum multorum vidit, et urbes,
• Naufragus eversae post saeva incendia Trojae.

Poet. lib. 2. l. 46.91

Lastly, by this figure language is enriched, and rendered more copious; in which respect, were there no other, a figure of speech is a happy invention. This property is finely touched by Vida:

• Quinetiam agricolas ea fandi nota voluptas
• Exercet, dum laeta seges, dum trudere gemmas
• Incipiunt vites, sitientiaque aetheris imbrem
• Prata bibunt, ridentque satis surgentibus agri.<303>
• Hanc vulgo speciem propriae penuria vocis
• Intulit, indictisque urgens in rebus egestas.
• Quippe ubi se vera ostendebant nomina nusquam,
• Fas erat hinc atque hinc transferre simillima veris.

Poet. lib. 3. l. 90.92

The beauties I have mentioned belong to every figure of speech. Several other beauties peculiar to one or other sort, I shall have occasion to remark afterward.

Not only subjects, but qualities, actions, effects, may be expressed figuratively. Thus, as to subjects, the gates of breath for the lips, the watery kingdom for the ocean. As to qualities, fierce for stormy, in the expression Fierce winter: Altus for profundus; Altus puteus, Altum mare: Breathing for perspiring; Breathing plants. Again, as to actions, The sea rages, Time will melt her frozen thoughts, Time kills grief. An effect is put for the cause, as lux for the sun; and a cause for the effect, as boum labores for corn. The relation of resemblance is one plentiful source of figures of speech; and nothing is more common than to apply to one object the name of another that resembles it in any respect: height, size, and worldly greatness, resemble not each other; but the emotions they produce resemble each other, and prompted by this resemblance, we naturally express worldly greatness by height or size: one feels a certain uneasiness in seeing a great depth;<304> and hence depth is made to express any thing disagreeable by excess, as depth of grief, depth of despair: again, height of place, and time long past, produce similar feelings; and hence the expression, Ut altius repetam: distance in past time, producing a strong feeling, is put for any strong feeling, Nihil mihi antiquius nostra amicitia: shortness with relation to space, for shortness with relation to time, Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio:93 suffering a punishment resembles paying a debt; hence pendere poenas. In the same manner, light may be put for glory, sunshine for prosperity, and weight for importance.

Many words, originally figurative, having, by long and constant use, lost their figurative power, are degraded to the inferior rank of proper terms. Thus the words that express the operations of the mind, have in all languages been originally figurative: the reason holds in all, that when these operations came first under consideration, there was no other way of describing them but by what they resembled: it was not practicable to give them proper names, as may be done to objects that can be ascertained by sight and touch. A soft nature, jarring tempers, weight of wo, pompous phrase, beget compassion, assuage grief, break a vow, bend the eye downward, shower down curses, drown’d in tears, wrapt in joy, warm’d with eloquence, loaded with spoils, and a thousand other expressions of the like nature, have<305> lost their figurative sense. Some terms there are, that cannot be said to be either altogether figurative or altogether proper: originally figurative, they are tending to simplicity, without having lost altogether their figurative power. Virgil’s Regina saucia cura,94 is perhaps one of these expressions: with ordinary readers, saucia will be considered as expressing simply the effect of grief; but one of a lively imagination will exalt the phrase into a figure.

For epitomising this subject, and at the same time for giving a clear view of it, I cannot think of a better method, than to present to the reader a list of the several relations upon which figures of speech are commonly founded. This list I divide into two tables; one of subjects expressed figuratively, and one of attributes.

FIRST TABLE.

Subjects expressed figuratively.

1. A word proper to one subject employed figuratively to express a resembling subject.

There is no figure of speech so frequent, as what is derived from the relation of resemblance. Youth, for example, is signified figuratively by the morning of life. The life of a man resembles<306> a natural day in several particulars: the morning is the beginning of day, youth the beginning of life; the morning is cheerful, so is youth, &c. By another resemblance, a bold warrior is termed the thunderbolt of war; a multitude of troubles, a sea of troubles.

This figure, above all others, affords pleasure to the mind by variety of beauties. Beside the beauties above mentioned, common to all sorts, it possesses in particular the beauty of a metaphor or of a simile: a figure of speech built upon resemblance, suggests always a comparison between the principal subject and the accessory; whereby every good effect of a metaphor or simile, may in a short and lively manner, be produced by this figure of speech.

2. A word proper to the effect employed figuratively to express the cause.

Lux for the sun. Shadow for cloud. A helmet is signified by the expression glittering terror. A tree by shadow or umbrage. Hence the expression:

A wound is made to signify an arrow:

There is a peculiar force and beauty in this figure: the word which signifies figuratively the principal subject, denotes it to be a cause by suggesting the effect.

3. A word proper to the cause, employed figuratively to express the effect.

Boumque labores, for corn. Sorrow or grief, for tears.

• • Again Ulysses veil’d his pensive head;
  • Again, unmann’d, a show’r of sorrow shed.
• • Streaming Grief his faded cheek bedew’d.

Blindness for darkness:

• Caecis erramus in undis.

Aeneid. iii. 200.97

There is a peculiar energy in this figure, similar to that in the former: the figurative name denotes the subject to be an effect, by suggesting its cause.

4. Two things being intimately connected, the proper name of the one employed figuratively to signify the other.<308>

Day for light. Night for darkness; and hence, A sudden night. Winter for a storm at sea:

• Interea magno misceri murmure pontum,
• Emissamque Hyemem sensit Neptunus.

Aeneid. i. 128.98

This last figure would be too bold for a British writer, as a storm at sea is not inseparably connected with winter in this climate.

5. A word proper to an attribute, employed figuratively to denote the subject.

Youth and beauty for those who are young and beautiful:

Majesty for the King:

• What are thou, that usurp’st this time of night,
• Together with that fair and warlike form,
• In which the Majesty of buried Denmark
• Did sometime march?

Hamlet, act 1. sc. 1.

• ——— Or have ye chosen this place
• After the toils of battle, to repose
• Your weary’d virtue.

Paradise Lost.

Verdure for a green field.

Summer, l. 301.<309>

• Cool age advances venerably wise.

Iliad iii. 149.

The peculiar beauty of this figure arises from suggesting an attribute that embellishes the subject, or puts it in a stronger light.

6. A complex term employed figuratively to denote one of the component parts.

Funus for a dead body. Burial for a grave.

7. The name of one of the component parts instead of the complex term.

Taeda for a marriage. The East for a country situated east from us. Jovis vestigia servat, for imitating Jupiter in general.

8. A word signifying time or place, employed figuratively to denote what is connected with it.

Clime for a nation, or for a constitution of government: hence the expression, Merciful clime, Fleecy winter for snow, Seculum felix.<310>

9. A part for the whole.

The Pole for the earth. The head for the person:

Tergum for the man:

Vultus for the man:

• Jam fulgor armorum fugaces
• Terret equos, equitumque vultus.

Horat.101

• Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
• Tam chari capitis?

Horat.102

Dumque virent genua?

Horat.103

• Thy growing virtues justify’d my cares,
• And promis’d comfort to my silver hairs.

Iliad ix. 616.

• ——— Forthwith from the pool he rears
• His mighty stature.

Paradise Lost.

The silent heart with grief assails.

Parnell.104

Grove for the birds in it, Vocal grove. Ships for the seamen, Agonizing ships. Mountains for the sheep pasturing upon them, Bleating mountains. Zacynthus, Ithaca, &c. for the inhabitants. Ex moestis domibus, Livy.

11. The name of the sustainer, employed figuratively to signify what is sustained.

Altar for the sacrifice. Field for the battle fought upon it, Well-fought field.

12. The name of the materials, employed figuratively to signify the things made of them.

Ferrum for gladius.

13. The names of the Heathen deities, employed figuratively to signify what they patronise.

Jove for the air, Mars for war, Venus for beauty, Cupid for love, Ceres for corn, Neptune for the sea, Vulcan for fire.

This figure bestows great elevation upon the subject; and therefore ought to be confined to the higher strains of poetry.<312>

SECOND TABLE.

Attributes expressed figuratively.

1. When two attributes are connected, the name of the one may be employed figuratively to express the other.

Purity and virginity are attributes of the same person: hence the expression, Virgin snow, for pure snow.

2. A word signifying properly an attribute of one subject, employed figuratively to express a resembling attribute of another subject.

Tottering state. Imperious ocean. Angry flood. Raging tempest. Shallow fears.

• My sure divinity shall bear the shield,
• And edge thy sword to reap the glorious field.

Odyssey xx. 61.

Black omen, for an omen that portends bad fortune.

Ater odor.

Virgil.105

The peculiar beauty of this figure arises from suggesting a comparison.<313>

3. A word proper to the subject, employed to express one of its attributes.

Mens for intellectus. Mens for a resolution:

4. When two subjects have a resemblance by a common quality, the name of the one subject may be employed figuratively to denote that quality in the other.

Summer life for agreeable life.

5. The name of the instrument made to signify the power of employing it.

• ——— Melpomene, cui liquidam pater
• Vocem cum cithara dedit.107

The ample field of figurative expression displayed in these tables, affords great scope for reasoning. Several of the observations relating to metaphor, are applicable to figures of speech: these I shall slightly retouch, with some additions peculiarly adapted to the present subject.

In the first place, as the figure under consideration is built upon relation, we find from experience, and it must be obvious from reason, that the beauty of the figure depends on the intimacy<314> of the relation between the figurative and proper sense of the word. A slight resemblance, in particular, will never make this figure agreeable: the expression, for example, Drink down a secret, for listening to a secret with attention, is harsh and uncouth, because there is scarce any resemblance between listening and drinking. The expression weighty crack, used by Ben Johnson for loud crack, is worse if possible: a loud sound has not the slightest resemblance to a piece of matter that is weighty. The following expression of Lucretius is not less faulty, “Et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore.” i. 645.108

• ——— ——— Sed magis
• Pugnas et exactos tyrannos
• Densum humeris bibit aure vulgus.

Horat. Carm. l. 2. ode 13.109

• Phemius! let acts of gods, and heroes old,
• What ancient bards in hall and bow’r have told,
• Attemper’d to the lyre, your voice employ,
• Such the pleas’d ear will drink with silent joy.

Odyssey, i. 433.

Strepitumque exterritus hausit.

Aeneid. vi. 559.110

• ——— ——— Write, my Queen,
• And with mine eyes I’ll drink the words you send.

Cymbeline, act 1. sc. 2.

As thus th’ effulgence tremulous I drink.

Summer, l. 1684.<315>

Neque audit currus habenas.

Georg. i. 514.111

• O Prince! (Lycaon’s valiant son reply’d),
• As thine the steeds, be thine the talk to guide.
• The horses practis’d to their lord’s command,
• Shall hear the rein, and answer to thy hand.

Iliad, v. 288.

The following figures of speech seem altogether wild and extravagant, the figurative and proper meaning having no connection whatever. Moving softness, Freshness breathes, Breathing prospect, Flowing spring, Dewy light, Lucid coolness, and many others of this false coin, may be found in Thomson’s Seasons.

Secondly, The proper sense of the word ought to bear some proportion to the figurative sense, and not soar much above it, nor sink much below it. This rule, as well as the foregoing, is finely illustrated by Vida:

• Haec adeo cum sint, cum fas audere poetis
• Multa modis multis; tamen observare memento
• Si quando haud propriis rem mavis dicere verbis,
• Translatisque aliunde notis, longeque petitis,
• Ne nimiam ostendas, quaerendo talia, curam.
• Namque aliqui exercent vim duram, et rebus inique
• Nativam eripiunt formam, indignantibus ipsis,
• Invitasque jubent alienos sumere vultus
• Haud magis imprudens mihi erit, et luminis expers,
• Qui puero ingentes habitus det ferre gigantis,<316>
• Quam siquis stabula alta lares appellet equinos,
• Aut crines magnae genitricis gramina dicat.

Poet. iii. 148.112

Thirdly, In a figure of speech, every circumstance ought to be avoided that agrees with the proper sense only, not the figurative sense; for it is the latter that expresses the thought, and the former serves for no other purpose but to make harmony:

• Zacynthus green with ever-shady groves,
• And Ithaca, presumptuous boast their loves;
• Obtruding on my choice a second lord,
• They press the Hymenean rite abhorr’d.

Odyssey, xix. 152.

Zacynthus here standing figuratively for the inhabitants, the description of the island is quite out of place: it puzzles the reader, by making him doubt whether the word ought to be taken in its proper or figurative sense.

• ——— ——— Write, my Queen,
• And with mine eyes I’ll drink the words you send,
• Though ink be made of gall.

Cymbeline, act 1. sc. 2.

Cromwell.

How does your Grace?

Wolsey.

• Why, well;
• Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.
• I know myself now, and I feel within me
• A peace above all earthly dignities,
• A still and quiet conscience. The King has cur’d me,
• I humbly thank his Grace; and from these shoulders,
• These ruin’d pillars, out of pity, taken
• A load would sink a navy, too much honour.

Henry VIII. act 3. sc. 6.114

Ulysses speaking of Hector:

• I wonder now how yonder city stands,
• When we have here the base and pillar by us.

Troilus and Cressida, act 4. sc. 9.115 <318>

Othello.

No; my heart is turn’d to stone: I strike it, and it hurts my hand.

Othello, act 4. sc. 5.116

• Not less, even in this despicable now,
• Than when my name fill’d Afric with affrights,
• And froze your hearts beneath your torrid zone.

Don Sebastian King of Portugal, act 1.117

• How long a space, since first I lov’d, it is!
• To look into a glass I fear,
• And am surpris’d with wonder, when I miss
• Grey hairs and wrinkles there.

Cowley, vol. 1. p. 86.118

• I chose the flourishing’st tree in all the park,
• With freshest boughs, and fairest head;
• I cut my love into his gentle bark,
• And in three days behold ’tis dead;
• My very written flames so violent be,
• They’ve burnt and wither’d up the tree.

Cowley, vol. 1. p. 136.119

• Ah, mighty Love, that it were inward heat
• Which made this precious limbeck sweat!
• But what, alas! ah what does it avail,
• That she weeps tears so wond’rous cold,
• As scarce the ass’s hoof can hold,
• So cold, that I admire they fall not hail.

Cowley, vol. 1. p. 132.120

This would be very right, if there were any inconsistence, in being interred in one place really, and in another place figuratively.

• Je crains que cette saison
• Ne nous amene la peste;
• La gueule du chien celeste
• Vomit feu sur l’horison.
• Afin que je m’en delivre,
• Je veux lire ton gros livre
• Jusques an dernier feüillet:
• Tout ce que ta plume trace,
• Robinet, a de la glace
• A faire trembler Juillet.

Maynard.121

• In me tota ruens Venus
• Cyprum deseruit.

Horat. Carm. l. 1. ode 19.122

From considering that a word used in a figurative sense suggests at the same time its proper meaning, we discover a fifth rule, That we ought not to employ a word in a figurative sense, the proper sense of which is inconsistent or incongruous with the subject: for every inconsistency, and even incongruity, though in the expression only and not real, is unpleasant:<320>

• Interea genitor Tyberini ad fluminis undam
• Vulnera siccabat lymphis ———

Aeneid. x. 833.123

• Tres adeo incertos caeca caligine soles
• Erramus pelago, totidem sine sidere noctes.

Aeneid. iii. 203.124

The foregoing rule may be extended to form a sixth, That no epithet ought to be given to the figurative sense of a word that agrees not also with its proper sense:

• ——— Dicat Opuntiae
• Frater Megillae, quo beatus
• Vulnere.

Horat. Carm. lib. 1. ode. 27.125

• Parcus deorum cultor, et infrequens,
• Insanientis dum sapientiae
• Consultus erro.

Horat. Carm. lib. 1. ode 34.126

Seventhly, The crowding into one period or thought different figures of speech, is not less faulty than crowding metaphors in that manner: the mind is distracted in the quick transition from one image to another, and is puzzled instead of being pleased:

• I am of ladies most deject and wretched,
• That suck’d the honey of his music-vows.

Hamlet.127

• My bleeding bosom sickens at the sound.

Odyssey, i. 439.<321>

• ——— ——— Ah miser,
• Quantâ laboras in Charybdi!
• Digne puer meliore flammâ.
• Quae saga, quis te solvere Thessalis
• Magus venenis, quis poterit deus?
• Vix illigatum te triformi
• Pegasus expediet Chimerâ.

Horat. Carm. lib. 1. ode 27.128

Eighthly, If crowding figures be bad, it is still worse to graft one figure upon another: For instance,

A falchion129 drinking the warriors’ blood is a figure built upon resemblance, which is passable. But then in the expression, lives is again put for blood; and by thus grafting one figure upon another, the expression is rendered obscure and unpleasant.

Ninthly, Intricate and involved figures that can scarce be analysed, or reduced to plain language, are least of all tolerable:

• ——— Onerantque canistris
• Dona laboratae Cereris.

Aeneid. viii. 180.131 <322>

Vulcan to the Cyclopes:

• Arma acri facienda viro: nunc viribus usus,
• Nunc manibus rapidis, omni nunc arte magistra:
• Praecipitate moras.

Aeneid. viii. 441.132

• ——— Huic gladio, perque aerea suta
• Per tunicam squalentem auro, latus haurit apertum.

Aeneid. x. 313.133

• Semotique prius tarda necessitas
• Lethi, corripuit gradum.

Horat. Carm. lib. 1. ode 3.134

• Scribêris Vario fortis, et hostium
• Victor, Maeonii carminis alite.

Horat. Carm. lib. 1. ode 6.135

Speaking of Proteus,

• Instant he wears, elusive of the rape,
• The mimic force of every savage shape.

Odyssey iv. 563.

• Rolling convulsive on the floor, is seen
• The piteous object of a prostrate Queen.

Ibid. iv. 952.

In the tenth place, When a subject is introduced by its proper name, it is absurd to attribute to it the properties of a different subject to which the word is sometimes apply’d in a figurative sense:

• Hear me, oh Neptune! thou whose arms are hurl’d
• From shore to shore, and gird the solid world.

Odyssey. ix. 617.

Neptune is here introduced personally, and not figuratively for the ocean: the description therefore, which is only applicable to the latter, is altogether improper.

It is not sufficient, that a figure of speech be regularly constructed, and be free from blemish: it requires taste to discern when it is proper when improper; and taste, I suspect, is our only guide. One however may gather from reflection and experience, that ornaments and graces suit not any of the dispiriting passions, nor are proper for expressing any thing grave and important. In familiar conversation, they are in some measure ridicu-<324>lous: Prospero, in the Tempest, speaking to his daughter Miranda, says,

• The fringed curtains of thine eyes advance,
• And say what thou seest yond.140

No exception can be taken to the justness of the figure; and circumstances may be imagined to make it proper; but it is certainly not proper in familiar conversation.

In the last place, Though figures of speech have a charming effect when accurately constructed and properly introduced, they ought however to be scattered with a sparing hand: nothing is more luscious, and nothing consequently more satiating, than redundant ornaments of any kind.<325>

[* ]Page 204.

[† ]Chap. 2. part 5.

[1. ]Act 3, sc. 1: read “times” for “time.”

[* ]Philoctetes of Sophocles, act 4. sc. 2.

[† ]Alcestes of Euripides, act 2. sc. 1.

[2. ]“Daphnis, the wild mountains and woods tell us that even the African lions moaned over thy death.”

[3. ]“For him, even the laurels, even the tamarisks wept. For him, as he lay beneath a lonely rock, even the pine-crowned Maenalus wept, and the crags of cold Lycacus.”

[4. ]“Rocks and waves I have seen moved to pity by my complaints—I have heard the trees accompany my tears with sighs, but I have never found, nor hope to find, compassion in this cruel fair.” (Aminta, trans. E. Grillo)

[5. ]Read “rebellion’s” in the last line.

[* ]Philoctetes of Sophocles, at the close.

[6. ]“He raises a mighty roar, whereat the sea and all its waves shuddered and the land of Italy was affrighted far within, and Aetna bellowed in its winding caverns.” Read “Construemere” for “Intremuere.”

[7. ]“The wave that brought it in recoiled aghast” (act 5, sc. 5).

[* ]The chastity of the English language, which in common usage distinguishes by genders no words but what signify beings male and female, gives thus a fine opportunity for the prosopopoeia; a beauty unknown in other languages, where every word is masculine or feminine.

[8. ]Act 3, sc. 5.

[† ]See Appendix, containing definitions and explanations of terms, § 29.

[9. ]“But rather, I would pray, may earth yawn for me to its depths, or may the Almighty Father hurl me with his bolt to the shades—the pale shades and abysmal might of Erebus—before, O Shame, I violate thee or break thy laws!”

[10. ]Act 2, sc. 2.

[* ]Aeneid iv. 173.

[11. ]Act 3, sc. 2: read “As if this flesh” for “As if his flesh.”

[12. ]Second line read: “Are at this hour asleep! O Sleep! O gentle Sleep, . . .” Read “clouds” for “shrouds”; “and most stillest night” for “the stillest night.”

[13. ]Act 2, sc. 1, The Fate of Capua—A Tragedy, 1700.

[14. ]Act 1, sc. 2.

[15. ]Act 4, sc. 9.

[16. ]

• That I do love thee more then I do love
• My Life (if thou doubt’st, Cruel) ask this Grove,
• And that will tell thee; and with it each beast,
• Each stupid stock there can the same attest;
• Each stone of these high mountains, which so oft
• I with the voice of my complaints made soft.

[17. ]“Hardly had Caesar descended from his praetorian ship, than a dreadful storm arose in the port, which by its violence scattered the fleet and sank his ship, as if it would no longer bear Caesar or the Fortune of Caesar.”

[18. ]Act 2, sc. 1.

[19. ]Act 4, sc. 2: read “unsisting” for “unresisting.”

[20. ]“while thy severed hand, Larides, seeks its master, and the dying fingers twitch and clutch again at the sword.”

[21. ]Kames omits five lines between the second and third lines.

[22. ]

• Give me, ye sacred muses, to impart
• The hidden secrets of your tuneful art;
• Give me your awful mysteries to sing,
• Unlock, and open wide, your secret spring.
(Vida’s Art of Poetry, trans. Christopher Pitt)

[23. ]Act 1, sc. 2.

[24. ]Act 2, sc. 2.

[25. ]Act 2, sc. 2.

[26. ]Act 2, sc. 4.

[27. ]

• Sing thou on this, thy Phoebus; and the Wood
• Where once his Fane of Parian Marble stood.
• On this his ancient Oracles rehearse.
(trans. Dryden)

[28. ]

• Let her deservedly
• The Judge of all our kisses be
• Whose mouth is fairest. With one voice
• Of peerlesse Amarillis they made choice.
• She sweetly bending her fair eyes,
• Her cheeks in modest blushes dyes,
• To shew through her transparent skin
• That she is no lesse fair within
• Then shee’s without; or else her countenance
• Envying the honour done her mouth perchance
• Puts on her scarlet robes, as who
• Should say, And am not I fair too?
(Il Pastor Fido, trans. Richard Fanshawe)

[29. ]“And the arrow in its fury, thirsty for blood, departs, flies towards him, reaches him, and pierces his side.”

[30. ]“Black Care even takes her seat behind the horseman” (Odes 3.1.40).

[31. ]“A blundering fool, whom trouble and sickness afflicts in town and country alike, in vain mounts his steed to escape his worries, because Sorrow rides as pillion and gallops along with him.”

[* ]Epistle 10.

[32. ]“Next the harbour of Drepanum and its joyless shore receive me. Here I, who have been driven by so many ocean-storms, lose, alas! my father Anchises, solace of every care and chance; here, best of fathers, thou leavest me in my weariness, snatched, alas! From such mighty perils all for naught. Nor did the seer Helenus, though he warned me of many horrors, nor grim Celaeno foretell me this grief.”

[33. ]“And had the gods’ decrees, had our mind not been perverse, he had driven us to befoul with steel the Argive den, and Troy would now be standing, and thou, lofty citadel of Priam, wouldst still abide!”

[34. ]Act 3, sc. 2.

[35. ]“Faunus’ sire was Picus, and he boasts thee, O Saturn, as his father; thou art first founder of the line.”

[* ]See chap. 8.

[* ]Chap. 31. of his Treatise on the Sublime.

[36. ]“She might have flown o’er the topmost blades of unmown corn, nor in her course bruised the tender ears.”

[37. ]“And at the bottom of her seething chasm thrice she sucks the vast waves into the abyss, and again in turn casts them upwards, lashing the stars with spray.”

[38. ]“Near at hand Aetna thunders with terrifying crashes, and now hurls forth to the sky a black cloud, smoking with pitch-black eddy and glowing ashes, and uplifts balls of flame and licks the stars.”

[39. ]“He, gigantic, strikes the stars on high.”

[40. ]

• Uniting force extreme, with endlesse wrath,
• Supporting both with youth and strength untired,
• His thundering blowes so fast about he la’th,
• That skies and earth the flying sparkles fired.
(Gerusalemme Liberata, trans. Fairfax)

[* ]L. 8. cap. 6. in fin.

[41. ]Act 3, sc. 3.

[42. ]“A short time and our princely piles will leave but a few acres to the plough.”

[43. ]Act 1, sc. 3.

[44. ]Act 1, sc. 1: read “his beams” for “its beams,” “wrathful” for “awful.”

[45. ]“If all the trees were pens, the sky was paper and the sea was ink, they would not capture the smallest part of your perfections.”

[46. ]Il Pastor Fido, act 5, sc. 2:

• O glorious Lovers! If I had tongues more
• Then Heaven hath eyes, or sands are on the shore,
• Their voices would be drowned in the main
• Sea of your endless Praises, Glorious Dame,
• Daughter of Jove (eternall as thy Father).

[47. ]Claude de Malleville (1597–1647), cited in the first edition as from Collection of French Epigrams, vol. 1, p. 66. “Silence reigned over land and sea, the sky became calm and Olympus vermilion, and the amorous West Wind shaking off sleep revived the flowers with a second breath. Dawn spread out the gold of her flaxen hair, and sowed with rubies the path of the sun; at last the God appeared in his finest array, that he might ever light the world. But when young and smiling Phillis left his palace more radiant than the east, he shone forth as a light yet brighter still and more beautiful. O sacred flame of day, do not be jealous that you seemed as dim beside him as the stars of the night beside you.”

[48. ]Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight’s Tale, 2273.

[* ]See chap. 2. part 1. sect. 5.

[49. ]“rash deed” (Terence, Eunuch 4.3.2).

[50. ]Titus Maccius Plautus (ca. 205–184 ), a comic playwright whose plays are the earliest Latin works to have survived complete: “I thought that both of them had perished in the miserable sea.”

[51. ]Act 3, sc. 5.

[52. ]Paradise Lost, 3.546.

[53. ]“Iccius, art thou looking now with envious eye at the rich treasures of the Arabians.”

[54. ]Henry VI, Part 1, act 4, sc. 5.

[55. ]Line 1346.

[* ]See chap. 1.

[56. ]“sink and o’erwhelm the ships.”

[57. ]Act 3, sc. 3.

[58. ]Act 1, sc. 2. Modern texts read as follows:

• Edward’s seven sons, wherof thyself art one,
• Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,
• Or seven fair branches springing from one root:
• Some of those seven are dried by nature’s course,
• Some of those branches by the Destinies cut;
• But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester,
• One vial full of Edward’s sacred blood,
• One flourishing branch of his most royal root,
• Is crack’d, and all the precious liquor spilt;
• Is hack’d down, and his summer leaves all vaded,
• By envy’s hand and murder’s bloody axe.

[59. ]Act 4, sc. 3.

[60. ]Act 5, sc. 4.

[* ]L. 8. cap. 6. sect. 2. [Sect. 44]

[61. ]“O ship, new billows threaten to bear thee out to sea again. Beware! Haste valiantly to reach the haven!”

[62. ]“And the rest of the ode, in which Horace represents the state under the semblance of a ship, the civil wars as tempests, and peace and good-will as the haven.”

[63. ]“As for me, the temple wall with its votive tablet shows I have hung up my dripping garments to the god who is master of the sea.”

[64. ]Book 4, ode 15: “When I wished to sing of fights and cities won, Apollo checked me, striking loud his lyre, and forbade my spreading tiny sails upon the Tuscan Sea.”

[65. ]Act 5, sc. 4.

[66. ]Act 4, sc. 3.

[67. ]Act 4, sc. 2.

[68. ]Act 1, sc. 3.

[69. ]Act 3, sc. 2 to read:

• Here is a letter, lady,
• The paper as the body of my friend
• And every word in it a gaping wound
• Issuing life-blood.

[70. ]“So vast was the struggle to found the race of Rome.”

[* ]Chap. 19. Comparisons.

[71. ]“The Constant.”

[72. ]“Greedy flames sucked in his heart.”

[73. ]Act 4, sc. 5: delete “frail.”

[74. ]“For it is all important to follow the principle illustrated by this passage and never to mix your metaphors, But there are many who, after beginning with a tempest, will end with a fire or a falling house, with the result that they produce a hideously incongruous effect.” Read “Multi autem” for “multi enim.”

[75. ]Henry IV, Part 1, act 5, sc. 1.

[76. ]Act 3, sc. 1: read “slings” for “stings.”

[77. ]“But the queen, long since smitten with a grievous love-pang, feeds the wound with her life-blood, and is wasted with fire unseen.”

[78. ]“All the while the flame devours her tender heart-strings, and deep in her breast lives the silent wound.”

[79. ]“Thou art treating of the civil strife that with Metellus’ consulship began, the causes of the war, its blunders, and its phases, and Fortune’s game, friendships of leaders that boded ill, and weapons stained with blood as yet unexpiated—a task full of dangerous hazard—and art walking, as it were, over fires hidden beneath treacherous ashes.”

[80. ]Read “set in the silver sea.”

[81. ]“In times of stress shew thyself bold and valiant! Yet wisely reef thy sails when they are swollen by too fair a breeze.” (Odes II.x)

[82. ]“Yes, his modesty is but a shameless grimace, that a cloak of virtue poorly disguises, and which vanishes, as one comes to realise, in the light of day when a purse appears.”

[83. ]

• Their Fustian Muse each accident confounds;
• Nor ever rises but by leaps and bounds,
• Till their small Stock of Learning quickly spent,
• Their poem dies for lack of nourishment.
(Boileau, trans. N. Rowe)

[84. ]“Alas! How often shall he lament changed faith and gods, and marvel in surprise at waters rough with darkening gales, who now enjoys thee, fondly thinking thee all golden, who hopes that thou wilt ever be free of passion for another, ever lovely—ignorant of the treacherous breeze.” Read “quotiens fidem” for “quoties fidem.”

[85. ]

• While all my Care shall be my Skiff to save,
• From Rock and Shelf, and the devouring Wave;
• To Govern my Desires, by Passion tost,
• Least Reason, in the raging Storm be lost.
(Boileau, trans. N. Rowe)

[86. ]Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax (1661–1715): statesman, poet, disciple, and subsequently patron of Isaac Newton and of Addison. He was one of the commissioners who negotiated the union with Scotland in 1706.

[* ]Reflections sur la Poesie, vol. 1. sect. 24.

[87. ]“cruel Cupid, ever whetting his fiery darts on blood-stained stone.”

[88. ]Act 2, sc. 2: read “death” for “birth.”

[* ]Act 4. sc. 6. [Act 4, sc. 3: delete “then” in last line.]

[90. ]

• See how the poet banishes with grace
• A native term to give a stranger place;
• From different images with just success,
• He cloaths his matter in the borrow’d dress,
• The borrow’d dress the things themselves admire,
• And wonder whence they drew the strange attire.
• Proud of their ravish’d spoils they now disclaim
• Their former colour, and their genuine name,
• And in another garb, more beauteous grown,
• Prefer the foreign habit to their own.
• Oft’ as he paints a battle on the plain,
• The battle’s imag’d by the rouring main;
• Now he the fight a fiery deluge names,
• That pours along the fields a flood of flames;
• In airy conflict, now the winds appear,
• Alarms the deeps, and wage the stormy war;
• To the fierce shock th’embattl’d tempests pour
• Waves charge on waves; th’encountering billows roar.
• Thus in a varied dress the subject shines,
• By turns the objects shift their proper signs;
• From shape to shape alternately they run,
• To borrow others charms, and lend their own;
• Pleas’d with the borrow’d charms, the readers find,
• A crowd of different images combin’d
• Rise from a single object of the mind.

[* ]See chap. 2. part. 1. sect. 5.

[† ]I have often regretted, that a factious spirit of opposition to the reigning family makes it necessary in public worship to distinguish the King by his proper name. One will scarce imagine who has not made the trial, how much better it sounds to pray for our Sovereign Lord the King, without any addition.

[91. ]

• And hence Ulysses’ toils were I to choose,
• For the main theme that should employ my muse;
• By his long labours of immortal fame,
• I’d paint my heroe, but conceal his name;
• As one, who lost at sea, had nations seen,
• And mark’d their towns, their manners and their men,
• Since Troy was level’d to the dust by Greece;
• [’Till a few lines epitomiz’d the piece.].

[92. ]

• Ev’n the rough hinds delight in such a strain,
• When the glad harvest waves the golden grain;
• And thirsty meadows drink the pearly rain;
• On the proud vine her purple gems appear;
• The smiling fields rejoice, and hail the pregnant year.
• First from necessity the figure sprung
• For things, that would not suit our scanty tongue,
• When no true names were offer’d to the view,
• Those they transferr’d that bordered on the true;
• Thence by degrees the noble license grew.

[93. ]The preceding three phrases are translated as:

• “I recall from the depths”
• “Nothing for me is more ancient [i.e., solid] than our friendship”
• “In trying to be precise, I become obscure”
[Horace]

[94. ]Aeneid 4.1: “The queen, long since smitten with a grievous love pang.”

[95. ]Metamorphoses 12.513: “Pelion stripped of its forest shade.”

[96. ]“With my wound I will follow you, not my feet.”

[97. ]“We wander on the blind waves.”

[98. ]“Meanwhile Neptune saw the sea in a turmoil of wild uproar.”

[99. ]Circilio 2.3.65: “I gave thirty minae for your head.”

[100. ]“Fleeing, with back turned.”

[101. ]Odes 2.1: “Even now the gleam of weapons strikes terror into timid horses and into the horsemen’s faces.”

[102. ]Odes 1.24: “What restraint should there be to grief for one so dear?”

[103. ]Epodes 13.4: “While our limbs are strong [literally ‘knees’]”

[104. ]Thomas Parnell (1679–1718), friend of Swift, and of Pope who published his works posthumously.

[105. ]“Black odour” (bad smell).

[106. ]“I beg you, make clear your resolution.”

[107. ]Horace Odes 3.13: “O Melpomene, thou to whom the Father gave a liquid voice and music of the lyre.”

[108. ]“And are varnished over with finely sounding phrase.”

(trans. H. A. J. Munro, London, 1864)

[109. ]“But the dense throng, shoulder to shoulder packed, drinks in more eagerly with listening ear stories of battles and of tyrants banished.”

[110. ]“Rooted to the spot in terror of the din.”

[111. ]“The chariot heeds not the rein.”

[112. ]

• But tho’ our fond indulgence grants the muse,
• A thousand liberties in different view;
• When e’er you chuse an image to express
• In foreign terms, and scorn the native dress,
• Yet be discreete; nor strain the point too far,
• Let the transition still unforc’d appear,
• Nor e’er discover an excess of care;
• For some we know with awkward silence
• Distort the subject, and disguise the sense;
• Quite change the genuine figure, and deface
• The native shape with ev’ry living grace;
• And force unwilling objects to put on
• An alien face, and features not their own.
• A low conceit in disproportion’d terms,
• Is like a boy dress’d up in giants arms;
• Blind to the truth, all reason they exceed,
• Who name a stall, the palace of a steed,
• Or grass the tresses of great Rhea’s head.

[114. ]Act 3, sc. 2.

[115. ]Act 4, sc. 5.

[116. ]Act 4, sc. 1.

[117. ]John Dryden.

[118. ]From “The Long Life.”

[119. ]From “The Tree.”

[120. ]From “Weeping.”

[121. ]François de Maynard (1583–1646) Oeuvres poétiques: untitled epigram.

I fear that the season will bring in the plague; the mouth of the Celestial Dog is vomiting fire on the horizon. Before I am released from it I want to read your great book to the very last page: everything that your pen inscribes, Robinet, has a coolness that makes July shiver.

[122. ]“Upon me Venus, leaving her Cyprus, has fallen with all her power.”

[123. ]“Meanwhile by the wave of the Tiber river, the father staunched his wounds with water, and rested his reclining frame against a tree’s trunk.”

[124. ]“For full three days, shrouded in misty gloom, we wander in the deep, for as many starless nights.”

[125. ]“Then let Opuntian Megylla’s brother tell with what wound, what shaft, he languishes in bliss.”

[126. ]“I, a chary and infrequent worshipper of the gods, what time I wandered, the votary of a foolish wisdom.”

[127. ]Act 3, sc. 1: read “And I of ladies” for “I am of ladies.”

[128. ]“Ah! Wretched youth! In what fatal whirlpool art thou caught, lad worthy of a better flame! What witch, what wizard with Thessalian charms, nay, what god, can rescue thee! Entangled, as thou art, in the triple-formed Chimaera’s toils, scarce Pegasus shall set thee free.”

[129. ]Broad, curved convex-edged sword.

[130. ]“And kindle the altars with offerings.”

[131. ]“And pile on baskets the gifts of Ceres.”

[132. ]“Arms for a brave warrior must ye make. Now is need of strength, now of swift hands, now of all your masterful skill. Fling off delay!”

[133. ]“Driven through the brazen joints and through tunic rough with gold, the sword drank from his pierced side.”

[134. ]“And the doom of death, that before had been slow and distant, quickened its pace.”

[135. ]“Thou shalt be heralded by Varius, a poet of Homeric flight, as valiant and victorious o’er the foe.”

[136. ]Line 333.

[137. ]Line 633.

[138. ]Line 957.

[139. ]Line 735.

[140. ]Act 1, sc. 2.