MIXED METAPHORS.

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confused when incompatible operations are required to be joined.

The following example has often been quoted from Addi-
poem on the victories of Marlborough:-

"I bridle in my struggling muse with pain,
That longs to launch into a bolder strain."

Three different actions are here conjoined in one.

"The noble harbor of the Golden Horn, five miles in length, crowded with all the flags of Europe lying in its bosom."

The following line from Young, although a mixed metaphor, is considered elegant and expressive:

"Her voice is but the shadow of a sound."

In like manner, many of the mixed metaphors in Shakespeare are redeemed by their effectiveness and originality.

The mixture of the metaphorical and the plain, or literal, is also objectionable. Dryden, speaking of the aids he had in his translations, says, "I was sailing in a vast ocean without other help than the pole-star of the ancients, and the rules of the French stage among the moderns." "Boyle was the father of Chemistry, and brother to the Earl of Cork."

When words have lost their metaphorical meaning, the incongruity is no longer felt. There are, however, many words that have ceased to be metaphors, but still so far suggest their original meaning as to give the sense of harmony when the figure is attended to. Thus, to say "the impression was conveyed" involves a certain degree of inconsistency, although quite intelligible. "Upon the style it is that these perplexities depend for their illumination." Perplexity should be disentangled, and obscurity illuminated.

Our language has many combinations of words, indifferent as regards the metaphor, but fixed by use, and therefore not to be departed from. We say "use or employ means," and "take steps," but not use steps. One may acquire knowledge, take degrees, contract habits, lay up treasure, obtain rewards, win prizes, gain celebrity, arrive at honors, conduct affairs, espouse a side, interpose authority, pursue a course, turn to account, serve for a warning, bear no malice, profess principles, cultivate

acquaintance, pass over in silence; all which expressions owe their suitability, not to the original sense of the words, but to the established usages of the language.

(2.) The straining of a Metaphor. By this is meant the pursuing of the figure into details that are irrelevant or out of keeping.

Young, speaking of old age, says it should

"Walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore

Of that vast ocean it must sail so soon;

And put good works on board; and wait the wind
That shortly blows us into worlds unknown."

In the last two lines, the feelings suggested are out of keeping with what goes before. At first an emotion of deep solemnity is excited; the figure then changes to the prosaic and calculating operations of a sea-faring enterprise.

This fault is, therefore, a case of discord, which is everywhere a blemish in composition.

(3.) Excess of Metaphors.

When metaphors are greatly multiplied, it becomes difficult to preserve their congruity, and the variety of subjects necessarily distracts the mind. There is also the evil attending profusion of figures generally; the mind is kept too much on the strain.

The ancient critics particularly adverted to this fault. In the opinion of Longinus, Demosthenes observed the just mean and Plato often exceeded it. Such excess, however, is not likely to be confined to metaphors, but extends to all kinds of figures, constituting the florid or figurative style.

PERSONIFICATION.

23. Personification consists in attributing life and mind to inanimate things. "The mountains sing together, the hills rejoice and clap their hands."

Personification is a figure of various degrees.

I. The highest degree ascribes to inanimate objects human feelings and purposes, as well as sex.

PERSONIFICATION.

As in Milton, on Eve's taking the forbidden fruit :-
"So saying, her rash hand, in evil hour,

Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she ate!
Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat
Sighing, through all her works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost."

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It is in this form that the figure appears in the boldest flights of poetry. In figurative boldness it is surpassed only by the Apostrophe. Shelley's "Cloud" is personification throughout. The following stanza is an example:

"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder."

Besides the actual objects of Nature, it is not unusual to personify abstractions of the mind; as, time, life, death, truth, love, virtue, evil, sin, hope, wisdom, genius, friendship, pleasure, vengeance.

"Can wisdom lend, with all her boasted power,

The pledge of joy's anticipated hour?"

By a process short of personification, abstractions may be represented as real things, and thereby be rendered more vivid. Thus time is a river, a shore, a wave on the ocean of eternity. Life is a vapor, a dream, a shadow.

Ancient mythology gave personal existence to all the imposing objects and appearances of Nature; the sun, moon, and stars; the sky, earth, seas, mountains, rocks, hills, valleys, rivers, springs, floods; the winds, clouds, thunder, hail; the day, night, dawn, light, dark; the seasons. Likewise to the important productions of nature, as corn and wine.

These personifications are retained in the poetry of all languages, for the sake of clothing the objects with the interest that personality gives.

24. II. Another and inferior degree of personification consists in merely attributing some quality of living beings to things inanimate.

As, the thirsty ground, a dying lamp, the angry sea, a cruel disaster, the smiling year. Thomson, describing the influence of the sunbeams upon the snow in the valley, says,

"Perhaps the vale

Relents awhile to the neglected ray."

"Upon a rock whose haughty brow."

The two forms of personification shade into each other. The second is also included among Metaphors, constituting one species of that figure.

25. The English language, by reserving the distinction of gender for living beings that have sex, gives especial scope for personification.

In many languages, as Greek, Latin, French, German, &c., gender is attributed to inanimate objects, in a manner that deprives it of all its meaning. In English, the masculine and feminine pronouns are regularly applied only to persons and to the more distinguished animals. Hence they are closely associated in our minds with personality; and their occasional application to things without life has at once a personifying effect.

26. The special value of personification arises from the interest awakened in us by the actions, feelings, and deportment of beings like ourselves.

Some of the strongest feelings of our nature have reference to persons; such are love, admiration, vanity, the thirst for power, revenge, derision. It is one effect of advancing civilization to enlarge the interest that we take in our fellow-creatures. The compositions that touch the deepest chords of the mind deal principally with persons, as Poetry, Romance, and History. From the earliest times, this interest has been extended, by ascribing human feelings to the objects of the outer world on some pretext of remote resemblance. Thus the powers of nature, as the winds and running streams, have been assimilated

to living beings, and fancifully endowed with will, purpose, and feeling, so as to be recommended to our human sympathies. The highest merits of style are expressed by the words animation, vivacity, liveliness, as if the conferring of life were the means of awakening our strongest interest. (See STRENGTH, POETRY.)

The highest form of personification should be used seldom, and only when justified by the presence of strong feeling.

ALLEGORY-FABLE- PARABLE.

27. When, with a view to some moral or instruction, subjects remote from one another are brought into a comparison sustained throughout the details, the result is an Allegory.

The Pilgrim's Progress is a well-known example. In it the spiritual life or progress of the Christian is represented at length by the story of a pilgrim in search of a distant country, which he reaches after many struggles and difficulties.

Comparisons of such length as Extract I. (APPENDIX) are allegories.

Examples occur in the Spectator-the Vision of Mirza, 159; Luxury and Avarice, 55; The Paradise of Fools, 460. In the Appendix, Extract III., is an allegorical contrast of Probability and Plausibility, from Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric.

Chaucer's House of Fame is an allegory, imitated by Pope in his Temple of Fame.

Spenser's Faery Queen is allegorical throughout; the vir tues and vices being personified, and made to act out their nature in a series of supposed adventures.

Thomson's Castle of Indolence is one of the many imitations of Spenser.

Swift's Tale of a Tub is an allegory, wherein the divisions of Christianity (Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinistic) are represented as three brothers, whose adventures are related. So, in the Travels of Gulliver, the vices of politicians are ridiculed by being exemplified in communities made up of imaginary beings