essay, we trace the unfolding of a plot, a story, which is the easiest and most engaging of literary forms. EXAMPLE. The following, being the opening paragraph of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, will illustrate something of the fundamental machinery of that story : — "As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a Dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a Man cloathed with Rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great Burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the Book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled ; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying What shall I do?" 2. Allegory is so predominantly associated, in ordinary minds, with its great monuments, like the Pilgrim's Progress and Spenser's Faerie Queene, and with moral virtues and lessons, that it is quite generally thought to be obsolete, or something to be shunned, like a sermon. The fact is, how ever, it is a very vital and by no means infrequent figure, though more in the way of allegoric touches, and used with the reticence and delicacy that obtains in the more modern art of literature. It is often a valuable means of exposition, being closely allied to analogy.1 EXAMPLE. The following paragraph illustrates Dean Swift's peculiar ways, often bullying and insolent, of obtaining his ends in politics and his disappointment at not obtaining a bishopric for himself: "Could there be a greater candor? It is an outlaw who says, 'These are my brains; with these I'll win titles and compete with fortune. These are my bullets; these I'll turn into gold;' and he hears the sound of coaches and six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue ribbon, and my lady's brocade petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre and crosier in it, which he intends to have for his share has been delayed on the way 1 For Analogy, see above, p. 77; in Exposition, see below, p. 567. from St. James's; and he waits and waits until nightfall, when his runners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different road, and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with a curse, and rides away into his own country." 1 Various modifications of the figure Allegory, such as Parable, Fable, Apologue, belong rather to invention than to style, and being well enough defined in any dictionary, need not be further discriminated here. II. - The connotation of a sup Implicatory Words and Coloring. porting or illustrative idea, which is the enriching source of all the figures of this class, is generally made more gracefully and with less suggestion of labor and artifice, by some means of implication, putting the reader as it were in the atmosphere and attitude of the connoted idea without making it obvious how he got there. The effect of this is not only illustrative; it gives also a picturesque tone and coloring to the whole passage, making it a verbal cloth of gold. Trope. This word, from the Greek Tрéπw, "to turn," which is popularly used as nearly synonymous with figures of speech, is here adopted to denote a word so turned from its literal setting and suggestiveness as to flash a figurative implication in one swift term. As to principle, it is not new; it involves metaphor, simile, or personification, but it does not work them out, it merely suggests and leaves them. Trope is the commonest of figurative expedients; every style that has vigor or imagination is full of it. From the beginning it has so truly been the spontaneous means of imparting lightness and lucidity to abstract ideas that nearly the whole vocabulary of moral and intellectual terms is in its origin tropical.2 1 THACKERAY, English Humorists, Lecture on Swift. 2 "We should often be at a loss how to describe a notion, were we not at liberty to employ in a metaphorical sense the name of anything sufficiently resembling it. EXAMPLES. -1. An involved Simile. "The tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face,” etc.1-"Those graceful fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks." 2"The light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar leaves." Many of the adjectives in -like, -ly, -en, involve an original simile. 2. Involved Metaphor. “It [a university] is the place where the catechist makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the truth day by day into the ready memory, and wedging and tightening it into the expanding reason. It is a place which wins the admiration of the young by its celebrity, kindles the affections of the middle-aged by its beauty, and rivets the fidelity of the old by its associations." — In the following a single word suffices to associate the object named with the sun, whose spots are invisible from the excess of light: "There are poems which we should be inclined to designate as faultless, or as disfigured only by blemishes which pass unnoticed in the general blaze of excellence." 5 3. Involved Personification. "But in the apparent height of their power and prosperity the progress of decay had already begun, and once begun it was rapid. Floods, sieges, and sacks all contributed to it, but it was chiefly due to the course of physical change, conspiring with the increase in the burthen of vessels." Synecdoche and Metonymy. These, from their unobtrusiveness and spontaneity, may be classed with the implicatory figures. Their connotation is very close, lying, in fact, within the radius of the thing illustrated, with its natural relations and attributes. The two figures, being essentially alike in principle, are here described together. 1. SYNECDOCHE lets some striking part of an object stand for the whole, or, less frequently, the whole for a part. It is There would be no expression for the sweetness of a melody, or the brilliance of an harangue, unless it were furnished by the taste of honey and the brightness of a torch." -JEVONS, Principles of Science. See also EARLE, English Prose, p. 241. 1 Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, Vol. i, p. 247. 2 NEWMAN, Historical Sketches, Vol. iii, p. 22. 8 STEVENSON, An Inland Voyage (Thistle edition), p. 60. 4 NEWMAN, ut supra, p. 16. 5 MACAULAY, Essay on Hallam's Constitutional History. 6" One of the richer sources of Figure is the attribution of human qualities to objects which are naturally devoid of them. Sometimes it hardly amounts to what we should call Personification, it is merely a tinge of anthropomorphism.” — EARLE, English Prose, p. 246. The example is quoted by him. essentially synecdoche, too, and gives a peculiar coloring to an assertion, when a verb that denotes a more partial or limited action is used for the larger or more comprehensive action natural to the object. EXAMPLES. — 1. Of Name-Synecdoche. It will be noted that the part named in the following is just the part most useful for setting forth the idea or picture: “There moved the multitude, a thousand heads." 1 "The gilded parapets were crown'd With faces, and the great tower fill'd with eyes Up to the summit, and the trumpets blew." 2 ། 2. Of Verb-Synecdoche. "Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle."8 The literal fact is that he resided at Highgate. — “Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue Ægean, many a spot is there more beautiful or sublime to see, many a territory more ample; but there was one charm in Attica, which in the same perfection was nowhere else." 4 Washing is an insignificant act for a sea. 2. METONYMY (μerá and ovvμa, “change of name") names not the object but some aspect or accompaniment of it so closely related in idea as to be naturally interchangeable with it. EXAMPLES. "He was a capable man, with a good chance in life; but he had drunk up two thriving businesses like a bottle of sherry, and involved his sons along with him in ruin."5" There are places that still smell of the plough in memory's nostrils." 6 "The bright death quiver'd at the victim's throat; Touch'd; and I knew no more." 7 It will be noted in the above examples that while in synecdoche the connoted part is more restricted than the original, in metonymy it is more 1 TENNYSON, The Princess, Prologue, 1. 57. 2 Ib., Pelleas and Ettarre, l. 158. 8 CARLYLE, Life of John Sterling, p. 52. 4 NEWMAN, Historical Sketches, Vol. iii, p. 20. 5 STEVENSON, The Amateur Emigrant (Thistle edition), p. 33. abstract, it enlarges the scope of the idea by identifying it with some general significance or result of it. The above-quoted examples are purposely chosen for their comparative boldness; how common and natural the figure may be, however, may be seen from this metonymy from Gibbon : "The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor."1 Concerning both these figures it is to be remarked that their principle is to choose merely the serviceable part of the idea, whether it is the actual part that is most intimately concerned in the picture or the relation that deepens its significance, and, employing merely this, to let the rest go. Thus they reduce an idea to its focus and centre, and make that do the work. Allusion. An allusion (ad and ludo, literally a "play upon ") is an indirect reference to or suggestion of something that the reader may be trusted to understand, some personage, incident, expression, or custom. The employment of allusion connotes all that the reader knows of the thing alluded to, making it throw light on the idea in hand. Often a whole region of implication is thus opened. The following are some of the most striking uses of allusion. 1. The name of some noted personage of history or literature is sometimes used to connote the traits with which the personage is identified; as when a person is called a Solomon, a Judas, a Napoleon, a Tartuffe, a Pecksniff. EXAMPLES. The familiar line "A Daniel come to judgment," from The Merchant of Venice, will at once suggest itself to the student. "He [Donne] was the blind Samson in the Elizabethan gate, strong enough to pull the beautiful temple of Spenserian fancy about the ears of the worshippers, but powerless to offer them a substitute." 2 The word Samson, by its allusive suggestion, connotes strength of a blind brute kind, yet not without sublimity and greatness. 1 GIBBON, Decline and Fall, introductory paragraph. 2 GOSSE, Modern English Literature, p. 123. |