The Spirit of a Comparison. In addition to the illustrative value of simile or metaphor, a delicate revelation of the writer's mood or feeling is often made through the choice of the object to which the matter in hand is compared. Thus the figure may disparage or elevate, may convey contempt or connote admiration or poke fun, and thus induce in the reader a touch of the same mood.

EXAMPLES. -1. Of Simile. With the following passage it is natural to associate sublimity; this feeling, in fact, is stronger than the illustrative value:

"On the other side, Satan, alarmed,

Collecting all his might, dilated stood,

Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:

His stature reached the sky, and on his crest
Sat Horror plumed." 1

The following connotes Ruskin's feeling of contempt for the object described: "We have got into the way, among our other modern wretchedness, of trying to make windows of leaf diapers, and of strips of twisted red and yellow bands, looking like the patterns of currant jelly on the top of Christmas cakes; but every casement of old glass contained a saint's history." 2 The following evidently indulges in a sly laugh at its object: "The unwonted lines which momentary passion had ruled in Mr. Pickwick's clear and open brow, gradually melted away, as his young friend spoke, like the marks of a black-lead pencil beneath the softening influence of India rubber." 8

2. Of Metaphor. The following both illustrates the manner of an action and conveys a disparaging estimate of its character: "Pierre Bayle wrote enormous folios, one sees not on what motive principle; he flowed on forever, a mighty tide of ditch-water; and even died flowing, with the pen in his hand." 4— The following, by a double entendre in the trope-word, conveys a sly innuendo: "Sentences of the same calibre, some even of far larger bore, we have observed in this and other works of the same author."5

In the employment of figure a sound sense of humor and congruity in other words, a in other words, a sane literary sense - must always be present, or in some lapse of taste the comparison may flat the note, or introduce unintentionally some uncongenial or ludicrous suggestion. It is eminently here that the fineness of a writer's literary endowment shows.

EXAMPLES. When, for instance, a young writer says of John Quincey Adams's statesmanship that it was as pure as a lily, the figure may in part illustrate, but it does not really belong with the idea statesmanship, it is more congruous with more delicate ideas. I once heard a clergyman, endeavoring to describe pictorially some great heaps of white summer cloud, say that they looked like immense great balls of popcorn. The picture was successful; but —.

The Key of Words. This expression, adopted from Robert Louis Stevenson,' suggests that in a masterfully written passage there is a certain relation of words to each other, by which they aid each other in maintaining a congruous emotional level; they comport with a mood of homeliness or severe dignity, of contempt or whimsey, of enthusiasm or meditative pensiveness. This key of words is kept fine and unerring only by skill in the various strata or levels of the vocabulary; a writer must be at home in the dialect of beauty or bluntness, of grace or coarseness, and know not only the denotation but the feel, the congenial mood, of his word.

EXAMPLES. -There is a scale of expression by which the same idea or act may be coarsened to various depths; as is exemplified in the expressions "to become intoxicated," "to get drunk," coarsest of all, "to get full.” — A whole vocabulary of disparaging words is thus available, as poetaster, criticaster, pulpiteer, fellow, manikin, and the like; e.g. "It is time for even the fiery pulpiteers to pause and reflect," where we know well the writer's feeling toward the clergymen mentioned.

One of the most serviceable forms of this connotation is in a kind of reduction of the idea to its lowest or boldest terms; e.g. "A fool he was, if you will; but so is a sovereign a fool, that will give half a principality for a little crystal as big as a pigeon's egg, and called a diamond: so is a

1 See above, p. 15, footnote.

wealthy nobleman a fool, that will face danger or death, and spend half his life, and all his tranquility, caballing for a blue riband; so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that hath been known to pay ten thousand crowns for a tulip."1 How such words may color a passage, forming a key or scheme of expression, may be seen in the following: "What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who is more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune? Mr. Addison has painted such a figure in his noble piece of Cato. But suppose fugitive Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out for his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes the door on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up — upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavernchorus which he and his friends are singing." "2

On the side of the connotation of idea, which in fact often blends with the connotation of emotion, this subject has already been treated under the head of Coloring due to Association; see above, p. 93, which section ought to be studied along with this.

Reserve, or Understatement. One result of the more delicate literary art of our day is the frequent custom of describing intense or exciting facts in studiously mild terms, but with such connotation as to lay the hint of it on the reader's imagination, trusting to that to supply the commensurate realizing mood. This reserve of statement is thus in a sense the opposite of the overt figures of emotion. Instead of exhibiting a great passion of excitement and by violent language pulling the reader up to it, it works as it were to keep the reader's emotion in advance of the expressed idea, by sending his thoughts out toward a generously suggested effect or situation.

A principle so broad as this is hard to cover by typical examples. One of the most striking ways of understatement is by LITOTES,3 which suggests its intended idea by negating its opposite; connoting at the same time an animus of inten2 Ib., Book i, Chap. i.

1 THACKERAY, Henry Esmond, Book iii, Chap. ii.

3 The connection of litotes with the double negative will come up for further mention; see below, p. 271.

sity, or challenge, or it may be satirical playfulness, the mood being evident from the kind of terms employed.

EXAMPLES. -"He [the Puritan] had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice." Here the negation of ordinary qualities sends out suggestion toward extraordinary as far as the reader's imagination will go, and setting no limits, suggests endless intensity.

The animus of innuendo is illustrated in the following: "The editor is clearly no witch at a riddle,”2 where it is playfully intimated that he is surprisingly stupid. "I made up my mind that ambulances, viewed as vehicles for driving distinguished ladies to military reviews, were not a stupendous success, and that thereafter they had better be confined to their legitimate uses of transporting the wounded and attending funerals.” 3 In this last example the innuendo is a little overdone; it lacks fineness.

1 MACAULAY, Essay on Milton.

2 CARLYLE, Essay on Boswell's Johnson.
3 PORTER, Campaigning with Grant.

CHAPTER V.

PROSE DICTION - STANDARD AND OCCASIONAL.

ENTERING now upon a new stage of our subject, we are to consider the general effect and resultant of the words and figures employed, the prevailing character and color that these impart to the whole passage or composition. This is what is meant distinctively by diction, the mere study and choice of expression being virtually the primitive stage of getting out the raw material. The problem of diction, then, is a problem of artistry: of giving such marshaling and management to a scheme of words as to produce a homogeneous tissue and movement of a certain determinate kind.

The most fundamental distribution of the subject is into Prose Diction and Poetic Diction, to each of which a chapter will be devoted, though each division, being subject at every point to invasions from the other, must be considered constantly with reference to the other. Under prose diction we are first to inquire after the principle or standard to which all prose, as prose, must conform, and secondly, to recount some of the claims or liberties of prose, as determined by some particular object or occasion.

Definition of Prose. It is important to have as startingpoint a just idea of what is most central and character-giving in prose, and this is well furnished by the various terms that in time past have been used to designate it.

The designating word, to begin with, merely sets prose over against verse. It comes from the Latin prosa, a contracted form of prorsa, which itself is a contraction of the compound