(little cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow's head was in his mouth. As he had not been careful to shut the door, Hepzibah was at the pains of closing it after him, with a pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness of young people, and particularly of small boys. She had just placed another representative of the renowned Jim Crow at the window, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamorously, and again the door being thrust open, with its characteristic jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little urchin who, precisely two minutes ago, had made his exit. The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast, as yet hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about his mouth."1

13. Stock Expressions and Cant. - It is not the slang of the day alone that is ephemeral. Good expressions also, happy terms and phrases, may lose their power by becoming worn; as soon, in fact, as they become stock expressions they are liable to creep into one's speech unbidden, and thus to become not representatives of thought but substitutes for it. just then the use of them seems to strike the note of insincerity; the writer seems to be saying what he does not fully mean. This may or may not be the case; the outworn phrase may just express the writer's thought; but the chances are that it does not, and at least the reader also should recognize it as freshly and independently expressed, and should be convinced of it by the individual manner of expression. The name given to speech or manner of thinking which by becoming conventional has become insincere is cant.

The matter resolves itself into a plea for self-reliance and independence. Use no expression thoughtlessly, or merely because it is current, but from your own recognition of its fitness, plainly because, whether new or old, it represents your own thought.

ILLUSTRATION. Boswell once asked Dr. Johnson, of certain poems just published, "Is there not imagination in them, Sir?" "Why, Sir,"

1 HAWTHORNE, The House of the Seven Gables, p. 69.

2 See above, p. 64.

8 Compare the first artistic fault mentioned, p. 6.

replied the Doctor, "there is in them what was imagination, but it is no more imagination in him, than sound is sound in the echo. And his diction too is not his own. We have long ago seen white-robed innocence and flower-bespangled meads."

1. The way in which phrases may become stock expressions may be illustrated by the old religious expressions, now going by, as: "the sacred desk" for pulpit; "the vale of tears"; "worms of the dust"; "to hold out faithful." Also by words and phrases much over-worked to-day; as, "to be in touch " with something; "survival of the fittest"; "the trend" of things or events; "to go without saying" (a foreign idiom translated; see above, p. 61).

2. The following happily illustrates the breaking up of the trite phrase "without let or hindrance": "No one will question that the whole nature of the holiest being tends to what is holy without let, struggle, or strife—it would be impiety to doubt it." The good effect of this is easily felt.

CHAPTER IV.

WORDS AND FIGURES FOR CONNOTATION.

HITHERTO We have considered the various problems involved in the choice of words for what they literally say, literally (litera), that is, according to the letter. But there is a way of employing not only words but sentences and whole compositions, in which more is meant than meets the ear. A writer may talk about something entirely aside from his theme, yet in such a way that the theme is not departed from but vivified and illustrated; or he may use such terms and colorings of expression as serve to infuse into the passage some indication of how he feels, and how he would have his reader feel, about the idea he is conveying. This is figurative language; or to use a more comprehensive and scientific term, connotation,1- conveying, besides the literal meaning of the word, a secondary force or meaning.

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Practical Value of Figures. Figures of speech are popularly regarded as ornaments and artifices of style. This they are not, primarily, as is shown by the fact that any suspicion of artifice or over-elaboration in the management of them destroys their flavor at once. They generally add beauty to the style, it is true; but this is because the associated idea, brought in for usefulness, is in itself beautiful; besides this, there is an intrinsic beauty in the art of crowding expression with manifold suggestion and enlisting imagination and emotion in it. Under all this, however, is the sturdy basis of

1 Further definition of denotation and connotation need not be dwelt on here; see above, pp. 9, 29, 34, 46.

practical use; figures enable us to say more in a given space, and to say it with more life and vigor.1

The test of a figure's practical value is its naturalness: it should rise so spontaneously out of the idea or situation as to go without question or sense of unfitness. If the figure connotes an illustrative thought, it must be reasonable for the writer to think in that way; else the figure is far-fetched or fantastic or superfine. If the figure connotes emotion, it must be natural for the writer to have that mood or feeling, else the figure will be violent or maudlin or unreal. There is a fine sympathy of thought with illustrative thought, and of expression with emotion, which it is one object of this chapter to indicate; it will not do for the writer to let these run away with him; he must hold them well in hand and make them do his skilfully calculated work. To say this is merely to say that the greater the apparent naturalness the truer the actual art.

Summary of Connotation. The natural division of the subject has already been repeatedly recognized. A figure may be employed either for the sake of enriching the thought of the idea, that is, for its illustrative value; or for the sake of creating in the reader a certain mood or feeling about the idea, that is, for its emotional value. In either case the figurative force may be overt, that is, revealing its object openly; or implicit, that is, imparting its power unobtrusively through the tone and coloring of words and style.

I. CONNOTATION OF IDEA.

The principle underlying all the figures of this class is the principle of association. Along with the thought to be

1 "Simile and figure may be regarded as a natural short-hand, which substitutes well-known things for the unknown qualities of whatever has to be described, and which therefore gives the general effect of the things to be described without necessitating the task of minute description." — GEORGE BRIMLEY, Essays, p. 43.

enforced or the object to be described the reader is made to think of something else: it may be something more familiar, better known, in which case the object gains in clearness; or something less abstract, more impressive to the senses, in which case the object gains in concrete reality. Both these qualities are usually present, the proportion varying somewhat between different figures, especially simile and metaphor, but blending always into a general effect of enhanced life and vigor.1

I

Overt Figures of Association. In these the fact of connotation is presented most typically: the associated object being plainly evident, either as definitely named or as so clearly assumed that the reader thinks without effort in its sphere of ideas.

Simile and Analogy. When the thing to be illustrated and the associated object are named together, with a particle or phrase of comparison (like, similar to, resembling, comparable to, etc.) expressed or implied, and when these compared objects are of different classes, the figure thus arising is called Simile, — which word is simply the neuter singular adjective similis, "like." A simile is an expressed likeness.

When the likeness is not between simple objects but between relations of objects, the more complex figure thus arising is called Analogy, from the Greek words åvá and λóyos, an associated or comparing word. If we were to represent the two figures algebraically, simile would be expressed by a ratio (a: b), and analogy by a proportion (a: b::c:d). The principle of the two, however, is the same; and often they interact so naturally that it serves no practical purpose to discriminate them.

1 For connotation as a general instrument of Force, see above, p. 34.