In the following it is impossible without other information to tell where history ends and metaphor begins: "The object of the conspirators was to put between thirty and forty barrels of gunpowder into the mine, and to blow the King and the Prince of Wales, the lords and the bishops to atoms. They shortly found a cellar which answered their purpose better. Here they banked up their barrels under a suspicious quantity of coal and other fuel. [Hitherto historic, from this point the account is metaphorical.] When the train was laid, it led, however, to themselves, and when the explosion came, it was under their own feet. They were scattered to the four winds." 1 4. Sometimes simile and metaphor are united in one expression, the thought being introduced by the one and carried on by the other. By this combination of figures the illustrative quality of simile and the vigorous directness of metaphor are both secured with a distinctly pleasing effect. EXAMPLE.—The following is from a conversation between the sisters Irene and Penelope : "Oh, how can you treat me so!' moaned the sufferer. What do you mean, Pen?' "I guess I'd better not tell you,' said Penelope, watching her like a cat playing with a mouse. If you're not coming to tea, it would just excite you for nothing.' "The mouse moaned and writhed upon the bed. "Oh, I would n't treat you so!' "The cat seated herself across the room, and asked quietly It “Well, what could you do if it was Mr. Corey? You could n't come to tea, you say. But he'll excuse you. I've told him you had a headache. Why, of course you can't come ! would be too barefaced. But you need n't be troubled, Irene; I'll do my best to make the time pass pleasantly for him.' Here the cat gave a low titter, and the mouse girded itself up with a momentary courage and self-respect. So.' "I should think you would be ashamed to come here and tease me 5. Metaphor is both bolder and more condensed than simile, and by virtue of both these qualities it is naturally 1 From an article in The English Illustrated Magazine. 2 HOWELLS, The Rise of Silas Lapham, p. 118. better adapted to produce a forcible and vivid impression. Hence it is more used in impassioned discourse, and in dramatic poetry, which is the poetry of passion as distinguished from the poetry of fancy. NOTE. This distinction between simile and metaphor is already brought out in the Illustration, p. 79, 3. There not only the form of the figure but the image itself is ill adapted to a moment of supreme passion; it is too leisurely and descriptive. Personification. This figure endows inanimate things, or abstract ideas, with attributes of life and personality. It is closely related to the preceding figure, being indeed, in some of its uses, merely personal metaphor. The English language is well adapted to personification, because it is not cumbered, like Latin, Greek, and German, with the incongruities of grammatical gender; so when personality is attributed to something inanimate, the fact is significant and striking. EXAMPLES. "Do we look for Truth? she is not the inhabitant of cities, nor delights in clamor; she steals upon the calm and meditative as Diana upon Endymion, indulgent in her chastity, encouraging a modest, and requiting a faithful, love."1" And then came autumn, with his immense burden of apples, dropping them continually from his overladen shoulders as he trudged along." 2 "Yet Hope had never lost her youth; She did but look through dimmer eyes; 1. The use of personification inheres in the fact that we can follow the traits and acts of a person better than the attributes of a thing or an abstraction; as soon as the personality is suggested we are conscious of a kind of communion with it, a sympathy with its life and character. 1 LANDOR, Imaginary Conversations, Vol. i, p. 242 (Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa). 2 HAWTHORNE, Mosses from an Old Manse, p. 21. 8 TENNYSON, In Memoriam, cxxv. EXAMPLE. — In the following, from Stevenson, consider how the vividness is increased as soon as personality is attributed to the river: "The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vadencourt all the way to Origny it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea." 1 2. The abuse, or rather the cheapening of personification, consists in annulling its proper effect by employing it where no end of concreteness or vividness really calls for it. Unless something real is gained by it the effect of it is crude or artificial. NOTE. - In the following sentence there is really no occasion for the personal pronoun, nor is anything gained by regarding the world as a person: "It is to scholarly men that the world owes her progress in civilization and refinement." There is a strong tendency with young writers to make a feminine of every familiar abstraction: the world, our country, our college or fraternity, science, and the like; a tendency to be watched and subjected to the claims of practical use. Another cheap and rather empty device is to treat mental and moral traits as persons; Lowell calls it "that alphabetic personification which enlivens all such words as Hunger, Solitude, Freedom, by the easy magic of an initial capital." Allegory. In this figure an abstract truth or lesson is conceived under the form of a fundamental metaphor, and followed out into detail, generally as a narrative, sometimes as an extended description. Thus, in the most celebrated of allegories, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the trials and experiences of the Christian life are set forth in the story of a pilgrimage from the "City of Destruction" to the "Celestial City." I. 1. Allegory, as a means of conveying abstract truth, has a twofold utility. First, it has the concreteness of its underlying metaphor; we apprehend the truth as an object of sense or a thing of life, and follow its fortunes accordingly. Secondly, instead of having to follow the logical plan of an 1 STEVENSON, An Inland Voyage, p. 59 (Thistle edition). 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 Tpépw, "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. |