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d. In the heat of composition two or more images are sometimes jumbled together in a metaphor in such a way as to be ridiculous. "The strong arm of the law is marching through the land breathing fire and sword" is an example of such a jumble. A similar effect is produced when the reader passes too suddenly from metaphor to literal statement, as in "Appearing above the horizon like a new and resplendent luminary, he entered Parliament the following year." If the pupil is given to these faults, he should, in his revision, scan each metaphor closely, asking himself such questions as these "Is there any confusion of images here?" "Will this metaphor make my readers laugh when I do not want them to laugh?"

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e. Beware of drawing figures out to tedious length, as in the following: "With the rope of his genius he let the bucket of imagination down into the well of human nature and drew it up brimming over with wit and humor.”

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Synecdoche and Metonymy. - These are varieties of metaphor in which the image chosen to represent the object is something closely connected with it. In synecdoche the image may be related to the object as a part to a whole, or as a whole to a part; as the genus to the species, or as the species to the genus. The material may be used for the thing made, a quality for the object possessing the quality, and so on.

In the following passage from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, the word "sail"—à part of a ship—is used for the ship itself:

I have sixty sails, Cæsar none better.

In this from Henry the Fourth,

I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot,

the word "foot" is used for "foot-soldiers." In the following, the word "blue"

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a quality of the sky — is

I came and sat

Below the chestnuts when their buds

Were glistening in the breezy blue.

- TENNYSON: The Miller's Daughter.

The use of an individual name to designate a class is illustrated in the following:

Most facts are very soon forgotten, but not the noblest Shakespeare or Homer of them can be remembered forever. CARLYLE.

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This last variety of synecdoche is sometimes termed

antonomasia.

In metonymy the image used to represent the object is an accompaniment of it, as for example, what contains it, what causes it, what stands for it, etc.

In the following example, "breath," the accompaniment and cause of words, is used in the sense of words: Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,

A breath can make them as a breath has made.
GOLDSMITH: The Deserted Village.

In the following," the sceptre," the accompaniment of kings and sign of their power, is used in the sense of kings, "learning" in the sense of learned men, "physic" in the sense of physicians:

The sceptre, learning, physic must

All follow this, and come to dust.

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The distinction between synecdoche and metonymy is disregarded by many rhetoricians as being trivial and conventional.

Two common literary forms may be classed under the head of allegory; namely, the fable and the parable. A fable is, in popular speech, a short pointed allegory in which animals are introduced as speaking and acting like human beings. A parable is a short allegory, but the term is now used solely of the biblical stories, or of allegories framed after them.

175.

Assignments on Figures of Imagery.

A. How many figures in the following selection? Name them.

Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even. - CERVANTES.

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B. Look for the figures in the following selections and name them. Which figure pleases you most? What kind of figure is it? Express the same idea in a plain statement. Which seems to you the more forcible—the figure or the plain statement? Which seems the most accurate?

J. H., one of those choice poets who will not tarnish their bright fancies by publication, always insists on a snowstorm as essential to the true atmosphere of whist. Mrs. Battle, in her famous rule for the game, implies winter, and would doubtless have added tempest, if it could be had for the asking. For a good solid read also, into the small hours, there is nothing like that sense of safety against

having your evening laid waste, which Euroclydon brings, as he bellows down the chimney, making your fire gasp, or rustles snowflakes against the pane with a sound more soothing than silence. Emerson, as he is apt to do, not only hit the nail on the head, but drove it home, in that last phrase of the "tumultuous privacy."

Gower has positively raised tediousness to the precision of science, he has made dulness an heirloom for the students of our literary history. As you slip to and fro on the frozen levels of his verse, which give no foothold to the mind, as your nervous ear awaits the inevitable recurrence of his rhyme, regularly pertinacious as the tick of an eight-day clock and reminding you of Wordsworth's

"Once more the ass did lengthen out

The hard, dry seesaw of his horrible bray,"

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you learn to dread, almost to respect, the powers of this indefatigable man. He is the undertaker of the fair mediæval legend, and his style has the hateful gloss, the seemingly unnatural length, of a coffin. Love, beauty, passion, nature, art, life, the natural and theological virtues, there is nothing beyond his power to disenchant, nothing out of which the tremendous hydraulic press of his allegory (or whatever it is, for I am not sure if it be not something even worse) will not squeeze all feeling and freshness and leave it a juiceless pulp. It matters not where you try him, whether his story be Christian or pagan, borrowed from history or fable, you cannot escape him. Dip in at the middle or the end, dodge back to the beginning, the patient old man is there to take you by the button and go on with his imperturbable narrative. You may have left off with Clytemnestra, and you begin again with Samson; it makes no odds, for you cannot tell one from tother. His tediousness is omnipresent, and like Dogberry he could find in his heart to bestow it all (and more if he had it) on your worship.

The word lengthy has been charged to our American account, but it must have been invented by the first reader of Gower's works, the only inspiration of which they were ever capable. Our literature had to lie by and recruit for more than four centuries ere it could give us an equal vacuity in Tupper, so persistent a uniformity of commonplace in the Recreations of a Country Parson. Let us be thankful that the industrious Gower never found time for recreation.

C. Does the following passage contain a figure? If so, what is it? If there is a figure, do you think it is a good one? Why? The actual ether which fills space is so elastic that the slightest possible distortion produced by the vibration of a single atom sends a shudder through it with inconceivable rapidity for billions and billions of miles. This shudder is Light.

Figures of Arrangement.

176. Antithesis. This term is applied to a sentence or part of a sentence in which corresponding words, phrases, or clauses are set over against one another in such a way as to make contrasting ideas conspicuous. The term is also used of contrasting sentences, or even of contrasting paragraphs.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue. EMERSON: English Traits.

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Demosthenes told Phocian, "The Athenians will kill you some day when they are in a rage.” "And you," said he, "if they are once in their senses.' PLUTARCH.

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Our very hopes belied our fears,

Our fears our hopes belied;

We thought her dying when she slept,

And sleeping when she died.

- HOOD: The Death-bed.

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