pompous names that have been given to them by rhetoricians, are only forms of familiar speech used in common by them and by the vulgar."* The discovery of the metonymy and catachresis, in the wranglings of the mob, has certainly a considerable resemblance to the discovery which Cornelius Scriblerus made of the ten prædicaments of logic, in the battle of the serjeant and the butcher in the Bear-garden. "Cornelius was forced to give Martin sensible images; thus, calling up the coachman, he asked him what he had seen in Bear-garden? the man answered he saw two men fight a prize; the one was a fair man, a serjeant in the guards; the other black, a butcher; the serjeant had red breeches, the butcher blue; they fought upon a stage about four o'clock, and the serjeant wounded the butcher in the leg.Mark (quoth Cornelius) how the fellow runs through the prædicaments. Men, substantia; two, quantitas; fair and black, qualitas; serjeant and butcher, relatio; wounded the other, actio et passio; fighting, situs; stage, ubi; two o'clock, quando; blue and red breeches, habitus." "+ "Nothing is more evident," says the same author, "than that divers persons no other way remarkable, have each a strong disposition to the formation of some particular trope or figure. Aristotle saith, that the hyperbole is an ornament fit for young men of quality; accordingly we find in those gentlemen a wonderful propensity toward it, which is marvellously improved by travelling. Soldiers also and seamen are very happy in the same figure. The periphrasis or circumlocution is the peculiar talent of country farmers; the proverb or apologue of old men at their clubs; the ellipsis or speech by half words, of ministers and politicians; the aposiopesis of courtiers; the litotes or diminution of ladies, whisperers and backbiters; and the anadiplosis of common criers and hawkers, who by redoubling the same words, persuade people to buy their oysters, green hastings, or new ballads. Epithets may be found in great plenty at Billingsgate, sarcasm and irony learned upon the water, and the epiphonema or exclamation frequently from the Bear-garden, and as frequently from the hear him of the House of Commons."+ These examples are ludicrous indeed; yet the observation of Racine is not the less just; and we may safely conclude, however different it may be from the opinion which we should have formed, a priori, that when the mind is in a state of emotion, the suggestions of analogy arise with more than usual copiousness and rapidity, and that figurative language is thus the very language of nature. But though, in a state of emotion, images are readily suggested, according to that principle of shadowy and remote resemblance, which we are considering, it must be remembered, as a rule which is to guide us in the use of figures, that in this case the mind seizes the analogy with almost unconscious comparison, and pours it forth in its vigorous expression, with the rapidity of inspiration. It does not dwell on the analogy beyond the moment, but is hurried on to new analogies, which it seizes and deserts in like manner. This rapidity with which analogies are seized and deserted, seems to me to justify, in some degree, in the drama, and in highly impassioned poetry of every kind, what in poetry or general composition, of a calmer kind, would be unpardonable inaccuracy. In the case of mixed metaphor, for * C. III. Art. I. Œuvres, tom. V. p. 63. Edit. 1750. Art of Sinking in Poetry, c. xiii. 355 instance, as when Hamlet talks of taking arms against a sea of troubles, nothing can be clearer than that there is an incongruity of phrase in the different parts of the sentence, since it is not with a sword or a spear that we stem the waves; and as the inconsistent images occur in the short compass of a single line, and are a part of a meditative soliloquy, a greater congruity might unquestionably have been preserved with advantage. But when the objection is made universal, and applied to every case of expression, even of the strongest passion, in which any mixture of metaphors occurs in the imagery of the longest sentence, I cannot but think that this universal censure has arisen from that technical criticism, which thinks only of tropes and figures and the formal laws of rhetoric, and not from that sounder criticism which founds its judgments on the everlasting principles of In conformity with these principles, a our intellectual and moral nature. long and exact adherence to all the congruities of an image that has been accidentally used in a former part of a sentence or paragraph, though indispensably necessary in every species of calm composition, is yet rather censurable than commendable in scenes of dramatic passion. If the speaker be supposed to reflect that he is using a comparison, it is a proof that he is not impassioned at this moment of reflection; and if he be supposed to use the metaphorical expression only from its greater strength, as it bursts upon him immediately and without any attention to the various properties of the object, which suggested it perhaps by a single analogy,-nothing can be more just, in point of nature, than that a subsequent expression should chance to have little agreement with those other properties which never were real objects of his thought. When a metaphor is comprised in a few words— and it is of such brief metaphors that the poetic language of passion should in preference be composed-the image should be faithfully observed; because the metaphorical expression does not then outlast the feeling of analogy which originally suggested it. But it is very different when it extends through a long sentence. To follow it out rigidly, for several lines, in the expression of strong feeling, is an evident departure from nature; since it is to have a remote object of analogy constantly in view during the whole time of the emotion. To seize a new metaphor, or, in other words, to think no more of a metaphorical expression, when it has already exhibited all the analogy that was felt at the time, when it rose as it were to our utterance, is to be conscious only of our emotion itself, and to speak with that instant inspiration which it gives. It may be to mix metaphors, in the common rhetorical sense of that phrase, but it is assuredly to be faithful to nature. It must not be forgotten, however, that, it is only to the eloquence of strong passion that such a license is allowable; and that it cannot be admitted in any case, in which the very image conveyed in the primary metaphor can be supposed, without impropriety, to be itself a continued object of the speaker's thought. The simile, as I have already remarked, is a figure of more deliberate reflection than the metaphor; yet, notwithstanding the intellectual labour which it seems to imply, it is evident, that, in the pleasure which we receive from it, we still have in view its source in the general principle of spontaneous suggestion. It is not every simile, therefore, however just, that pleases; but such only, that seem to be derived from objects that might naturally be expected to occur to the mind in the situation in which the comparison is made. We talk of far-fetched similes, not as implying that there is no real analogy in the objects which they compare, or that the analogy is not as complete as in many other comparisons to which we do not give that name, but merely because the analogy is sought in objects, the natural occurrence of which to the mind does not seem very probable. We are more pleased, in general, with comparisons derived from the works of nature, than with those which are borrowed from the works of art; partly, because natural objects are not limited to a particular class of observers, but may be supposed to have been present to the senses of all in every period of their life, and, therefore, to be of more ready and general occurrence in suggestion; and partly, because with works of human art there is associated a degree of minute labour, which is not favourable to conceptions of beauty and sublimity, and which carries with it the feeling of toil and artificial preparation into all the groups of images with which it is combined. In exactness of analogy, and this, too, in a case in which such similitude could scarcely have been expected,-it is not easy to find a comparison more striking than that which Butler has made of honour, to the drop of quickly-cooled glass, which chemists have called prince Rupert's drop, and which has long attracted their attention, in consequence of the particular quality described in the simile: "Honour is like that glassy bubble, Which gives philosophers such trouble; Yet, truly accurate as it is, how absurd would such a simile have appeared in any other species of poetry than that, of which it is a part of the province to bring far-fetched images together! The different degrees of the pleasure received from comparisons, as they appear to harmonize more or less with the natural influence of the principle of suggestion in spontaneous trains of thought, is finely shown, in what has always appeared to me a very striking imperfection in one of the most popular stanzas of Gray's very popular Elegy. I quote also the two preceding stanzas:- "Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart, once pregnant with celestial fire; But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem, of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom'd caves of Ocean bear; The two similies into this stanza certainly produce very different degrees of poetical delight. That which is borrowed from the rose blooming in solitude pleases in a very high degree, both as it contains a just and beautiful similitude, and still more, as the similitude is one of the most likely to have arisen to a poetic mind in such a situation. But the simile in the first two lines of the stanza, though it may, perhaps, philosophically be as just, has no other charm, and strikes us immmediately as not the natural sugges* That finds, Orig. +V. 45-56. + Part II. Canto ii. v. 385-388. tion of such a moment and such a scene. To a person moralizing amid the simple tombs of a village church-yard, there is perhaps no object that would not sooner have occurred than this piece of minute jewellery-a gem of purest ray serene, in the unfathomed caves of Ocean. When the analogies are suggested by surrounding objects, or by objects that harmonize with the surrounding scenery, they appear more natural, and, therefore, more pleasing. It is this which forms the principal charm of the separate stanzas of another very popular poem of a similar class, the Hermit of Dr. Beattie, in which the moral allusions are all caught from objects that are represented as present to the eye or ear of the moralist. I confess, however, that, when the poem is read as a whole, the uniformity of the allusions, drawn from such a variety of objects to the single circumstance of man's mortality, gives an appearance of laborious search, almost in the same manner as if the analogy had been traced from very remote objects. I select, therefore, only a single stanza from the whole : ""Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more. I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you; Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn, Kind Nature the embryo blossom will save. O! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave ?"'* We have seen, then, what an accession to our pleasure the suggesting principle of analogy has produced, in giving birth to the figurative language of poetry; and how necessary it is to have frequent recourse to this principle, in laying down the general laws of philosophical criticism. But there is another class of most important analogies, which we have not yet considered, -those which form the powerful associations that direct the genius of scientific invention. These are the analogies of objects, considered as means, in reference to a particular end. When a mechanician sees a machine, the parts of which all concur in one great ultimate effect, if he be blessed with inventive genius, he will not merely see and comprehend the uses of the parts, as they co-operate in the particular machine before him, but there will perhaps arise in his mind the idea of some power, yet unapplied to the same purpose, some simpler process, by which the ultimate effect may be augmented, or improved, or at least obtained at less cost of time, or labour, or capital. When the crucible of the chemist presents to him some new result, and his first astonishment is over, there arise in his mind the ideas of products, or operations, in some respects analogous, by the comparison of which he discovers some new element, or combination of elements, and perhaps, changes altogether the aspect of his science. A Newton sees an apple fall to the ground, and he discovers the system of the universe. In these cases, the principle of analogy, whether its operation be direct or indirect, is too forcible, and too extensive in its sway, to admit of much dispute. It is sufficient to know, that by the suggestions which it has afforded, to those whom Heaven has formed for the high destiny of constituting a part of that series of minds, which spread from age to age the progress of improvement over all the regions and generations of mankind, we have risen to a degree of empire * Stanza 4. over nature, which, compared with our original imbecility, is a greater advance in the scale of being, than that fabulous apotheosis which the ancient world conferred on its barbarous heroes. LECTURE XXXVI. PRIMARY LAWS OF SUGGESTION.-I. RESEMBLANCE, CONCLUDED.—II. CONTRAST. GENTLEMEN, a great part of my last Lecture was occupied in considering the influence of resemblance, as a connecting principle in our trains of thought. The illustrations of it, which I used, were chiefly of the rhetorical kind, which are, in themselves, most striking illustrations of the varieties of spontaneous suggestion, and which appeared, to me, peculiarly valuable, as enabling me to point out to what simple universal principles of the mental constitution, even the boldest figures of the rhetorician are to be traced. It is the same in these as in all the other products of human skill. The very arts, which we seem to ourselves to create, as if it were in our power to add to nature, never can be any thing more than forms which nature herself assumes. Whether the province be that of matter or of mind,-in the exercises of poetry and eloquence, and in the philosophic criticism, which estimates the degrees of excellence displayed in these delightful combats of intellectual glory, as in the works of a very different kind, which the mechanic ingenuity and labour of man devise and execute,-what appears most artificial is nothing more than a skilful application of the simple laws of nature,—of laws which we may apply, indeed, to our various purposes, and which some may know how to apply more successfully than others, but which are continually operating on matter and mind, independently of the applications which our skill may make of them. In examining how much the suggesting principle is influenced by similarity, we considered first, that most direct and obvious resemblance which objects bear to each other in their sensible qualities. We then proceeded to consider the fainter indirect resemblance which constitutes what is termed analogy, and we found, that it is to this species of shadowy likeness that philosophy owes its accessions of power, and poetry its most attractive charms; since to the invention of the philosopher it suggests, in the contemplation of a single desired effect, all the variety of analogous means, which may separately lead to the production of it, and to the fancy of the poet all that variety of kindred imagery and emotions with which, by a sort of double transformation, he gives life to inanimate objects, and form, and colour, and substance, to every feeling of the soul. There is another set of resemblances, not in the objects themselves, but in the mere arbitrary signs which express them, that have a powerful, though less obvious influence on suggestion, and often guide the trains of our thought without appearing to guide them. It is, when we consider, indeed, what language truly is, not more wonder |