"And indeed the Mr. Gilfil of those late Shepperton days had more of the knots and ruggednesses of poor human nature than there lay any clear hint of in the open-eyed loving Maynard. But it is with men as with trees: if you lop off their finest branches, into which they were pouring their young life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence; and what might have been a grand tree expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical misshapen trunk. Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow, which has crushed and maimed the nature just when it was expanding into plenteous beauty; and the trivial erring life which we visit with our harsh blame, may be but as the unsteady motion of a man whose best limb is withered. "And so the dear old Vicar, though he had something of the knotted whimsical character of the poor lopped oak, had yet been sketched out by nature as a noble tree. The heart of him was sound, the grain was of the finest; and in the gray-haired man who filled his pockets with sugar-plums for the little children, whose most biting words were directed against the evil doing of the rich man, and who, with all his social pipes and slipshod talk, never sank below the highest level of his parishioners' respect, there was the main trunk of the same brave, faithful, tender nature that had poured out the finest, freshest forces of its life-current in a first and only love - the love of Tina." 1 tained figures. In a complex or elaborate figure of speech, the danger is that the thing illustrated may be forgotten in the illustration, that which should be subordinate be- Danger in suscoming the principal object of attention. A figure of this kind, instead of illuminating the path of thought, is a will-o'-the-wisp, which may lead the reader into a bog. Such are many of the conceits of Cowley, the allegories once popular, all exercises of intellectual ingenuity that resemble conundrums or enigmas. Writing of this kind is well described as "frigid;" it counterfeits the warmth and glow of poetry, but leaves those 1 George Eliot: Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story; Epilogue. whom it deceives the colder for their disappointment. For example: "Man is a harp, whose chords elude the sight, Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose, "The truth is that Macaulay was not only accustomed, like many more of us, to go out hobby-riding, but, from the portentous vigour of the animal he mounted, was liable, more than most of us, to be run away with. His merit is, that he could keep his seat in such a steeple-chase: but as the object in view is arbitrarily chosen, so it is reached by cutting up the fields, spoiling the crops, and spoiling or breaking down the fences, needful to secure to labour its profit, and to man at large the full enjoyment of the fruits of the earth." "2 The former of these examples is frigidity itself; the objection to the latter lies in the difficulty of giving equal attention throughout to both sides of the comparison. The reader is in danger of for getting Macaulay in the excitement of the chase. Figures suggestive of incompatible ideas should not be brought close together. The more forcible such figures Mixed metaphors. are, each by itself, the stronger the objection to an attempt to combine them. The follow ing sentences contain incongruous figures: "Seventy-five professors have catered to the demands of these young women now pushing toward the goals of higher education." 8 "We see now that old war-horse of the Democracy waving his hand from the deck of the sinking ship." 666 "Horrible!' said the Lady Amelia; 'diluting the best blood of the country, and paving the way for revolutions."" 4 1 William Cowper: Retirement. 2 William E. Gladstone: Lord Macaulay. The Quarterly Review, July, 1876, p. 31. 8 American newspaper. 4 Anthony Trollope: Doctor Thorne, chap. vi. "He was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would1 sit authoritative at some board, and talk and direct, and rule the roast, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so well accustomed himself to do." 2 "there was, nevertheless, an under-stratum of joy in all this which buoyed her up wondrously.” 8 "The chariot of Revolution is rolling, and gnashing its teeth as it rolls." 4 "The bulk of the original troops were very reluctant philanthropists, and had to be vigorously weeded and sifted, so that the toughest work was performed by a handful of seasoned and tested "If no authority, not in its nature temporary, were allowed to one human being over another, society would not be employed in building up propensities with one hand which it has to curb with the other."7 "Yet exactly upon this level is the ordinary state of musical feeling throughout Great Britain; and the howling wilderness of the psalmody in most parish churches of the land, countersigns the statement." 8 "the other shall have used every tittle of the same matter without eliciting one scintillation of sympathy, without leaving behind one distinct impression in the memory, or planting one murmur in the heart." 8 A similar fault is that of joining literal with Literal with metaphorical expressions. For example: figurative language. "Boyle was the father of chemistry and brother to the Earl of Cork." "It is an emotional wave that lacks organization." 1 See pages 63, 64. 2 Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers, vol. i. chap. iii. Tauchnitz edition. 8 Ibid., vol. ii. chap. xviii. 4 Transcribed from the report of a speech by a German Socialist. The Nineteenth Century, March, 1881, p. 424. 5 Query as to this use of bulk. 6 American newspaper. 7 J. S. Mill: The Subjection of Women, chap. iv. 8 De Quincey: Essay on Style. 9 Student's theme. "Such are the oratorical tendencies of the age; such the foundation stones on which they rest." 1 "When entering the twilight of dotage, reader, I mean to have a printing-press in my own study.” 2 "2 "It is not likely, therefore, that the Republican Convention will declare strongly against the South. They will, of course, throw a tub to the whale in that respect in some general phrases.” 8 Among the most forcible tropes is that which attributes life to the lifeless, or a life to the living different from its own, as, "the raging torrent," "the fiery steed," "leaps the live thunder," "a bleak northeasterly expression." 5 This figure is called Personification. PERSONIFICATION. Properly used, personification stimulates the imagi nation: "This music crept by me upon the waters." & "On his crest Sat Horror plumed."7 "Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying, "And Winter, slumbering in the open air, "Armour rusting in his halls On the blood of Clifford calls; 'Quell the Scot,' exclaims the Lance- Is the longing of the Shield Tell thy name, thou trembling Field; 1 Student's theme. 8 American periodical. 2 De Quincey: Essay on Secret Societies. Byron Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 5 George Eliot : Felix Holt. Shakspere: The Tempest, act. i. scene ii. Milton: Paradise Lost, book iv. line 989. 8 Coleridge: Youth and Age. Ibid. Work without Hope. Field of death, where'er thou be, Groan thou with our victory!" 1 "I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and the sea, and the solitude of forests: Danger, which sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my playmate.” "For Winter came: the wind was his whip: One choppy finger was on his lip : He had torn the cataracts from the hills And they clanked at his girdle like manacles." 8 "Mammon's trusty cur, Clad in rich Dulness' comfortable fur, In naked feeling, and in aching pride." 4 "Against no matter whose the liberty And life, so long as self-conceit should crow "2 And clap the wing, while justice sheathed her claw."5 "The pretension is not to drive Reason from the helm but rather to bind her by articles to steer only in a particular way." 6 "Genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train."7 Improperly used, personification is a form of fine writing. It is dangerously easy in languages, like the English, in which a writer may attribute per- Dangers in personality to an inanimate object by means of a masculine or a feminine pronoun, or by "the easy magic of an initial capital." sonification. "Equally annoying," writes Mr. Leslie Stephen, "was Gray's immense delight in semi-allegorical figures. We have whole catalogues of abstract qualities scarcely personified. Ambition, bitter Scorn, grinning Infamy, Falsehood, hard Unkindness, keen Remorse, and moody Madness are all collected in one stanza not 1 Wordsworth: Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle. 2 Shelley: The Revolt of Islam; Preface. Ibid.: The Sensitive Plant. 4 Burns: To Robert Graham. 5 Browning: Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 6 J. S. Mill: Nature. 7 Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Professor at the Breakfast Table, X. 8 See pages 102–105. |