to stick to them, or as a stupid architect kills the design of a building by overloading it with ornaments. Figures exist for the style, and not the style for the figures; and from this follows not only the first rule, but the second also. To make the figure of more importance than the thing which it is to illustrate or to reinforce is to exalt the servant above the master.

The third rule is justified by the fact that figures are used to increase the lucidity of style, and that in a manner all comparisons are to be looked upon as in the nature of illustrations. It follows that they must, in order to fulfill their function, be easily understood themselves. Examine this pas

sage:

The Wandering Jew has seen

Men come and go as the fixed Pyramids
Have seen even the steadfast polar star
Shift in its place.

To see any
force in this, it is necessary to be aware
that, since the Pyramids were built, the North Star
has been altered in the precession of the equinoxes.
A writer has no right to appeal to such special
knowledge. This is one of the reasons why there
are so few of the discoveries of modern science,
rich and varied as they are, which can effectively
be used in simile. The allusions would not be
commonly understood. Another reason, equally
potent, is that in general the connotation of scien-
tific facts is too practical and uninspiring to add
to the interest of poetic or imaginative themes. In
old days it was the fashion for minor poets to go

as far afield as possible for similes, which were dragged into verse as a Comanche Indian drags into camp his captives. Foot-notes were generously provided for the enlightenment of the reader, and nobody seemed to see the absurdity of illustrating a thought by a figure so obscure that it had itself to be explained. The tropes of the minor poets of the last century remind one of the remark of the Scotch goodwife about a learnedly obscure commentary on the Scriptures: ""T is a braw wise book, na dout; an' the Bible does explain it wonderfu'." If a writer will hold to his own experience for his similes, he will have little difficulty in deciding what is likely to be readily understood by the general reader; and if he will remember that, provided that there be nothing vulgar or ludicrous or commonplace in its suggestion, the more homely an allusion the more effective it is likely to be, he cannot go far wrong.

The rule never to make a comparison without realizing fully what it is should be regarded as being as binding as a moral precept. If this be obeyed, there is no danger of the production of that hybrid microbe with which the pages of sensational fiction swarm, which is known as the mixed metaphor. I took up in the smoking-room of a steamer not long ago a novel called "Half a Million of Money," by Miss Amelia B. Edwards. I opened to a page on which was this sentence:

Trefalden cast a hasty glance about the room, as if looking for some weapon wherewith to slake the hatred that glittered in his eye. — Chap. xciv.

I give carefully the origin of this, since it seems like an absurd mock simile manufactured for the occasion. If the author had felt the force of the word "slake," and how it involves the idea of thirst, she could not have coupled it with "weapon or with "glittered in his eye." A thirst which is slaked with a sword and glitters in the eye needs only to be realized to be cast aside.

Goethe, in speaking of Klopstock, once said :

An ode occurs to me where he makes the German muse run a race with the British; and indeed, when one thinks what a picture it is, where the girls run one against the other, throwing about their legs, and kicking up the dust, one must assume that the good Klopstock did not really have before his eyes such pictures as he wrote, else he could not possibly have made such mistakes.- Conversations of Goethe, November 9, 1824.

Of these lines of Montgomery,

The soul aspiring pants its source to mount,

As streams meander level to their fount, –

Macaulay observes :

In

We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in the world. In the first place, no stream meanders or can possibly meander level with the fount. the next place, if streams did meander level with their founts, no two notions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and mounting upward.— Cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

It would be easy and it would be amusing to go on with examples of mixed figures and figures which are ineffective, but the point hardly needs further illustration.

Pushing a figure too far is a fault less common in these days than it has been at some periods of our literary history when fashions in writing were more ornate than at present. If a writer realizes what a simile means, he is not likely to fall into this error. It is when he introduces a figure for the sake of the figure, and not for the purpose of strengthening or making more clear what he is saying, that this fault occurs.

These lines of Cowper may serve as an example:

Man is a harp, whose chords elude the sight,
Each yielding harmony disposed aright;

The screws reversed (a task which, if He please,
God in a moment executes with ease),

Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose,
Lost, till He tune them, all their power and use.

If this stopped with the second line, it might do well enough; but when the attention is forced to the consideration of the mechanical details of the harp, and the image of ten thousand thousand strings and a corresponding number of screws, and the notion applied to a man bereft of his wits, the idea becomes absurd, and whatever value the figure might have is entirely lost.

A clear realization of what he is doing will also prevent the writer from mingling figure and fact. "He was the guardian genius of Ireland, and had served with eloquence and credit in legislative halls," could hardly have been written by one who felt clearly the meaning and significance of the figure. To realize how a guardian genius would look in legislative halls would have brought him at once

to his senses. It is always necessary to have sharply defined in the brain whatever one is saying, but this is especially true of any use of language which invites the reader to loose his grasp upon absolute, literal fact.

The difference between simile and metaphor is one which need not be pressed very sharply. It is to be observed that as writing becomes more excited or impassioned there is less need of insisting upon formalities; so that as the writer warms his readers, he may assume a likeness instead of explicitly stating it. At the beginning of a passage it may be better to say, "Napoleon swept like a tempest over Europe," whereas later, the reader having become interested in the theme, it is fitting to write, "Napoleon, the tempest which was sweeping over Europe." There is probably no better rule than for the writer to do that which at the moment seems to him most natural, and then in revision to see if it strikes him as it did when he wrote it.

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Personification may be conveniently regarded as classed with simile and metaphor. It is somewhat out of fashion, but if it is used it is to be governed by the rules given above. One who realizes what he is saying in the phrase, “ Hope told a flattering tale,”— who sees that he is representing Hope as a beautiful and seductive being, is not likely to go on to add, "but this hope was founded upon a delusion," because he cannot conceive a young nymph or goddess as being founded upon anything. He will naturally and without effort carry out the figure, and say, "but she beguiled us; or, "but