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I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain,
That longs to launch into a nobler strain.1

"To bridle a goddess," roars the old Doctor, "is no very delicate idea; but why must she be bridled? because she longs to launch; an act which was never hindered by a bridle and whither will she launch? into a nobler strain. She is in the first line a horse, in the second a boat; and the care of the poet is to keep his horse or his boat from singing.'

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Johnson's second example is from Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard":

66

The well-sung woes shall soothe my [pensive] ghost;

He best can paint them who shall feel them most.1

Perhaps," adds Johnson, "woes may be painted; but they are surely not painted by being well-sung: it is not easy to paint in song, or to sing in colours."

Other failures in the use of metaphors come from less distinguished writers :

He took the stump, platform in hand.

Under this religious trait is an undercurrent of keen, dry humor cropping out occasionally and flavoring his talk.

We must bring the viper to his knees and force him to apologize. Mrs. Traff and her eldest flower took up the thread of life once

more.

The revival of learning in Italy first woke the germs of that harmony which later blossomed into Elizabethan literature.

The Bible needs no smoothing-iron to make it palatable to delicate

ears.

We see now that old war-horse of the Democracy waving his hand from the deck of the sinking ship.

The meeting was intended to signify the unity and cohesion of both wings of the party, who had fought shoulder to shoulder for many years past.

In these examples, the so-called figures of speech are not figures in any just sense.

1 Johnson apparently quoted from memory, for the lines as he gives them differ slightly from the original.

What Figures may do. If the object of writing is to convey a thought from one mind to another, the only reason for using figurative language is that it explains, illustrates, or enforces the thought. Usually it serves one of these purposes, not directly, but by suggestion through the association of ideas.

A good figure springs naturally out of the subject which it illustrates; it is not dragged into the text by the head and shoulders. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to the general end in view. In so far as it enables the reader to see more clearly or to feel more strongly what the writer sees or feels, it is useful; in so far as it does not, it either interrupts or obscures.

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A figure, then, like other things in this world, may be good in one place and bad in another. It is good or bad according as it is or is not harmonious with the tone and the spirit of the context. If subject and treatment are homely, it will be homely, unless, indeed, the writer wishes to lift the reader's thoughts for a moment; if subject and treatment are on a high plane, it will naturally be poetical. A good figure, to borrow Emerson's words about a good quotation, “illuminates the page."

If you use a figure of speech, be sure that it is a good one.

EXERCISE CLXIX

Let each pupil bring to the class an example of the simile, of the metaphor, and of personification.

EXERCISE CLXX

Show why each figure of speech is effective:

:

1. Priscilla was only a leaf floating on the dark current of events.

-HAWTHORNE.

2. There is an immense number of books that are stagnant fens of literature which can produce nothing but intellectual malaria. — LORD ROSEBERY.

3. The unwonted lines which momentary passion had ruled in Mr. Pickwick's clear and open brow, gradually melted away, as his young friend spoke, like the marks of a black-lead pencil beneath the softening influence of India rubber. -DICKENS.

4. What was originally a mere intellectual hobby becomes a veritable Pegasus of culture. - STUDENT'S THEME.

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Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth
Finds the down pillow hard. - SHAKSPERE.1

6. The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.

- LONGFELLOW.

7. And this huge Castle, standing here sublime, I love to see the look with which it braves, Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,

The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

-WORDSWORTH.

8. Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other2 in passing,

Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, 2
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
- LONGFELLOW.

9. Nor dare she trust a larger lay,

But rather loosens from the lip

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip

Their wings in tears, and skim away.―TENNYSON.

EXERCISE CLXXI

Show why each would-be figure of speech will not bear examination :

1. Carlo received severe injuries at the hands of a bull-dog.

2. Each of us is an active member of the mosaic of the world. 3. I went through a short dose of the Boston public schools. 4. Once the boy put on his boots, like any other unripe donkey, to run away from home.

5. Such literary lights as Longfellow and Emerson gathered round the old stove.

1 Cymbeline, iii. 6.

2 See page 123

6. I have in mind a story the bare outlines or rather the kernel of which occurred to me last summer.

7. I might treat Southey and Keats together as hangers-on of these two real fountains of poetry.

8. The whole poem breathes with that spiritual touch1 Wordsworth imparted to his best work.

9. The American absorbs the news from the headlines, and he rams it home with a sprinkling from the editorial columns.

10. The germ of the problem was sown by the emancipation proclamation, and this germ has grown until the rising tide is at our doors. 11. The eyes of the vox populi will be on the game to-day.

12. I cannot understand why some flower of nobility has not fairly flung himself and his hereditary acres at my feet.

13. She is merely a hot-house product forced into an abnormal artificial growth by these fashionable people who must have their lion or the times would be out of joint.

14. The ten-year-old critic is quick to scent out2 the core of a moral or intellectual medicine under the sugar coating of many a "story." 15. The story is said to be based on sources which are close to the administration.

1 What word is omitted?

See pages 295-298.

CHAPTER IV

PRINCIPLES OF CHOICE

FOR rhetorical purposes, the choice between this and that kind of word, sentence, or paragraph is not a choice between correct and incorrect, but between better and worse. To secure attention, a writer must choose the kind that is adapted both to his ideas and to his probable readers. ADAPTATION is the fundamental principle of all good writing.

Another principle, the principle of VARIETY, is embodied in the advice often given by teachers to pupils in composition,—“ Vary the expression." The best form of speech, if used too often, becomes monotonous; and monotony gradually dulls attention and in course of time kills interest. The most brilliant style, as every reader of Gibbon or of Junius knows, ceases to please when the brilliancy becomes a glare: to a good piece of writing, as to a good picture, shade is as important as light. Variety is the life of style.

In good writing, then, the choice of words is determined by the principle of variety working in harmony with the principle of adaptation. Literary language unrelieved by a colloquial expression soon becomes tiresome; and even colloquial language may, if kept up without a break, fatigue the mind. Pages of long words tire the attention in one way, pages of short words in another. A general remark is more clearly understood and more surely remembered if it is followed by specific instances that present the general idea in a portable form;1 specific remarks make a

1 A good example given in Macaulay's letter, on pages 345-346.

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