The essential merit of real or live metaphor being to add vividness to
what is being conveyed, it need hardly be said that accuracy of detail
is even more necessary in metaphorical than in literal expressions;
the habit of metaphor, however, and the habit of accuracy do not
always go together.
_Yet Taurès was the Samson who upheld the pillars of the Bloc._
_Yet what more distinguished names does the Anglican Church of the
last reign boast than those of F.D. Maurice, Kingsley, Stanley,
Robertson of Brighton, and even, if we will draw our net a little
wider, the great Arnold?_
_He was the very essence of cunning, the incarnation of a book-thief._
Samson's way with pillars was not to uphold them; we draw nets closer,
but cast them wider; and what is the incarnation of a thief? too, too
solid flesh indeed!