its efforts to communicate ideas, was the use of figures. The thought
moves naturally from the near to the remote, and from that which is
known to that which is unknown. If we attempt to describe or explain a
thing, we instinctively compare it to something which is familiar. “It
is like this,” we say; “it is similar to that thing which you know.”
It has often been remarked that all language is full of what Trench
happily calls the fossil remains of metaphors,--words which were once
used to convey an idea by comparing it to something known, but of which
the figurative force is now forgotten. It is hardly necessary to give
examples, because every student has had his attention called to this
class of words; but their number illustrates how natural comparisons
are, and how constantly they are called to aid expression.
To comparison it is customary to give two names, according as the
likeness is stated explicitly or is implied. If a writer says, “The
officer followed his victim like a sleuth-hound,”--a phrase which
used to come into all the detective stories,--he makes an explicit
comparison between the officer and a hound. If he writes, “The
sleuth-hound of justice followed the track of his prey,”--a phrase
still to be met with in newspapers of a certain class,--the comparison
is the same, but it is assumed instead of being explicitly stated.
To the expressed comparison is given the name “simile;” to the
comparison assumed, the name “metaphor.” It is of no great practical
importance--unless in the line of encouraging carefulness in the
discrimination of words--whether the distinction of names is carefully
observed or not, but it is of some convenience in study.
The object of using figures is to add Clearness, or Force, or
Elegance--or all of these--to the presentation of an idea. Constantly
it happens that, by declaring that an unknown thing is like some known
thing, the writer enables the reader to form an idea of it as it is.
When in Job we read the beautiful simile, “My days are swifter than
a weaver’s shuttle,” we are impressed by the passage of life with a
vividness which could not be secured by any mere assertion, no matter
how strong. The physical fact is so easily grasped that it makes more
clear the intellectual reflection. In the same wonderful poem--and no
one studying literature either for profit or for pleasure can afford to
neglect the book of Job--there are beautiful figures enough to teach
the art of using them were it otherwise forgotten. “Man is born unto
trouble, as the sparks fly upward;” “I caused the widow’s heart to sing
for joy;” “The house appointed for all living;” “He maketh the deep to
boil like a pot;” “Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as
a shock of corn cometh in in his season,”--it is impossible not to see
how in every case the thought is made more clear by the comparison.
It is evident, too, that in each case cited the expression has gained
not only in Clearness but in Force. The moment a likeness is suggested,
the mind of the reader is led to make the comparison, and is thus alive
and alert; while in each case the figure suggests far more than any
bare statement of fact. Since the secret of Force lies in connotation,
in the suggestiveness which leads the mind onward into the mood so
that it seems to itself to originate the ideas which are really given
to it directly or indirectly by the author, it follows that in the
use of figures is one of the most effectual means of securing this
quality. Job says, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” and
with the plain statement of the brevity of life come suggestions of the
inevitableness of this brevity; we seem to see man tossed by the hand
of the unseen, as a shuttle is thrown by the hand of the weaver, flung
to and fro without power to stay or to resist. The whole despairing
mood of the afflicted patriarch is summed up in the single simile. To
come nearer to our own times, take that simile which is perhaps the
most beautiful in English literature outside of Shakespeare:--
Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.
What is suggested is all the serenity of the eventide; the hush which
comes between the daylight and the dark; the sense of peace; that
feeling that a mystery is being wrought before our very eyes, when out
of the faintly rose-purple haze of the sky throbs into radiance the
first star. There is, too, that sense of restfulness that belongs to
the twilight coolness, and, in some undefinable way, an idea of purity
and innocence too high and too subtle to be defined. The gain in Force
from such richness of suggestion is evident.
Even more closely than with Clearness or Force is the use of figures
connected with Elegance. More than any other means at the disposal
of the writer does this help to establish the mood which the author
desires to share with his reader. More, perhaps, than any other means
may figures be moulded to manifold uses, and thus they have large share
in that adaptation of the means to an end, in which, as has been said,
lies the secret of Elegance.
The proper use of figures is a thing which it is of the utmost
importance for the student to master thoroughly; and I have ventured to
set down a few rules which may be useful in practical work:--
1. Never use a figure without a definite purpose, and never simply for
its own sake.
2. Never subordinate sense to figure.
3. Make all figures easily comprehensible.
4. Never make a comparison without realizing fully what it is.
5. Never push a figure too far.
The reason for giving the first rule is, that so many young writers--I
say young writers as a matter of courtesy, since there are plenty of
old ones of whom it is no less true!--are given to the fault of piling
up figures in much the same way that a tasteless milliner sometimes
puts on her bonnets all the artificial flowers that can be made 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 passage:--
... 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 scientific 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: “’Tis 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:--
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. In 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.
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 all her flatteries
were delusions.” The truth is, that the mind will generally go in the
right direction if it is given a fair chance. It is only when we hamper
it with rules not understood, when we force it to go in paths which we
suppose to be laid out by conventions, or when we endeavor to make it
pace according to our vanity, that it goes astray. Be natural in the
use of figures, and you will seldom be wrong.
VIII
MEANS AND EFFECTS CONTINUED
Few means of literary effect are more subtle than Variety. It must
pervade all parts of a composition, yet it is to be perceived only by
its effects. Its absence is at once noted, and at once destroys the
beauty and attractiveness of any work; yet to define Variety is as
difficult as to tell how it is to be secured. Stevenson gives a rule
as wise as it is hard to follow: “The one rule is to be infinitely
various.”
The need of variety in the use of words is evident. The fault of
repetition is sufficiently obvious, yet it is very easily committed.
The fact that a sentence has been written in a given form often makes
that seem the only correct way of expression. No one but a thoroughly
trained writer can be as sensitive to errors in his own work as to
mistakes in the writings of others; and so it happens that unless
one is very careful the same word may appear two or three times in
a passage where synonyms would be better than the repetition. That
richness in synonyms which is one of the finest characteristics of
English does away with any necessary difficulty in attaining variety in
diction. In writing, and yet more in revising, the value and force of
synonymous terms cannot be too constantly kept in mind. A knowledge
of these, with that cardinal virtue of writers, the dictionary-habit,
should carry any student triumphantly past all dangers of monotony in
words.
One caution should perhaps be added: Do not be afraid to repeat a word
as often as is really necessary. I quoted in an earlier chapter a
sentence from Lowell which illustrates what I mean:
The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born
on, good to live on, good to die for and be buried in.
Or notice the repetition of “man” and of “department” in this from
Macaulay:--
A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of
sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man
who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who
in that department succeeded preëminently.--_On John Dryden._
Here the judicious repetition of the subject holds the whole closely
together, and saves the attention of the reader from fatigue. It
serves, also, to mark the distinction between the first half, which
is a specification of the causes of failure, and the second half,
which states the effects that followed from them. The recurrence
of “department” adds to the emphasis in a way which may easily be
appreciated by replacing it by a pronoun. Repetitions so cleverly used
as this are of course not defects but beauties.
The variation of form is an art more cunning than that of the changing
of the word. Look at this sentence from Stevenson, and notice how much
is gained by the alteration of the construction:--
How often and willingly do I not look in fancy on Tummel, or
Manor, or the talking Ardle, or Dee swirling in its Lynn; on the
bright burn of Kinnaird, or the golden burn that pours and sulks
in the den behind Kingussie!--_Pastoral._
To put “talking” before its noun and “swirling” after the substantive
it modifies, to see to it that no two phrases shall have the same form,
may seem small matters, and yet it is by devices of this sort that the
skillful artificer of words gives to his style finish and charm.
The ability to command a variety of forms gives to the writer the power
of repetition without seeming to repeat. Often it happens that it is
well to re-say a thing, either for the sake of putting it in a light
somewhat different from that of its first presentation, or to enforce
it more strongly. This is especially true, it may be, of writing which
is expository or argumentative, but the need of repetition of ideas is
common to composition of all sorts. To vary the cadence of the sentence
so that the ear shall never be wearied by monotony, cunningly to mix
long and short paragraphs so that no single form constantly repeated
shall tire the attention, is indeed a difficult art to acquire. No rule
can be given for variety; the very idea of rule for variation involves
a contradiction of terms, since it is the essence of variation to be
irregular. The student must train his ear and his mind by reading
the best authors; but the most that instruction can do is to call
attention to this matter, and thus to afford a clue to what may be the
real if unsuspected cause of a writer’s dissatisfaction when his work
appears vaguely dull and unattractive. Variety is closely connected
with Elegance. The adaptation of the sentence structure to the thought,
and yet more the subtler adaptation to the mood, are refinements of
composition which it takes long to acquire; but with every advance
toward a mastery of them the learner has come nearer to the secret of
that consummate skill in fitting means to effects which is the soul
of the highest style. Each must do it for himself; for the secret of
variety cannot be told farther than it is revealed in the words of
Stevenson, with which we began: “The one rule is to be infinitely
various.”
Upon variety depends largely that delightful and elusive quality
which we call Euphony. No writer or reader can be long insensible to
that music of words which is as intangibly tangible in prose as in
poetry,--different in the one from the other, but as real and truly a
source of delight in speech as in song, in prose as in verse. It is
true that what is written is not necessarily read aloud. It is written
in silence, and untrained writers fail to realize that although it be
read in silence, the eye is the ear of the mind, and all melody or lack
of melody will be subtilely felt in the soundless perusal. All that has
been said of variety applies as well to this quality; and, indeed, it
is perhaps hardly necessary to give two names where the two things are
so closely interwoven.
Intangible as this quality may seem, it is yet one of the most striking
in literature. Take this sentence from Walt Whitman, and see if it is
possible for any reader not to be offended by its close:--
Nor shades of Virgil, nor myriad memories, poems, old
associations, magnetize and hold on to her.
Or suppose one said:--
If for the city of Athens nature did much, it is not to be denied
that art did a great deal more.
The ear is dull which does not perceive the difference between this and
the sentence as Newman wrote it:--
If nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that art did much
more.
Examples might be multiplied indefinitely, but it is better that
the student find them for himself. Sensitiveness to euphony and the
practical acquirement of a euphonious style are greatly aided by the
habit of reading aloud the works of men who are masters, and it is well
to test in the same way whatever is written. The ear is more readily
trained by the voice than by any other means. It is possible to suppose
that what we have written must sound well as a matter of course; but
if we read or hear it read aloud, and find that it does not please
the ear, only one stupid with self-conceit will leave it unaltered.
A melodious diction is apt to be made up more largely of short words
than of long ones, and of words easily pronounced than of those trying
to the tongue; yet it is no more possible to achieve a euphonious
style simply by using words short and easily pronounced than it is to
make a beautiful brook by digging a channel which shall be entirely
straight and free from obstructions, or to build a beautiful temple by
collecting exquisite marbles. Construction is more than material.
One of the means by which it was formerly the fashion to strive after
pleasing sound in diction was the use of alliteration. This device is
somewhat in disrepute in these days, because it has been so notoriously
abused. The sensational novelist could no more do without alliteration
than without the historical present tense. The patent medicines are
alliteratively labeled; comic operas and pseudo-Queen Anne cottages at
little watering-places have been baptized with titles with reduplicated
initials, until the writer who indulges in alliteration feels something
as does the professor who sees his title blazoned on the shingle of the
barber and the boot-black.
Yet this pleasant device cannot be spared. There is in our blood
some trace of the fondness for it which made it serve the old bards
instead of rhyme. It must be employed more cunningly than of old, and
as it were slipped into the literary web surreptitiously. Here are
instances:--
A man is a bundle of _r_elations, a knot of _r_oots, whose
_f_lower and _f_ruitage is the world.--Emerson: _History_.
In making edu_c_ation not only _c_ommon to all, but in some sense
_c_ompulsory on all.--Lowell: _New England Two Centuries Ago_.
All the beautiful _s_entiments in the _w_orld _w_eigh less than a
_s_ingle lovely action.--_Id._: _Rousseau and the Sentimentalists_.
Here there is little more than the repetition of the initial of a
prominent word, marked by the same place in successive cadences. Often
alliteration in modern prose of the best sort is carried much farther.
Here are a couple of examples from Stevenson:--
I know a child of Suffolk whose fancy still _l_ingers about the
_l_i_l_ied _l_ow_l_and waters of that shire.--_Pastoral._
A task in _r_ecitation that _r_eally merited _r_eward.--_The
Manse._
Of course I am speaking only of prose. The diction of poetry is
governed by different laws, and the reduplication of sound is a
recognized and not infrequent ornament of verse used to a degree which
would not be tolerated in prose. In the latter it is important that
alliteration shall appear to be rather the consequence of the subject
than an extraneous ornament. Once a writer introduces into prose a word
which is evidently or even apparently chosen for its initial, he has
given the reader a suspicion of artificiality which is fatal to the
best effect.