common parent, resembles a tree, the trunk and branches of which are connected with a common root: but let us suppose that a family is figured, not barely to be like a tree, but to be a tree; and then the simile will be converted into a metaphor, in the following

manner:

one root:

Edward's seven sons, whereof thyself art one,
Were seven fair branches, springing from inging f
Some of these branches by the dest'nies cut:
But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Glo'ster,
One flourishing branch of his most royal root,
Is hack'd down, and his summer-leaves all faded,
By Envy's hand and Murder's bloody axe.

Figuring human life to be a voyage at sea:

Richard II. Act I. Sc. 3.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current while it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Julius Cæsar, Act IV. Sc. 5.

Figuring glory and honor to be a garland of flowers:

Hotspur.

Would to heaven,

Thy name in arms were now as great as mine!

Pr. Henry. I'll make it greater, ere I part from thee,

And all the budding honors on thy crest,

I'll crop, to make a garland for my head.

First Part Henry IV. Act V. Sc. 9.

Figuring a man who hath acquired great reputation and honor to be a tree full of fruit:

Oh, boys, this story

The world may read in me: my body's mark'd
With Roman swords; and my report was once
First with the best of note. Cymbeline loved me;
And when a soldier was the theme, my name
Was not far off: then was I as a tree,

Whose boughs did bend with fruit. But in one night,
A storm or robbery, call it what you will,

Shook down my mellow hangings, nay my leaves;
And left me bare to weather.

Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 3.

Blessed be thy soul, thou king of shells, said Swaran of the dark-brown shield. In peace thou art the gale of spring; in war, the mountain-storm. Take now my hand in friendship, thou noble king of Morven. Fingal.

Thou dwellest in the soul of Melvina, son of mighty Ossian. My sighs arise with the beam of the east; my tears descend with the drops of night. I was a lovely tree in thy presence, Öscar, with all my branches round me; but thy death came like a blast from the desert, and laid my green head low: the spring returned with its showers, but no leaf of mine arose.

Ibid.

526. I am aware that the term metaphor has been used in a more extensive sense than I give it; but I thought it of consequence, in a disquisition of some intricacy, to confine the term to its proper sense, and to separate from it things that are distinguished by different names. An allegory differs from a metaphor, and what I would choose to call a figure of speech, differs from both. I proceed to explain these differences. A metaphor is defined above to be an act of the imagination, figuring one thing to be another. An allegory requires no such operation, nor is one thing figured to be another: it consists in choosing a subject having properties or circumstances resembling those of the principal subject; and the former is described in such a manner as to represent the latter: the subject thus represented is kept out of view; we are left to discover it by reflection; and we are pleased with the discovery, because it is our own work. Quintilian (L. viii. cap. vi. sec. 2) gives the following instance of an allegory:

O navis, referent in mare te novi
Fluctus. O quid agis? fortiter occupa portum.

Horat. lib. i. ode 14.

and explains it elegantly in the following words: "Totusque ille Horatii locus, quo navim pro republica, fluctuum tempestates pro bellis civilibus, portum pro pace, atque concordia dicit."

A finer or more correct allegory is not to be found than the following, in which a vineyard is made to represent God's own people, the Jews:

Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with its shadow, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all which pass do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast doth devour it. Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard thy right hand hath planted, and the branch thou madest strong for thyself. Psalm 1xxx.

In a word, an allegory is in every respect similar to a hieroglyphical painting, excepting only that words are used instead of colors. Their effects are precisely the same: a hieroglyphic raises two images in the mind; one seen, which represents one not seen: an allegory does the same: the representative subject is described; and resemblance leads us to apply the description to the subject represented. In a figure of speech, there is no fiction of the imagination employed, as in a metaphor, nor a representative subject introduced, as in an allegory. This figure, as its name implies, regards the expression only, nou the thought; and it may be defined, the using a word in a sense different from what is proper to it. Thus youth, or the beginning of life, is expressed figuratively by morning of life: morning is the beginning of the day; and in that view it is employed to signify the beginning of any other series, life especially, the progress of which is reckoned by days.

527. Figures of speech are reserved for a separate section; but metaphor and allegory are so much connected, that they must be handled together; the rules particularly for distinguishing the good from the bad, are common to both. We shall therefore proceed to these rules, after adding some examples to illustrate the nature of an allegory:

Queen. Great lords, wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
What though the mast be now thrown overboard
The cable broke, the holding anchor lost,
And half our sailors swallow'd in the flood;
Yet lives our pilot still. Is 't meet that he
Should leave the helm, and, like a fearful lad,
With tearful eyes, add water to the sea,
And give more strength to that which hath too much;
While in his moan the ship splits on the rock,
Which industry and courage might have saved?

Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!

Third Part Henry VI. Act V. Sc. 5.

Oroonoko. Ha! thou hast roused

The lion in his den; he stalks abroad,
And the wide forest trembles at his roar.
I find the danger now.

Oroonoko, Act III. Sc. 2.

My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. He fenced it, gath ered out the stones thereof, planted it with the choicest vines, built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a wine-press therein: he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned nor digged, but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant. Isaiah, v. 1.

The rules that govern metaphors and allegories are of two kinds: the construction of these figures comes under the first kind; the propriety or impropriety of introduction comes under the other. I begin with rules of the first kind; some of which coincide with those already given for similes; some are peculiar to metaphors and allegories.

And, in the first place, it has been observed, that a simile cannot be agreeable where the resemblance is either too strong or too faint. This holds equally in metaphor and allegory; and the reason is the same in all. In the following instances, the resemblance is too faint to be agreeable:

He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
Within the belt of rule.

Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 2.

There is no resemblance between a distempered cause and any body that can be confined within a belt.

Again:

Steep me in poverty to the very lips. ----Othello, Act IV. Sc. 9. Poverty here must be conceived a fluid, which it resembles not in any manner.

Speaking to Bolingbroke banished for six years:

Again:

The sullen passage of thy weary steps

Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home-return.-Richard II. Act I. Sc. 6.

Here's a letter, lady,

And every word in it a gaping wound

Issuing life-blood.

Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. 3.

Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem. - Eneid, i. 37.

The following metaphor is strained beyond all endurance, Timurbec, known to us by the name of Tamerlane the Great, writes to Bajazet, emperor of the Ottomans, in the following terms:

Where is the monarch who dares resist us? where is the potentate who doth not glory in being numbered among our attendants? As for thee, descended from a Turcoman sailor, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath been wreck'd in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper, that thou shouldst take In the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the port of safety; lest the tempest of our ver geance make thee perish in the sea of the punishment thou deservest.

Such strained figures, as observed above (chapter xix., Comparisons), are not unfrequent in the first dawn of refinement; the mind in a new enjoyment knows no bounds, and is generally carried to excess, till taste and experience discover the proper limits.

Secondly, Whatever resemblance subjects may have, it is wrong to put one for another, where they bear no mutual proportion; upon comparing a very high to a very low subject, the simile takes on an air of burlesque; and the same will be the effect where the one is imagined to be the other, as in a metaphor; or made to represent the other, as in an allegory.

Thirdly, These figures, a metaphor especially, ought not to be crowded with many minute circumstances; for in that case it is scarcely possible to avoid obscurity. A metaphor above all ought to be short: it is difficult for any time to support a lively image of a thing being what we know it is not; and for that reason, a metaphor drawn out to any length, instead of illustrating or enlivening the principal subject, becomes disagreeable by over-straining the mind. Here Cowley is extremely licentious; take the following instance:

Now thou art in, thou ne'er wilt part
With one inch of my vanquish'd heart:
For since thou took'st it by assault from me,
'Tis garrison'd so strong with thoughts of thee,
It fears no beauteous enemy.

For the same reason, however agreeable long allegories may at first be by their novelty, they never afford any lasting pleasure; witness the Fairy Queen, which with great power of expression, variety of images, and melody of versification, is scarce ever read a second time.

528. In the fourth place, the comparison carried on in a simile, being in a metaphor sunk by imagining the principal subject to be that very thing which it only resembles; an opportunity is furnished to describe it in terms taken strictly or literally with respect to its imagined nature. This suggests another rule, that in constructing a metaphor, the writer ought to make use of such words only as are applicable literally to the imagined nature of his subject: figurative words ought carefully to be avoided; for such complicated figures, instead of setting the principal subject in a strong light, involve it in a cloud; and it is well if the reader, without rejecting by the lump, endeavor patiently to gather the plain meaning regardless of its figures:

A stubborn and unconquerable flame
Creeps in his veins, and drinks the streams of life.
Lady Jane Gray, Act I. Sc. 1.

Copied from Ovid,

Sorbent avidæ præcordia flammæ. - Metamorph. lib. ix. 172.

Let us analyze this expression. That a fever may be imagined a flame, I admit; though more than one step is necessary to come at the resemblance: a fever, by heating the body, resembles fire; and it is no stretch to imagine a fever to be a fire: again, by a figure of speech, flame may be put for fire, because they are commonly conjoined; and therefore a fever may be termed a flame. But now admitting a fever to be a flame, its effects ought to be explained in words that agree literally to a flame. This rule is not observed here; for a flame drinks figuratively only, not properly.

King Henry to his son, Prince Henry:

Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,
Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart
To stab at half an hour of my frail life.

Second Part Henry IV. Act IV. Sc. 11.

Such faulty metaphors are pleasantly ridiculed in the Rehearsal :

Physician. Sir, to conclude, the place you fill has more than amply exacted the talents of a wary pilot; and all these threatening storms, which like impregnate clouds, hover o'er our heads, will, when they once are grasped but by the eye of reason, melt into fruitful showers of blessings on the pecple.

Bayes. Pray mark that allegory. Is not that good?

Johnson. Yes, that grasping of a storm with the eye is admirable.