Never had the Cardinal’s policy been more triumphantly vindicated.
Nowhere is this so noticeable as in the South of France.
In no case can such a course be justified merely by success.
Systems, neither of which can be regarded as philosophically established, but neither of which can we consent to surrender.—Balfour.
Two sorts of judgments, neither of which can be deduced from the other, and of neither of which can any proof be given.—Balfour.
It is at this stage that misconception creeps in. Most of these negative phrases are in themselves emphatic; and from their being placed first (really on the analogy of nor) comes the mistaken idea that they derive emphasis from their position. This paves the way for wholesale inversion: any words, other than the subject, are placed at the beginning; and this not always in order to emphasize the words so placed, but merely to give an impressive effect to the whole. The various steps are marked by the instances that follow. In the first two, inversion may be on the analogy of negatives, or may be designed for emphasis; in the third, emphasis is clearly the motive; and in the rest we have mere impressiveness—not to say mere mannerism.
With difficulty could he be persuaded....
Disputes were rife in both cases, but in both cases have the disputes been arranged.—Times.
Almost unanimously do Americans assume that....—Times.
They hardly resembled real ships, so twisted and burnt were the funnels and superstructure; rather did they resemble the ghosts of a long departed squadron....—Times.
His love of romantic literature was as far as possible from that of a mind which only feeds on romantic excitements. Rather was it that of one who was so moulded....—Hutton.
There is nothing to show that the Asclepiads took any prominent share in the work of founding anatomy, physiology, zoology, and botany. Rather do these seem to have sprung from the early philosophers.—Huxley.
His works were ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. Yet was the multitude still true to him.—Macaulay.
Henry Fox, or nobody, could weather the storm which was about to burst. Yet was he a person to whom the court, even in that extremity, was unwilling to have recourse.—Macaulay.
A book of ‘levities and gravities’, it would seem from the author’s dedication, is this set of twelve essays, named after the twelve months.—Westminster Gazette.
The set epistolary pieces, one might say, were discharged before the day of Elia. Yet is there certainly no general diminution of sparkle or interest....—Times.
Futile were the endeavor to trace back to Pheidias’ varied originals, as we are tempted to do, many of the later statues....—L. M. Mitchell.
Inevitably critical was the attitude that he adopted towards religion.... Odious to him were, on the one hand, ....—Journal of Education.
Finely conceived is this poem, and not less admirable in execution.—Westminster Gazette.
‘The Rainbow and the Rose’, by E. Nisbet, is a little book that will not disappoint those who know the writer’s ‘Lays and Legends’. Facile and musical, sincere and spontaneous, are these lyrics.—Westminster Gazette.
Then to the resident Medical Officer at the Brompton Hospital for Consumption for an authoritative opinion on the subject went the enquirer.—Westminster Gazette.
In view of the rapidly increasing tendency to causeless inversion of all kinds, it is far from certain that this last is intentional satire.
e. Miscellaneous.
(i) In narrated dialogue, the demand for variations of ‘he said’, &c., excuse considerable freedom in the matter of inversion. One or two points, however, may be noticed.
When the subject is a personal pronoun, say is perhaps the only verb with which inversion is advisable. ‘Said I, he, they’, and ‘retorted Jones’: but not ‘enquired I’, ‘rejoined he’, ‘suggested they’.
Compound verbs, as usual, do not lend themselves to inversion:
‘I won’t plot anything extra against Tom,’ had said Isaac.—M. Maartens.
‘At any rate, then,’ may rejoin our critic, ‘it is clearly useless....’—Spencer.
‘I am the lover of a queen,’ had often sung the steward in his pantry below.—R. Elliot.
‘The cook and the steward are always quarrelling, it is quite unbearable,’ had explained Mrs. Tuggy to the chief mate.—R. Elliot.
Inverted said at the beginning is one of the first pitfalls that await the novice who affects sprightliness. It is tolerable, if anywhere, only in light playful verse.
Said a friend to me the other day, ‘I should like to be able to run well across country, but have never taken part in a paper-chase, for I have always been beaten so easily when trying a hundred yards or so against my acquaintances....’—S. Thomas.
Mr. Takahira and Count Cassini continue to exchange repartees through friends or through the public press. Said the Japanese Minister yesterday evening:—Times.
It is inferred here officially and unofficially that neutral rights are unlikely to suffer from any derangement in Morocco to which England is a consenting party. Said a Minister:—‘American interests are not large enough in Morocco to induce us to....’—Times.
With verbs other than said, this form of inversion is still more decidedly a thing to be left to the poets. ‘Appears Verona’; ‘Rose a nurse of ninety years’; but not
Comes a new translation ... in four neat olive-green volumes.—Journal of Education.
(ii) The inverted conditionals should, had, could, would, were, did, being recommended by brevity and a certain neatness, are all more or less licensed by modern usage. It is worth while, however, to name them in what seems to be their order of merit. Should I, from its frequency, is without taint of archaism; but could and would, and, in a less degree, had, are apt to betray their archaic character by the addition of but (‘would he but consent’); and were and did are felt to be slightly out of date, even without this hint.
I should be, therefore, worse than a fool, did I object.—Scott.
Did space allow, I could give you startling proof of this.—Times.
(iii) Always, after performing inversion of any kind, the novice should go his rounds, and see that all is shipshape. For want of this precaution, a writer who was no novice, particularly in the matter of inversion, produces such curiosities as these:
Be this a difference of inertia, of bulk or of form, matters not to the argument.—Spencer.
It is true that, disagreeing with M. Comte, though I do, in all those fundamental views that are peculiar to him, I agree with him in sundry minor views.—Spencer.
We shall venture on removing the comma before ‘though’; but must leave it to connoisseurs in inversion to decide between the rival attractions of ‘disagree with M. Comte though I do’ and ‘disagreeing ... though I am’. ‘Though I do’, in spite of the commas, can scarcely be meant to be parenthetic; that would give (by resolution of the participle) ‘though I disagree with M. Comte, though I do, ....’
Archaism
a. Occasional.
We have implied in former sections, and shall here take it for granted, that occasional archaism is always a fault, conscious or unconscious. There are, indeed, a few writers—Lamb is one of them—whose uncompromising terms, ‘Love me, love my archaisms’, are generally accepted; but they are taking risks that a novice will do well not to take.
As to unconscious archaism, it might be thought that such a thing could scarcely exist: to employ unconsciously a word that has been familiar, and is so no longer, can happen to few. Yet charitable readers will believe that in the following sentence demiss has slipped unconsciously from a learned pen:
He perceived that the Liberal ministry had offended certain influential sections by appearing too demiss or too unenterprising in foreign affairs.—Bryce.
The guilt of such peccadilloes as this may be said to vary inversely as the writer’s erudition; for in this matter the learned may plead ignorance, where the novice knows too well what he is doing. It is conscious archaism that offends, above all the conscious archaisms of the illiterate: the historian’s It should seem, even the essayist’s You shall find, is less odious, though not less deliberate, than the ere, oft, aught, thereanent, I wot, I trow, and similar ornaments, with which amateurs are fond of tricking out their sentences. This is only natural. An educated writer’s choice falls upon archaisms less hackneyed than the amateur’s; he uses them, too, with more discretion, limiting his favourites to a strict allowance, say, of once in three essays. The amateur indulges us with his whole repertoire in a single newspaper letter of twenty or thirty lines, and—what is worse—cannot live up to the splendours of which he is so lavish: charmed with the discovery of some antique order of words, he selects a modern slang phrase to operate upon; he begins a sentence with ofttimes, and ends it with a grammatical blunder; aspires to albeit, and achieves howbeit. Our list begins with the educated specimens, but lower down the reader will find several instances of this fatal incongruity of style; fatal, because the culprit proves himself unworthy of what is worthless. For the vilest of trite archaisms has this latent virtue, that it might be worse; to use it, and by using it to make it worse, is to court derision.
A coiner or a smuggler shall get off tolerably well.—Lamb.
The same circumstance may make one person laugh, which shall render another very serious.—Lamb.
You shall hear the same persons say that George Barnwell is very natural, and Othello is very natural.—Lamb.
Don Quixote shall last you a month for breakfast reading.—Spectator.
Take them as they come, you shall find in the common people a surly indifference.—Emerson.
The worst of making a mannerism of this shall is that, after the first two or three times, the reader is certain to see it coming; for its function is nearly always the same—to bring in illustrations of a point already laid down.
Some of us, like Mr. Andrew Lang for instance, cannot away with a person who does not care for Scott or Dickens.—Spectator.
One needs not praise their courage.—Emerson.
What turn things are likely to take if this version be persisted in is a matter for speculation.—Times.
If Mr. Hobhouse’s analysis of the vices of popular government be correct, much more would seem to be needed.—Times.
Mr. Bowen has been, not recalled, but ordered to Washington, and will be expected to produce proof, if any he have, of his charges against Mr. Loomis.—Times.
It were futile to attempt to deprive it of its real meaning.—Times.
It were idle to deny that the revolutionary movement in Russia is nowhere followed with keener interest than in this country.—Times.
It were idle to deny that coming immediately after the Tangier demonstration it assumes special and unmistakable significance.—Times.
He is putting poetic ‘frills’, if the phrase be not too mean, on what is better stated in the prose summary of the argument.—Times.
Regarded as a counter-irritant to slang, archaism is a failure. Frills is ten times more noticeable for the prim and pompous be.
Under them the land is being rapidly frivolled away, and, unless immediate action be taken, the country will be so tied that....—Times.
That will depend a good deal on whether he be shocked by the cynicism of the most veracious of all possible representations....—H. James.
We may not quote the lengthy passage here: it is probably familiar to many readers.—Times.
‘We must not’. Similarly, the modern prose English for if I be, it were, is if I am, it would be.
‘I have no particular business at L.,’ said he; ‘I was merely going thither to pass a day or two.’—Borrow.
I am afraid you will hardly be able to ride your horse thither in time to dispose of him.—Borrow.
It will necessitate my recurring thereto in the House of Commons.—Spectator.
The Scottish Free Church had theretofore prided itself upon the rigidity of its orthodoxy.—Bryce.
The special interests of France in Morocco, whereof the recognition by Great Britain and Spain forms the basis of the international agreements concluded last year by the French Government.—Times.
To what extent has any philosophy or any revelation assured us hereof till now?—F. W. H. Myers.
On the concert I need not dwell; the reader would not care to have my impressions thereanent.—C. Brontë.
There, not thither, is the modern form; to it, not thereto; of which, of this, not whereof, hereof; till then, or up to that time, not theretofore. So, in the following examples, except, perhaps, before, though; not save, perchance, ere, albeit.
Nobody save an individual in no condition to distinguish a hawk from a handsaw....—Times.
My ignorance as to ‘figure of merit’ is of no moment save to myself.—Times.
This we obtain by allowing imports to go untaxed save only for revenue purposes.—Spectator.
Who now reads Barry Cornwall or Talfourd save only in connexion with their memorials of the rusty little man in black?—Times.
In my opinion the movements may be attributed to unconscious cerebration, save in those cases in which it is provoked wilfully.—Times.
When Mr. Roosevelt was but barely elected Governor of New York, when Mr. Bryan was once and again by mounting majorities excused from service at the White House, perchance neither correctly forecasted the actual result.—Times.
Dr. Bretton was a cicerone after my own heart; he would take me betimes ere the galleries were filled.—C. Brontë.
He is certainly not cruising on a trade route, or his presence would long ere this have been reported.—Times.
Mr. Shaynor unlocked a drawer, and ere he began to write, took out a meagre bundle of letters.—Kipling.
Fortifications are fixed, immobile defences, and, in time of war, must await the coming of an enemy ere they can exercise their powers of offence.—Times.
‘It is something in this fashion’, she cried out ere long; ‘the man is too romantic and devoted.’—C. Brontë.
Ere departing, however, I determined to stroll about and examine the town.—Borrow.
The use of ere with a gerund is particularly to be avoided.
And that she should force me, by the magic of her pen to mentally acknowledge, albeit with wrath and shame, my own inferiority!—Corelli.
Such things as our modern newspapers chronicle, albeit in different form.—Corelli.
It is thought by experts that there could be no better use of the money, albeit the best American colleges, with perhaps one exception, have very strong staffs of professors at incredibly low salaries.—Times.
‘Oxoniensis’ approaches them with courage, his thoughts are expressed in plain, unmistakable language, howbeit with the touch of a master hand.—Daily Telegraph.
The writer means albeit; he would have been safer with though.
Living in a coterie, he seems to have read the laudations and not to have noticed aught else.—Times.
Hence, if higher criticism, or aught besides, compels any man to question, say, the historic accuracy of the fall....—Daily Telegraph.
Many a true believer owned not up to his faith.—Daily Telegraph.
The controversy now going on in your columns anent ‘Do we believe?’ throws a somewhat strange light upon the religion of to-day.—Daily Telegraph.
It is because the world has not accepted the religion of Jesus Christ our Lord, that the world is in the parlous state we see it still.—Daily Telegraph.
A discussion in which well nigh every trade, profession and calling have been represented.—Daily Telegraph.
Why not? Because we have well-nigh bordering on 300 different interpretations of the message Christ bequeathed us.—Daily Telegraph.
It is quite a common thing to see ladies with their hymn-books in their hands, ere returning home from church enter shops and make purchases which might every whit as well have been effected on the Saturday.—Daily Telegraph.
How oft do those who train young minds need to urge the necessity of being in earnest....—Daily Telegraph.
I trow not.—Daily Telegraph.
The clerk, as I conjectured him to be from his appearance, was also commoved; for, sitting opposite to Mr. Morris, that honest gentleman’s terror communicated itself to him, though he wotted not why.—Scott.
I should be right glad if the substance could be made known to clergy and ministers of all denominations.—Daily Telegraph.
So sordid are the lives of such natures, who are not only not heroic to their valets and waiting-women, but have neither valets nor waiting-women to be heroic to withal.—Dickens.
b. Sustained archaism in narrative and dialogue.
A novelist who places his story in some former age may do so for the sake of a purely superficial variety, without any intention of troubling himself or his readers with temporal colour more than is necessary to avoid glaring absurdities; he is then not concerned with archaism at all. More commonly, however, it is part of his plan to present a living picture of the time of which he writes. When this is the case, he naturally feels bound to shun anachronism not only in externals, but in thought and the expression of thought. Now with regard to the language of his characters, it would be absurd for him to pretend to anything like consistent realism: he probably has no accurate knowledge of the language as his characters would speak it; and if he had this knowledge, and used it, he would be unintelligible to most of his readers, and burdensome to the rest. Accordingly, if he is wise, he will content himself with keeping clear of such modes of expression as are essentially modern and have only modern associations, such as would jar upon the reader’s sense of fitness and destroy the time illusion. He will aim, that is to say, at a certain archaic directness and simplicity; but with the archaic vocabulary, which instead of preserving the illusion only reminds us that there is an illusion to be preserved, he will have little to do. This we may call negative archaism. Esmond is an admirable example of it, and the ‘Dame Gossip’ part of Mr. Meredith’s Amazing Marriage is another. It hardly occurs to us in these books that the language is archaic; it is appropriate, that is all. The same may be said, on the whole, of Treasure Island, and of one or two novels of Besant’s.
Only the novelist who is not wise indulges in positive archaism. He is actuated by the determination to have everything in character at all costs. He does not know very much about old English of any period; very few people do, and those who know most of it would be the last to attempt to write a narrative in it. He gives us, however, all that he knows, without much reference to particular periods; it may not be good ancient English, but, come what may, it shall not be good modern. This, it need scarcely be said, is not fair play: the recreation is all on the writer’s side. Archaism is, no doubt, very seductive to the archaist. Well done (that is, negatively done), it looks easy; and to do it badly is perhaps even easier than it looks. No very considerable stock-in-trade is required; the following will do quite well: Prithee—quotha—perchance—peradventure—i’ faith—sirrah—beshrew me—look ye—sith that—look to it—leave prating—it shall go hard but—I tell you, but—the more part—fair cold water—to me-ward—I am shrewdly afeared—it is like to go stiff with me—y’ are—y’ have—it irks me sorely—benison—staunch—gyves—yarely—this same villain—drink me this—you were better go; to these may be added the indiscriminate use of ‘Nay’ and ‘Now (by the rood, &c.)’; free inversion; and verb terminations in -st and -th. Our list is largely drawn from Stevenson, who, having tried negative archaism with success in Treasure Island, chose to give us a positive specimen in The Black Arrow. How vexatious these reach-me-down archaisms can become, even in the hands of an able writer, will be seen from the following examples of a single trick, all taken from The Black Arrow.
An I had not been a thief, I could not have painted me your face.
Put me your hand into the corner, and see what ye find there.
Bring me him down like a ripe apple. And keep ever forward, Master Shelton; turn me not back again, an ye love your life.
Selden, take me this old shrew softly to the nearest elm, and hang me him tenderly by the neck, where I may see him at my riding.
Mark me this old villain on the piebald.
‘Sirrah, no more words,’ said Dick. ‘Bend me your back.’
‘Here is a piece of forest that I know not’, Dick remarked. ‘Where goeth me this track?’
‘I slew him fair. I ran me in upon his bow,’ he cried.
‘Swallow me a good draught of this,’ said the knight.
It is like a child with a new toy.
But there is the opposite fault. The judicious archaist, as we have said, will abstain from palpable modernisms, especially from modern slang. The following extracts are taken from an old woman’s reminiscences of days in which a ‘faultless attire’ included ‘half high boots, knee-breeches very tight above the calf (as the fashion was then), a long-tailed cutaway coat, ...’:
But the Captain, who, of course, lacks bowels of mercy for this kind of thing, says that if he had been Caesar, ‘Caius would have got the great chuck. Yes, madam, I would have broke Mister Caius on the spot’.—Crockett.
But if you once go in for having a good time (as Miss Anne in her innocence used to remark) you must be prepared to....—Crockett.
... as all girls love to do when they are content with the way they have put in their time.—Crockett.
Metaphor
Strictly speaking, metaphor occurs as often as we take a word out of its original sphere and apply it to new circumstances. In this sense almost all words can be shown to be metaphorical when they do not bear a physical meaning; for the original meaning of almost all words can be traced back to something physical; in our first sentence above, for instance, there are eight different metaphors. Words had to be found to express mental perceptions, abstract ideas, and complex relations, for which a primitive vocabulary did not provide; and the obvious course was to convey the new idea by means of the nearest physical parallel. The commonest Latin verb for think is a metaphor from vine-pruning; ‘seeing’ of the mind is borrowed from literal sight; ‘pondering’ is metaphorical ‘weighing’. Evidently these metaphors differ in intention and effect from such a phrase as ‘smouldering’ discontent; the former we may call, for want of a better word, ‘natural’ metaphor, as opposed to the latter, which is artificial. The word metaphor as ordinarily used suggests only the artificial kind: but in deciding on the merits or demerits of a metaphorical phrase we are concerned as much with the one class as the other; for in all doubtful cases our first questions will be, what was the writer’s intention in using the metaphor? is it his own, or is it common property? if the latter, did he use it consciously or unconsciously?
This distinction, however, is useful only as leading up to another. We cannot use it directly as a practical test: artificial metaphors, as well as natural ones, often end by becoming a part of ordinary language; when this has happened, there is no telling to which class they belong, and in English the question is complicated by the fact that our metaphorical vocabulary is largely borrowed from Latin in the metaphorical state. Take such a word as explain: its literal meaning is ‘spread out flat’: how are we to say now whether necessity or picturesqueness first prompted its metaphorical use? And the same doubt might arise centuries hence as to the origin of a phrase so obviously artificial to us as ‘glaring inconsistency’.
Our practical distinction will therefore be between conscious or ‘living’ and unconscious or ‘dead’ metaphor, whether natural or artificial in origin: and again, among living metaphors, we shall distinguish between the intentional, which are designed for effect, and the unintentional, which, though still felt to be metaphors, are used merely as a part of the ordinary vocabulary. It may seem at first sight that this classification leaves us where we were: how can we know whether a writer uses a particular metaphor consciously or unconsciously? We cannot know for certain: it is enough if we think that he used it consciously, and know that we should have used it consciously ourselves; experience will tell us how far our perceptions in this respect differ from other people’s. Most readers, we think, will agree in the main with our classification of the following instances; they are taken at random from a couple of pages of the Spectator.
These we should call dead: ‘his views were personal’; ‘carry out his policy’; ‘not acceptable to his colleagues’; ‘the Chancellor proposed’; ‘some grounds for complaint’; ‘refrain from talking about them’; ‘the remission of the Tea-duty’; ‘sound policy’; ‘a speech almost entirely composed of extracts’; ‘reduction of taxation’; ‘discussion’; ‘the low price of Consols’; ‘falls due’; ‘succeeded’; ‘will approach their task’; ‘delivered a speech’; ‘postponing to a future year’. The next are living, but not intentional metaphor; the writer is aware that his phrase is still picturesque in effect, but has not chosen it for that reason: ‘a Protestant atmosphere’; ‘this would leave a margin of £122,000’; ‘the loss of elasticity’ in the Fund; ‘recasting our whole Fiscal system’; ‘to uphold the unity of the Empire’; ‘to strengthen the Exchequer balances’; ‘all dwelt on the grave injury’; ‘his somewhat shattered authority’; ‘the policy of evasion now pursued’; ‘throws new light on the situation’; ‘a gap in our fiscal system’. Intentional metaphors are of course less plentiful: ‘the home-rule motion designed to “draw” Sir Henry’; ‘a dissolving view of General Elections’; ‘this reassuring declaration knocks the bottom out of the plea of urgency’; ‘the scattered remnants of that party might rally after the disastrous defeat’.
One or two general remarks may be made before we proceed to instances. It is scarcely necessary to warn any one against over-indulgence in intentional metaphor; its effects are too apparent. The danger lies rather in the use of live metaphor that is not intentional. The many words and phrases that fall under this class are all convenient; as often as not they are the first that occur, and it is laborious, sometimes impossible, to hit upon an equivalent; the novice will find it worth while, however, to get one whenever he can. We may read a newspaper through without coming upon a single metaphor of this kind that is at all offensive in itself; it is in the aggregate that they offend. ‘Cries aloud for’, ‘drop the curtain on’, ‘goes hand in hand with’, ‘a note of warning’, leaves its impress’, ‘paves the way for’, ‘heralds the advent of’, ‘opens the door to’, are not themselves particularly noisy phrases; but writers who indulge in them generally end by being noisy.
Unintentional metaphor is the source, too, of most actual blunders. Every one is on his guard when his metaphor is intentional; the nonsense that is talked about mixed metaphor, and the celebrity of one or two genuine instances of it that come down to us from the eighteenth century, have had that good effect. There are few obvious faults a novice is more afraid of committing than this of mixed metaphor. His fears are often groundless; many a sentence that might have stood has been altered from a misconception of what mixed metaphor really is. The following points should be observed.
1. If only one of the metaphors is a live one, the confusion is not a confusion for practical purposes.
2. Confusion can only exist between metaphors that are grammatically inseparable; parallel metaphors between which there is no grammatical dependence cannot result in confusion. The novice must beware, however, of being misled either by punctuation or by a parallelism that does not secure grammatical independence. Thus, no amount of punctuation can save the time-honoured example ‘I smell a rat: I see him hovering in the air: ... I will nip him in the bud’. Him is inseparable from the later metaphors, and refers to the rat. But there is no confusion in the following passage; any one of the metaphors can be removed without affecting the grammar:
3. Metaphor within metaphor is dangerous. Here there is a grammatical dependence between the metaphors, and if the combination is unsuitable confusion will result. But combination is one thing, and confusion is another: if the internal metaphor is not inconsistent with the external, there is no confusion, though there may be ugliness. To adapt one of our examples below, ‘The Empire’s butcher (i. e. New Zealand) has not all his eggs in one basket’ is not a confusion, because a metaphorical butcher can have his eggs in one basket as well as any one else. What does lead to confusion is the choice of an internal metaphor applicable not to the words of the external metaphor, but to the literal words for which it is substituted. In the following example, the confusion is doubtless intended.
The swallowing is applicable only to the person metaphorically called a pillar.
4. Confusion of metaphor is sometimes alleged against sentences that contain only one metaphor—a manifest absurdity. These are really cases of a clash between the metaphorical and the non-metaphorical. A striking or original metaphor is apt to appear violent, and a commonplace one impertinent, if not adequately borne out by the rest of the sentence. This we may label ‘unsustained metaphor’. It sometimes produces much the same effect as mixed metaphor; but the remedy for it, as well as the cause, is different. Mixed metaphor is the result of negligence, and can generally be put right by a simple adaptation of the language to whichever metaphor is to be retained. Unsustained metaphor is rather an error of judgement: it is unsustained either because it was difficult to sustain, or because it was not worth sustaining; in either case abandonment is the simplest course.
This diverting incident contributed in a high degree to the general merriment.
Here we have four different metaphors; but as they are all dead, there is no real confusion.
This, as you know, was a burning question; and its unseasonable introduction threw a chill on the spirits of all our party.
Burning and chill are both live metaphors, they are grammatically connected by its, and they are inconsistent; there is therefore confusion.
The uncertainty which hangs over every battle extends in a special degree to battles at sea.—Spectator.
Extends is usually dead; and if in this case it is living, it is also suitable.
A centre and nucleus round which the scattered remnants of that party might rally after the disastrous defeat.—Spectator.
The main or external metaphor is that of an army. Now any metaphor that is applicable to a literal army is also applicable to a metaphorical one: but ‘rally round a nucleus’ is a confusion of metaphor, to whichever it is applied; it requires us to conceive of the army at the same time as animal and vegetable, nucleus being literally the kernel of a nut, and metaphorically a centre about which growth takes place. An army can have a nucleus, but cannot rally round it.
Sir W. Laurier had claimed for Canada that she would be the granary and baker of the Empire, and Sir Edmund Barton had claimed for Australia that she would be the Empire’s butcher; but in New Zealand they had not all their eggs in one basket, and they could claim a combination of the three.
This is quoted in a newspaper as an example of mixed metaphor. It is nothing of the kind: they in New Zealand are detached from the metaphor.
We move slowly and cautiously from old moorings in our English life, that is our laudable constitutional habit; but my belief is that the great majority of moderate churchmen, to whatever political party they may belong, desirous as they are to lift this question of popular education out of the party rut, ....
‘A rut’, says the same newspaper, ‘is about the very last thing we should expect to find at sea, despite the fact that it is ploughed’. There is no mention of ruts at sea; the two metaphors are independent. If the speaker had said ‘Moderate churchmen, moving at length from their old moorings, are beginning to lift this question out of the party rut’, we should have had a genuine confusion, the moorings and the rut being then inseparable. Both this sentence and the preceding one, the reader may think, would have been better without the second metaphor; we agree, but it is a question of taste, not of correctness.
... the keenest incentive man can feel to remedy ignorance and abolish guilt. It is under the impelling force of this incentive that civilization progresses.—Spectator.
This illustrates the danger of deciding hastily on the deadness of a metaphor, however common it may be. Probably any one would have said that the musical idea in incentive had entirely vanished: but the successive attributes keenness and impelling force are too severe a test; the dead metaphor is resuscitated, and a perceptible confusion results.
Her forehand drive—her most trenchant asset.—Daily Mail.
Another case of resuscitation. Trenchant turns in its grave; and asset, ready to succumb under the violence of athletic reporters, has yet life enough to resent the imputation of a keen edge. As the critic of ‘ruts at sea’ might have observed, the more blunt, the better the assets.
And the very fact that the past is beyond recall imposes upon the present generation a continual stimulus to strive for the prevention of such woes.—Spectator.
We impose a burden, we apply a stimulus. It looks as if the writer had meant by a short cut to give us both ideas; if so, his guilt is clear; and if we call impose a mere slip in idiom, the confusion is none the less apparent.
Sword of the devil, running with the blood of saints, poisoned adder, thy work is done.
These are independent metaphors; and, as thy work is done is applicable to each of them, there is no confusion.
In the hope that something might be done, even at the eleventh hour, to stave off the brand of failure from the hide of our military administration.—Times.
To stave off a brand is not, perhaps, impossible; but we suspect that it would be a waste of energy. The idea of bulk is inseparable from the process of staving off. The metaphor is usually applied to literal abstract nouns, not to metaphorical concretes: ruin and disaster one can suppose to be of a tolerable size; but a metaphorical brand does not present itself to the imagination as any larger than a literal one. We assume that by brand the instrument is meant: the eleventh hour is all too early to set about staving off the mark.
This is a good example of mixed metaphor of the more pronounced type; it differs only in degree from some of those considered above. We suggested that impose a stimulus was perhaps a short cut to the expression of two different metaphors, and the same might be said of staving off the brand. But we shall get a clearer idea of the nature of mixed metaphor if we regard all these as violations of the following simple rule: When a live metaphor (intentional or unintentional) has once been chosen, the words grammatically connected with it must be either (a) recognizable parts of the same metaphorical idea, or one consistent with it, or (b) unmetaphorical, or dead metaphor; literal abstract nouns, for instance, instead of metaphorical concretes. Thus, we shall impose not the stimulus, but either (a) the burden of resistance, or (b) the duty of resistance; and we shall stave off not the ‘brand’ but the ‘ignominy of failure from our military administration’.
But from our remarks in 4 above, it will be clear that (b), though it cannot result in confusion of metaphor, may often leave the metaphor unsustained. Our examples illustrate several common types.
Is it not a little difficult to ask for Liberal votes for Unionist Free-traders, if we put party interests in the front of the consideration?—Spectator.
May I be allowed to add a mite of experience of an original Volunteer in a good City regiment?—Spectator.
But also in Italy many ancient edifices have been recently coated with stucco and masked by superfluous repairs.—Spectator.
The elementary schools are hardly to be blamed for this failure. Their aim and their achievement have to content themselves chiefly with moral rather than with mental success.—Spectator.
The scourge of tyranny had breathed his last.
The means of education at the disposal of the Protestants and Presbyterians of the North were stunted and sterilized.—Balfour.
I once heard a Spaniard shake his head over the present Queen of Spain.—(Quoted by Spectator.)
But, apart from all that, we see two pinching dilemmas even in this opium case—dilemmas that screw like a vice—which tell powerfully in favour of our Tory views.—De Quincey.
The reader who is uncharitable enough to insist upon the natural history of dilemmas will call this not unsustained metaphor, but a gross confusion; horns cannot be said to screw. We prefer to believe that De Quincey was not thinking of the horns at all; they are a gratuitous metaphorical ornament; dilemma, in English at any rate, is a literal word, and means an argument that presents two undesirable alternatives. The circumstances of a dilemma are, indeed, such as to prompt metaphorical language, but the word itself is incorrigibly literal; we confess as much by clapping horns on its head and making them do the metaphorical work.
These remarks have been dictated in order that the importance of recognizing the difference and the value of soils may be understood.—J. Long.
This metaphor always requires that the dictator—usually a personified abstract—should be mentioned. ‘Dictated by the importance’.
The opposite fault of over-conscientiousness must also be noticed. Elaborate poetical metaphor has perhaps gone out of fashion; but technical metaphor is apt to be overdone, and something of the same tendency appears in the inexorable working-out of popular catchword metaphors:
Tost to and fro by the high winds of passionate control, I behold the desired port, the single state, into which I would fain steer; but am kept off by the foaming billows of a brother’s and sister’s envy, and by the raging winds of a supposed invaded authority; while I see in Lovelace, the rocks on the one hand, and in Solmes, the sands on the other; and tremble, lest I should split upon the former or strike upon the latter. But you, my better pilot,...—Richardson.
Such phases of it as we did succeed in mentally kodaking are hardly to be ‘developed’ in cold print.—Times.
We are not photographers enough to hazard a comment on cold print.
The leading planks of the Opposition policy are declared to be the proper audit of public accounts,...—Times.
Repetition
‘Rhetorical’ or—to use at once a wider and a more intelligible term—‘significant’ repetition is a valuable element in modern style; used with judgement, it is as truly a good thing as clumsy repetition, the result of negligence, is bad. But there are some writers who, from the fact that all good repetition is intentional, rashly infer that all intentional repetition is good; and others who may be suspected of making repetitions from negligence, and retaining them from a misty idea that to be aware of a thing is to have intended it. Even when the repetition is a part of the writer’s original plan, consideration is necessary before it can be allowed to pass: it is implied in the terms ‘rhetorical’ or significant repetition that the words repeated would ordinarily be either varied or left out; the repetition, that is to say, is more or less abnormal, and whatever is abnormal may be objectionable in a single instance, and is likely to become so if it occurs frequently.
The writers who have most need of repetition, and are most justified in using it, are those whose chief business it is to appeal not to the reader’s emotions, but to his understanding; for, in spite of the term ‘rhetorical’, the object ordinarily is not impressiveness for impressiveness’ sake, but emphasis for the sake of clearness. It may seem, indeed, that a broad distinction ought to be drawn between the rhetorical and the non-rhetorical: they differ in origin and in aim, one being an ancient rhetorical device to secure impressiveness, the other a modern development, called forth by the requirements of popular writers on subjects that demand lucidity; and there is the further difference, that rhetorical repetition often dictates the whole structure of the sentence, whereas the non-rhetorical, in its commonest form, is merely the completion of a sentence that need not have been completed. But in practice the two things become inseparable, and we shall treat them together; only pointing out to the novice that of the two motives, impressiveness and lucidity, the latter is far the more likely to seem justifiable in the reader’s eyes.
We shall illustrate both the good and bad points of repetition almost exclusively from a few pages of Bagehot, one of its most successful exponents, in whom nevertheless it degenerates into mannerism. To a writer who has so much to say that is worth hearing, almost anything can be forgiven that makes for clearness; and in him clearness, vigour, and a certain pleasant rapidity, all result from the free use of repetition. It will be seen that his repetitions are not of the kind properly called rhetorical; it is the spontaneous fullness of a writer who, having a clear point to make, is determined to make it clearly, elegance or no elegance. Yet the growth of mannerism is easily seen in him; the justifiable repetitions are too frequent, and he has some that do not seem justifiable.