plete, its operation may, even without such refinement of analysis, as that to which I have alluded, be very obviously brought under the influence of contiguity. Thus, as the drapery forms so important a part of the complex perception of the human figure, the costume of any period may recall to us some distinguished person of that time. A ruff, like that worn by Queen Elizabeth, brings before us the sovereign herself, though the person who wears the ruff may have no other circumstance of resemblance ;-because, the ruff, and the general appearance of Queen Elizabeth, having formed one complex whole in our mind, it is necessary only that one part of the complexity should be recalled;-as the ruff, in the case supposed,-to bring back all the other parts, by the mere principle of contiguity. The instance of drapery, which is but an adjunct or accidental circumstance of the person, may be easily extended to other instances, in which the resemblance is in parts of the real and permanent figure: for, though the drapery be only an adjunct of the person, considered separately from our perception, it is an actual component part, as much as any other component part, of that complex idea, which is formed of the person perceived. If we meet a stranger, who, in any particular feature, as in the shape and colour of his eyes, resembles one of our intimate friends, the conception of our friend is suggested; because the conception of our friend's countenance is a complex one, composed of the separate parts of forehead, eyes, checks, mouth, nose, chin; and the eyes of the stranger affecting our vision, in precisely the same manner as the eyes of our friend, thus produce one part of the complex whole, which we have been accustomed to recognize as our friend, and the one part, by its former proximity, recalls the others. The view of one piece of landscape brings before us, in conception, a distant, and perhaps very different scene, by the influence of some small group of objects, or some detached rock, or tree, or hill, or waterfall, which produces the same impression on the eye in both. In this manner, by analysing every complex whole, and tracing in the variety of its composition, that particular part, in which the actual similarity consists, and which may, therefore, be supposed to introduce the other parts, that have formerly coexisted with it, we might be able to reduce every case of suggestion from direct resemblance, to the influence of mere contiguity. But, as in many cases of faint analogical resemblance, this analysis, however just, might appear to involve too great subtilty; and, as the suggestions of resemblance, if indeed they arise, as I suppose, only from the influence of former proximity, are at least so easily distinguishable, from the grosser instances of contiguity, that they may, without any inconvenience, be considered apart,-I have thought it, as I have said, upon the whole, more advantageous for our present purpose of illustration, to consider them thus separately. By the application of a similar refined analysis, however, to other tribes of associations, even to those of contrast, we may, perhaps, find that it would be possible to reduce these also to the same comprehensive influence of mere proximity, as the single principle on which all suggestion is founded. As yet we have taken into view only those more obvious resemblances of actual things, which produce similar impressions on our organs of sense. There is another species of resemblance, founded on more shadowy analogies, which gives rise to an innumerable series of suggestions, most important in value to our intellectual luxury, since it is to them we are, in a great measure, indebted for the most sublime of arts. To these analogies of objects, that agree in exciting similar emotions, we owe the simile, the metaphor, and, in general, all that figurative phraseology, which has almost made a separate language of poetry, as distinct from the abstract language of prose. "Poetas omnino, quasi aliena lingua locutos, non cogar attingere," says Cicero. Yet the difference of the languages of poetry and prose, is much less in Latin, than in our own tongue, in which the restriction of genders, in common discourse, to animated beings, gives, for the production of high rhetorical effect, such happy facilities of distinct personification. In poetry, we perceive every where what Akenside calls "The charm, That searchless Nature o'er the sense of man Diffuses,-to behold, in lifeless things The inexpressive semblance of himself, The zephyrs laugh,-the sky smiles,-the forest frowns,the storm and the surge contend together, the solitary place not merely blossoms like the rose, but it is glad. All nature becomes animated. The poetic genius, like that • Pleasures of Imagination, Book III. v. 282-286. ↑ Ibid. 286-292. soul of the world, by which the early philosophers accounted for all earthly changes, breathes its own spirit into every thing surrounding it. It is "quodcunque vides, quodcunque moveres," that the vivifying essence, which in the beautiful language of Virgil, of "Cœlum, ac terras, camposque liquentes, It is the metaphor which forms the essence of the language poetry; and it is to that peculiar mode of association which we are now considering,--the suggestion of objects by their analogous objects,--that the metaphor owes its birth,-whether the analogy be derived from the moral to the physical, or from the physical to the moral world. The metaphor expresses with rapidity the analogy, as it rises in immediate suggestion, and identifies it, as it were, with the object or emotion which it describes; the simile presents, not the analogy merely, but the two analogous objects, and traces their resemblance to each other with the formality of regular comparison. The metaphor, therefore, is the figure of passion; the simile the figure of calm description. In the drama, accordingly, as the most faithful poetic representation of passion, the simile should be of rare occurrence, and never but in situations in which the speaker may be considered as partaking almost the tranquillity of the poet himself. Thus, to take a well-known instance of error in this respect, when Portius, in the tragedy of Cato, at the very moment in which Lucia, whom he loves, has just bid him farewell forever, and when he is struggling to detain her, traces all the resemblances of his passion to the flame of a fading lamp, we feel immediately, that a lover who could so fully develope a comparison, and a comparison, too, derived from an object the least likely to occur to him at such a moment, could not be suffering any very great agony of heart. "Farewell," says Lucia; "O, how shall I repeat the word-forever!" To which Portius, hanging over her in despair, immediately replies, "Thus o'er the dying lamp, the unsteady flame Hangs quivering on a point, leaps off by fits, And falls again as loth to quit its hold. Thou must not go! My soul still hovers o'er thee, The speech, it may be remarked, by combining a simile and metaphor, in the compass of a very few lines, presents at once a specimen of a figure which suits, and a figure which is altogether inconsistent with a state of passion. If the three lines which describe the flame of a lamp had been omitted, and only the conclusion retained, "Thou must not go! My soul still hovers o'er thee, there would still have been an analogy borrowed from a remote object, but an analogy implied not developed, and expressed with the rapidity with which such analogies really arise. It may perhaps be thought, that even the analogy implied in a metaphor, as it is borrowed from objects not immediately present, and not essential to the emotion, is inconsistent with the natural direction of the suggesting principle in a state of violent feeling. But it is the nature of strong feelings to give to the whole character, for the time, a greater elevation, which enables it to comprehend, as it were, within its vision a greater multitude of kindred objects than can be grasped by it in its unimpassioned state, and to diffuse itself over them all, as if they were living and sympathizing parts of itself. If we attend to what occurs in real life, we shall find, that the metaphor, far from being unnatural, is almost a necessary part of the language of emotion, and that it is then that the language of prose makes its nearest approach to the language of poetry. Indeed, as poetry seems to have originated in the expression of lively feeling, it would have been truly singular if its language had been the least suited to the state in which such feelings are expressed. "I cannot believe," says the younger Racine, in his Reflections on Poetry,-"I cannot believe, with Aristotle, that figures of speech are only expressions disguised, for the purpose of pleasing by the mere astonishment which their disguise affords; nor with Quinctilian and Rollin, that they are expressions which the indigence of our language obliges us to borrow, when I reflect, that we speak, without intending it, a figurative language whenever we are animated by passion. It is then that words derived from foreign objects present themselves so naturally, that it would be impossible to reject them, and to speak only in common terms. To be convinced of this, we have only to listen to a dispute between women of the lowest rank, who cannot be suspected of any very refined search for expressions. Yet what an abundance of figures do they use! They lavish the metonymy, the catachresis, the hyperbole, and all those other tropes, which in spite of the pom pous names that have been given to them by rhetoricians, are only forms of familiar speech used in common by them and by the vulgar."* The discovery of the metonymy and catachresis, in the wranglings of the mob, has certainly a considerable resemblance to the discovery which Cornelius Scriblerus made of the ten prædicaments of logic, in the battle of the serjeant and the butcher in the Bear-garden. "Cornelius was forced to give Martin sensible images; thus, calling up the coachman, he asked him what he had seen in Bear-garden? the man answered he saw two men fight a prize; one was a fair man, a serjeant in the guards; the other black, a butcher; the serjeant had red breeches, the butcher blue; they fought upon a stage about four o'clock, and the serjeant. wounded the butcher in the leg.- Mark (quoth Cornelius) how the fellow runs through the prædicaments. Men, substantia; two, quantitas; fair and black, qualitas; serjeant and butcher, relatio; wounded the other, actio et passio; fighting, situs; stage, ubi; two o'clock, quando; blue and red breeches, habitus." "+ "Nothing is more evident," says the same author, “than that divers persons, no other way remarkable, have each a strong disposition to the formation of some particular trope or figure. Aristotle saith, that the hyperbole is an ornament fit for young men of quality; accordingly we find in those gentlemen a wonderful propensity toward it, which is marvellously improved by travelling. Soldiers also and seamen are very happy in the same figure. The periphrasis or circumlocution. is the peculiar talent of country farmers; the proverb or apologue of old men at their clubs; the ellipsis or speech by half words, of ministers and politicians, the aposiopesis of courtiers, the litotes or diminution of ladies, whispers and backbiters, and the anadiplosis of common criers and hawkers, who by redoubling the same words, persuade people to buy their oysters, green hastings, or new ballads. Epithets may be found in great plenty at Billingsgate, sarcasm and irony learned upon the water, and the epiphonema or exclamation frequently from the Bear-garden, and as frequently from the hear him of the House of Commons."+ These examples are ludicrous, indeed; yet the observation of Racine is not the less just; and we may safely conclude, however different it may be from the opinion which we should have formed a priori, that when the mind is in a state of emo C. III. Art. I.-Œuvres, tom. V. p. 63. Edit. 1750. † Chap. vii. Art of Sinking in Poetry, c. XIII. |
