Use of Illustrations.
An apt illustration is always a help to a writer or speaker. The mind of the reader or hearer is interested in tracing the comparison, and receives a stronger impression than it does when the thought is stated simply by itself.
Many of the most famous orators have been very gifted in employing similes to express their meaning. You should cultivate the habit of using illustrations. Although there is sometimes danger in employing them, yet where carefully and rightly used they not only ornament the composition, but render its thoughts and ideas more striking, more impressive and more easily remembered.
A Simile is a comparison explicitly stated; as,
Now does he feel his title
Hang loose upon him like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a goodly apple rotten at the heart.
The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the most imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both.
A Metaphor is a condensed Simile. The comparison is implied, but not expressed at length; thus:—
But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.
The simile implied here is, “The morning like to a person clad in russet mantle walks,” etc.
Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness ... above all taking the shield of faith wherewith ye may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Similes and Metaphors are employed
1. To aid the understanding.
We comprehend the unknown best by comparison with the known.
2. To intensify the feelings; as
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice.
What a piece of work is man; how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
3. To give point and force to what we wish to express.
Our conduct towards the Indians has been that of a man who subscribes to hospitals, weeps at charity sermons, carries out broth and blankets to beggars, and then comes home and beats his wife and children.
Howe’er it be, it seems to me
’Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.—Tennyson.
Every one must admit the beauty and force of the great poet’s comparison of kind hearts to coronets, and simple faith to Norman blood, implying that each object mentioned surpasses the one with which it is compared.
The following rules should be observed in the conduct of Metaphors:—
1. Do not use metaphors, except when needed to make a sentence clearer or stronger. Needless metaphors are a blemish instead of an ornament.
2. Do not pursue a simile or metaphor too far. The further it is pursued the less likely is the comparison to hold.
3. Metaphors should avoid mean or disagreeable details.
4. Metaphors should not be forced. Some metaphors are so far-fetched that (as Mr. Lowell says) one could wish their authors no worse fate than to be obliged to carry them back whence they came.
5. Do not mix literal and metaphorical language. In the sentence
I was walking on the barren hills of sin and sorrow near Welshpool,
“the barren hills of sin and sorrow” is metaphorical, and “near Welshpool” is literal.
Examples of Apt Illustrations.
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.—Shakespeare.
I had rather be a dog and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.—Shakespeare.
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.—Shakespeare.
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.—Milton.
Now morn, her rosy steps in eastern clime
Advancing, sow’d the earth with orient pearl.—Milton.
So may’st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop
Into thy mother’s lap.—Milton.
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.—Milton.
There is a reaper whose name is death,
And with his sickle keen
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.—Longfellow.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.—Longfellow.
But what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.—Tennyson.
But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.—Holmes.
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.—Lowell.
In winter, when the dismal rain
Came down in slanting lines,
And wind, that grand old harper, smote
His thunder-harp of pines.—Mulock.
Men not only want a competency, but they want a ten-story competency; then they want religion as a lightning rod to ward off the bolts of divine judgment.—Beecher.
As the river is swollen by the melting snows of spring and runs with greater force and volume, so, when he is aroused, his thoughts and words pour forth impetuously, and he exhibits the strength and majesty of the most commanding eloquence.
Examples of Faulty Illustrations.
Peace has poured oil on the troubled waters, and they blossom like the rose.
She has come down among us in her floating robes, bearing the olive-branch in her beak.
The American eagle broods over his nest in the rocky fastnesses, and his young shall lie down with the lamb.
We have gone through the floods, and have turned their hot ploughshares into pruning-hooks.
May we be as lucky in the future, preserving forever our Goddess of Liberty one and inseparable.
Corrections.—Peace may pour oil on troubled waters, but waters never blossom.
Anything that wears floating robes is not furnished with a beak.
The young of eagles are not in the habit of lying down with lambs.
Floods do not have hot ploughshares.
Why should anyone wish to preserve the Goddess of Liberty inseparable, as it would be an unheard-of experience for a Goddess to be divided?
