“Everywhere
I see in the world the intellect of man,
That sword, the energy, his subtle spear,
The knowledge, which defends him like a shield.”
This is another quotation from Browning in which he says intellect is a sword and energy a spear, thereby assuming a comparison and using the figure metaphor, while in the last line he uses the simile “like a shield.” Ingersoll calls the grave “the windowless palace of rest,” and Whittier refers to it in a beautiful metaphor as “the low green tent whose curtain never outward swings.”
Synecdoche and Metonymy. Another group of figures consists in naming one thing for something else closely associated with it in thought. When this relation is that of a part to the whole or of the whole to a part, the figure is synecdoche. Thus, when Browning says “pert tongue and idle ear consort ‘neath the archway” he conveys the idea that idle gossips gather beneath the archway and with sharp tongues talk over the failings of their neighbors, and he uses synecdoche in making the ear and the tongue, parts of the body, signify the person. Our everyday language is full of these figures in which a part of an object is named to represent the whole. We speak of owning “twenty head of cattle,” of hiring “ten hands,” of seeing “fifteen sails,” when we mean that we own twenty cattle, that we hire ten men, that we see fifteen boats.
When the relation expressed is that of a sign or symbol and that which is signified or symbolized, a cause and its effect, a material and that which is made from it, or is some other similar association of ideas, the figure is metonymy.
We speak of “the pulpit” when we mean the ministry, the “stage” when we mean the theatrical world, and thus use concrete symbols to represent abstract ideas. Again, we frequently make use of such an expression as “Have you read Pope or Dryden?” when we refer to the works rather than to the writer, and thus substitute cause for effect. “Columns of glittering steel advanced” contains another form of metonymy, that in which a material (steel) is named for that made from it (spears).
Search for examples of these two figures in the selections in Journeys Through Bookland. Both are elusive, and at first you are apt to pass over many without noticing them. As you continue your search and grow keen in it you will be surprised to see how common they are, both in what you read and in your own speech.
Apostrophe and Personification. An address to a person or thing, absent or dead, is an apostrophe, and when an inanimate object is assumed to be alive or an animate object is assumed to be raised to a higher plane of existence it is said to be by personification. Examples of the latter figure are “death’s menace,” “laugh of morn.” In the line “Lucidity of soul unlocks the lips” are both metonymy and personification. The following is the beginning of a beautiful apostrophe:
“O lyric Love, half angel and half bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire,—
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart
When the first summons from the darking earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue
And bared them of the glory—to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die,—
This is the same voice; can thy soul know change?”