Suppose, now, that the writer who reported the accident said that the boy was in great pain, so that his face was “as white as ivory.” Here is a simile,—an explicit statement of likeness in two things which are different in most respects. This particular simile is certainly more exact than the literal word white would be.
If now the writer had said, “I caught a glimpse of compressed lips and ivory face,” the comparison would have been not explicit, but implied. An implied comparison is called metaphor. Metaphor is from the Greek for carrying over, because it carries over bodily the name of one thing to another. To speak of a man as “bold as a lion,” is simile; to call him a “lion” outright, is metaphor. It is less clear to call a man a lion than to say in what respect he is like a lion; it is less clear to say, “ivory face” than to say “face white as ivory.”
The case of the boy who was injured may have got into the newspapers. To speak more figuratively, the press may have taken up the matter. Press stands here for the editors of the various journals. This last figure is metonymy. In metonymy one thing is put for another that is often associated with it. In the sentence given, metonymy does not seem to detract from clearness; at all events it saves a roundabout expression.
Metaphor and metonymy, by ascribing life to inanimate things, often become personification. So above, where the press takes up a matter. It is evident that personification need not make a sentence less intelligible.
Once more, let us suppose that the reporter who first learned of the boy’s accident remarked, on handing in his account of it, “The early bird catches the worm.” The remark is pure allegory—describing some act or thing indirectly by describing something else. If the hearer knows enough of the situation to understand the allegory, he undoubtedly receives a forcible impression, and may be helped to a clearer view. Allegory is a kind of expanded metaphor. It is more liable to misinterpretation than most figures; but the allegorical proverbs of our language, and the popularity of such books as the Pilgrim’s Progress, show that it is a favorite form of expression. Like general words, allegory can be used to say things which policy may forbid being said more directly.
From the discussion it appears that tropes can often be made to yield a clear and sufficiently exact phrase. Often however a trope lends force or beauty rather than clearness. It is forcible rather than clear to call a man a lion. It is beautiful rather than clear to speak of the Pleiades as “a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.” Such a phrase as this is legitimate enough in poetry; it would be legitimate in highly imaginative prose. But the fact cannot be dodged that it would be out of place in the midst of plain prose description.
The practical conclusion is obvious. Use tropes without hesitation when they are really needed to give clearness and force. Never use a trope for decorative purposes only. The ability to write plain, bare English is absolutely indispensable. The ability to write figuratively is an enviable, but not a necessary, possession.
When the need of a figure is actually felt, the choice should be made with scrupulous care. If tropes occur to you in numbers, “like flocks of pigeons,” choose only the pigeon that can carry a message. To secure lucidity, employ a figure which makes use of something already clear to the reader. Every-day life and common things are the best sources for both similes and metaphors. To secure force, select such figures as appeal to the emotional experiences of everybody. If you wish to hold attention and move your reader, appeal to such primal feelings as love, hate, fear, courage, joy, sorrow, aspiration, hope. Note how Shakespeare appeals to the human animal’s dread of deep water: he makes Cardinal Wolsey say, “I have ventured, like wanton boys that swim on bladders, this many summers in a sea of glory.” In Macbeth he appeals to the joy of release from pain: he calls sleep the balm of each day’s hurt.
A good figure of speech must be consistent. Although a lively imagination changes its metaphors from minute to minute, it must not change them so fast as to suggest ridiculous things. If the metaphor gets mixed, clearness and force go to the winds. The other day the writer heard a young man earnestly exclaim: “Now I shall have to toe the bee-line!” The thought of that youth, lifted to a perilous position where his toes sought vainly in the trackless air for a “bee-line,” was quite too much for the gravity of his hearers. This trope that failed to be a trope was about as effective as the famous lightning-change series of metaphors uttered by Sir Boyle Roche: “Mr. Speaker, I smell a rat. I see him floating in the air. But I will nip him in the bud.” Mixed metaphors may arise from mere liveliness of imagination,—a good fault sometimes. More frequently it arises from vague thinking or from grandiloquence. The examples on [page 246] show how liable fine writing is to this fault. A figure that is not in good taste is incomparably worse than no figure at all.
Oral Exercise.—Name each trope, and explain how each gets its force; what emotion each touches.