We now come to the third degree, to what is properly called digression; most frequently it is involuntary. Often in a lively and animated dialogue, the impetus of conversation carries you, as well as the person with whom you are conversing, far from the point from which you started. If it is a question of pleasure or interest, return to your point by employing a polite turn, as, Pray let us not lose sight of our business. But if it is an affair of nothings succeeding nothings, let it flow on.
Voluntary digression, when it is not a mere work of loquacity, may be employed in serious discourse, as political, philosophical, or moral discussions; but it is important to treat it with infinite reserve, and care, and never to introduce a personal apology, or a domestic incident, altogether out of place, as those persons do, who, in narrating any event relative to an individual, recount his life, their connexion with him, or his whole family, and make the event of an hour remind us of ages.
Lawyers, literary people, military men, travellers, [p118] invalids and aged ladies, ought to have a prudent and continual distrust of the abuse of digressions.
SECTION IV.
Of Suppositions and Comparisons.
The two shoals to be avoided in this form of language are directly opposed to each other; the one is triviality, the other bombast.
The object of supposition, which is already antiquated, and sometimes too simple, is to increase the force of reasoning, and to carry conviction to the mind of the person who listens to you; comparison tends to make an image, or to place before us the object described. When both these qualities are regulated by reason, use, and taste, it is very well; but how seldom is this the case!
They are not so used, if, in the course of a discussion, you suppose a respectable person to supply the place of a madman, an ill-bred person, or a robber; or, if you suppose him to be in a situation disgraceful or even ridiculous. As, for example; If you had been this bad person; or, Suppose, that you had committed this base act; or, that you should be laughed at, &c.
They are also misplaced, whenever, being satisfied with avoiding disagreeable comparisons, we endeavor [p119] to mark out some one as contemptible, by comparing his exterior with that of some other person in the company. When we say; This unfortunate man is of your size, sir; he has your traits, your physiognomy, &c.
They are also misplaced, if used in the presence of people of a profession upon which the injurious comparisons fall, as when we say; As quackish as a doctor; greedy as an attorney; loquacious as a lawyer, &c.
Finally, politeness and taste cannot at all exist in comparisons, if they are common or trivial, as when we say, black as the chimney-back, high as one’s hand, &c.