K. Henry V. act 4. sc. 13.
Instruction, no doubt, is the chief end of comparison, but not the only end. In works addressed to the imagination, comparison may be employed with great success to put a subject in a strong point of view. A lively idea is formed of a man’s courage, by likening it to that of a lion; and eloquence is exalted in our imagination, by comparing it to a river overflowing its banks, and involving all in its impetuous course. The same effect is produced by contrast. A man in prosperity, becomes more sensible of his happiness, by opposing his condition to that of a person in want of bread. Thus comparison is subservient to poetry as well as to philosophy; and with respect to both, the foregoing observation holds equally, that resemblance among objects of the same kind, and contrast among objects of different kinds, have no effect. Such a comparison neither tends to gratify our curiosity, nor to set the objects compared in a stronger light. Two apartments in a palace, similar in shape, size, and furniture, make separately as good a figure as when compared; and the same observation applies to two similar copartments in a garden. On the other hand, oppose a regular building to a fall of water, or a good picture to a towering hill, or even a little dog to a large horse, and the contrast will produce no effect. But resemblance, where the objects compared are of different kinds, and contrast where the objects compared are of the same kind, have each of them remarkably an enlivening effect. The poets, such of them as have a just taste, draw all their similes from things that in the main differ widely from the principal subject; and they never attempt a contrast but where the things have a common genus and a resemblance in the capital circumstances. Place together a large and a small sized animal of the same species, the one will appear greater the other less, than when viewed separately. When we oppose beauty to deformity, each makes a greater figure by the comparison.
Upon a subject not only in itself curious, but of great importance in all the fine arts, I must be more particular. That resemblance and contrast have an enlivening effect upon objects of sight, is made sufficiently evident; and that they have the same effect upon objects of the other senses, will appear from induction. Nor is this law confined to the external senses. Characters contrasted, make a greater figure by the opposition. Iago, in the tragedy of Othello, says
He hath a daily beauty in his life,
That makes me ugly.
The character of a fop, and of a rough warrior, are no where more successfully contrasted than by Shakespear.
Hotspur. My liege, I did deny no prisoners;
But I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword;
Came there a certain Lord, neat, trimly dress’d,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new-reap’d,
Shew’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
He was perfumed like a milliner;
And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose;—and still he smil’d, and talk’d;
And as the soldiers bare dead bodies by,
He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly, unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
He question’d me: amongst the rest, demanded
My pris’ners, in your Majesty’s behalf.
I then all smarting with my wounds; being gal’d
To be so pester’d with a popinjay,
Out of my grief, and my impatience,
Answer’d, neglectingly, I know not what:
He should, or should not; for he made me mad,
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman,
Of guns, and drums, and wounds; (God save the mark!)
And telling me, the sovereign’st thing on earth
Was parmacity, for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was,
This villanous saltpetre should be digg’d
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good, tall fellow had destroy’d
So cowardly: and but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.—
First part, Henry IV. act 1. sc. 4.
Passions and emotions are also inflamed by comparison. A man of high rank humbles the bystanders so far as almost to annihilate them in their own opinion. Cæsar, beholding the statue of Alexander, felt a great depression of spirits, when he reflected, that now at the age of thirty-two, when Alexander died, he had not performed one memorable action.
Our opinions also are much influenced by comparison. A man whose opulence exceeds the ordinary standard, is reputed richer than he is in reality; and the character of wisdom or weakness, if at all remarkable is generally carried beyond the truth.
The opinion a man forms of his present condition as to happiness or misery, depends in a great measure on the comparison he makes betwixt it and his former condition:
Could I forget
What I have been, I might the better bear
What I am destin’d to. I’m not the first
That have been wretched: but to think how much
I have been happier.
Southern’s Innocent adultery, act 2.