Here there is no manner of resemblance but in the word drown; for there is no real resemblance betwixt being drown’d at sea, and dying of grief at land. But perhaps this sort of tinsel wit, may have a propriety in it, when used to express an affected, not a real, passion, which was the Queen’s case.
Pope has several similes of the same stamp. I shall transcribe one or two from the Essay on Man, the gravest and most instructive of all his performances.
And hence one master-passion in the breast,
Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest.
Epist. 2. l. 131.
And again, talking of this same ruling or master passion.
Nature its mother, Habit is its nurse;
Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse;
Reason itself but gives it edge and pow’r;
As heav’n’s blest beam turns vinegar more sowr.
Ibid. l. 145.
Lord Bolingbroke, speaking of historians:
Where their sincerity as to fact is doubtful, we strike out truth by the confrontation of different accounts; as we strike out sparks of fire by the collision of flints and steel.
Let us vary the phrase a very little, and there will not remain a shadow of resemblance. Thus, for example:
We discover truth by the confrontation of different accounts; as we strike out sparks of fire by the collision of flints and steel.