Speaking to Bolingbroke banish’d for six years.
The sullen passage of thy weary steps
Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home-return.
Richard II. act 1. sc. 6.
Again,
Here is a letter, lady,
And every word in it a gaping wound
Issuing life-blood.
Merchant of Venice, act 3. sc. 3.
The following metaphor is strained beyond all endurance. Timur-bec, known to us by the name of Tamarlane the Great, writes to Bajazet Emperor of the Ottomans in the following terms.
Where is the monarch who dares resist us? where is the potentate who doth not glory in being numbered among our attendants? As for thee, descended from a Turcoman sailor, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath been wreck’d in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper, that thou shouldst take in the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the port of safety; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in the sea of the punishment thou deservest.
Such strained figures, it is observable, are not unfrequent in the first dawn of refinement. The mind in a new enjoyment knows no bounds, and is generally carried to excess, till experience discover the just medium.
Secondly, whatever resemblance subjects may have, it is wrong to put one for another if they bear no mutual proportion. Where a very high and a very low subject are compared, the simile takes on an air of burlesk; and the same will be the effect, where the one is imagined to be the other, as in a metaphor, or made to represent the other, as in an allegory.
Thirdly, these figures, a metaphor in particular, ought not to be extended to a great length, nor be crowded with many minute circumstances; for in that case it is scarcely possible to avoid obscurity. It is difficult, during any course of time, to support a lively image of one thing being another. A metaphor drawn out to any length, instead of illustrating or enlivening the principal subject, becomes disagreeable by overstraining the mind. Cowley is extremely licentious in this way. Take the following instance:
Great, and wise conqu’ror, who where-e’er
Thou com’st, dost fortify, and settle there!
Who canst defend as well as get;
And never hadst one quarter beat up yet;
Now thou art in, thou ne’er will part
With one inch of my vanquish’d heart;
For since thou took’st it by assault from me, }
’Tis garrison’d so strong with thoughts of thee}
It fears no beauteous enemy. }