Physician. Sir, to conclude, the place you fill has more than amply exacted the talents of a wary pilot; and all these threatening storms, which, like impregnate clouds, hover o’er our heads, will, when they once are grasp’d but by the eye of reason, melt into fruitful showers of blessings on the people.
Bayes. Pray mark that allegory. Is not that good?
Johnson. Yes, that grasping of a storm with the eye, is admirable.
Act 2. sc. 1.
Fifthly, The jumbling different metaphors in the same sentence, or the beginning with one metaphor and ending with another, is commonly called a mixt metaphor. Quintilian bears testimony against it in the bitterest terms: “Nam id quoque in primis est custodiendum, ut quo ex genere cœperis translationis, hoc desinas. Multi enim, cum initium a tempestate sumpserunt, incendio aut ruina finiunt: quæ est inconsequentia rerum fœdissima.” L. 8. cap. 6. § 2.
K. Henry.————— Will you again unknit
This churlish knot of all-abhorred war,
And move in that obedient orb again,
Where you did give a fair and natural light?
First Part Henry IV. act 5. sc. 1.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrag’ous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.
Hamlet, act 3. sc. 2.
In the sixth place, It is unpleasant to join different metaphors in the same period, even where they are preserved distinct. It is difficult to imagine the subject to be first one thing and then another in the same period without interval: the mind is distracted by the rapid transition; and when the imagination is put on such hard duty, its images are too faint to produce any good effect:
At regina gravi jamdudum saucia cura,
Vulnus alit venis, et cæco carpitur igni.
Æneid. iv. 1.
————————— Est mollis flamma medullas
Interea, et taciturn vivit sub pectore vulnus.
Æneid. iv. 66.