In an allegory, as well as in a metaphor, terms ought to be chosen that properly and literally are applicable to the representative subject. Nor ought any circumstance to be added, that is not proper to the representative subject, however justly it may be applicable figuratively to the principal. Upon this account the following allegory is faulty.
Ferus et Cupido,
Semper ardentes acuens sagittas
Cote cruentâ.
Horat. l. 2. ode 8.
For though blood may suggest the cruelty of love, it is an improper or immaterial circumstance in the representative subject: water, not blood, is proper for a whetstone.
We proceed to the next head, which is, to examine in what circumstances these figures are proper, in what improper. This inquiry is not altogether superseded by what is said upon the same subject in the chapter of comparisons; because, upon trial, it will be found, that a short metaphor or allegory may be proper, where a simile, drawn out to a greater length, and in its nature more solemn, would scarce be relished. The difference however is not considerable; and in most instances the same rules are applicable to both. And, in the first place, a metaphor, as well as a simile, are excluded from common conversation, and from the description of ordinary incidents.
In the next place, in any severe passion which totally occupies the mind, metaphor is unnatural. For that reason, we must condemn the following speech of Macbeth.
Methought, I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murther sleep; the innocent sleep;
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of Care,
The birth of each day’s life, sore Labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.——
Act 2. sc. 3.
The next example, of deep despair, beside the highly figurative style, hath more the air of raving than of sense:
Calista. Is it the voice of thunder, or my father?
Madness! Confusion! let the storm come on,
Let the tumultuous roar drive all upon me,
Dash my devoted bark; ye surges, break it;
’Tis for my ruin that the tempest rises.
When I am lost, sunk to the bottom low,
Peace shall return, and all be calm again.
Fair Penitent, act 4.
The metaphor I next introduce, is sweet and lively, but it suits not the fiery temper of Chamont, inflamed with passion. Parables are not the language of wrath venting itself without restraint:
Chamont. You took her up a little tender flower,
Just sprouted on a bank, which the next frost
Had nip’d; and with a careful loving hand,
Transplanted her into your own fair garden,
Where the sun always shines: there long she flourish’d,
Grew sweet to sense and lovely to the eye,
Till at the last a cruel spoiler came,
Cropt this fair rose, and rifled all its sweetness,
Then cast it like a loathsome weed away.
Orphan, act 4.