Secondly, the proper sense of the word ought to bear some proportion to the figurative sense, and not soar much above it, nor sink much below it. This rule, as well as the foregoing, is finely illustrated by Vida:
Hæc adeo cum sint, cum fas audere poetis
Multa modis multis; tamen observare memento,
Si quando haud propriis rem mavis dicere verbis,
Translatisque aliunde notis, longeque petitis,
Ne nimiam ostendas, quærendo talia, curam.
Namque aliqui exercent vim duram, et rebus iniqui
Nativam eripiunt formam, indignantibus ipsis,
Invitasque jubent alienos sumere vultus.
Haud magis imprudens mihi erit, et luminis expers,
Qui puero ingentes habitus det ferre gigantis,
Quam siquis stabula alta lares appellet equinos,
Aut crines magnæ genitricis gramina dicat.
Poet. l. iii. 148.
Thirdly, in a figure of speech, every circumstance ought to be avoided that agrees with the proper sense only, not the figurative sense; for it is the latter that expresses the thought, and the former serves for no other purpose but to make harmony:
Zacynthus green with ever-shady groves,
And Ithaca, presumptuous boast their loves;
Obtruding on my choice a second lord,
They press the Hymenean rite abhorr’d.
Odyssey xix. 152.
Zacynthus here standing figuratively for the inhabitants, the description of the island is quite out of place. It puzzles the reader, by making him doubt whether the word ought to be taken in its proper or figurative sense.
———————— Write, my Queen,
And with mine eyes I’ll drink the words you send,
Though ink be made of gall.
Cymbeline, act 1. sc. 2.
The disgust one has to drink ink in reality, is nothing to the purpose where the subject is drinking ink figuratively.
In the fourth place, to draw consequences from a figure of speech, as if the word were to be understood literally, is a gross absurdity, for it is confounding truth with fiction:
Be Moubray’s sins so heavy in his bosom,
That they may break his foaming courser’s back,
And throw the rider headlong in the lists,
A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford.
Richard II. act 1. sc. 3.
Sin may be imagined heavy in a figurative sense: but weight in a proper sense belongs to the accessory only; and therefore to describe the effects of weight, is to desert the principal subject, and to convert the accessory into a principal.