Je crains que cette saison
Ne nous amenne la peste;
La gueule du chien celeste
Vomit feu sur l’horison.
A fin que je m’en délivre,
Je veux lire ton gros livre
Jusques au dernier feüillet:
Tout ce que ta plume trace,
Robinet, a de la glace
A faire trembler Juillet.
Maynard.
In me tota ruens Venus
Cyprum deseruit.
Horat. Carm. lib. 1. ode. 19.
Almeria. O Alphonso, Alphonso!
Devouring seas have wash’d thee from my sight,
No time shall rase thee from my memory;
No, I will live to be thy monument:
The cruel ocean is no more thy tomb;
But in my heart thou art interr’d.
Mourning Bride, act 1. sc. 1.
This would be very right, if there were any inconsistence in being interred in one place really and in another place figuratively.
From considering that a word employ’d in a figurative sense suggests at the same time its proper meaning, a fifth rule occurs, That to raise a figure of speech, we ought to use no word, the proper sense of which is inconsistent or incongruous with the subject: for no incongruity, far less inconsistency, whether real or imagined, ought to enter into the expression of any subject:
Interea genitor Tyberini ad fluminis undam
Vulnera siccabat lymphis——
Æneid. x. 833.
Tres adeo incertos cæca caligine soles
Erramus pelago, totidem sine sidere noctes.
Æneid. iii. 203.
The foregoing rule may be extended to form a sixth, That no epithet ought to be given to the figurative sense of a word that agrees not also with its proper sense:
———— Dicat Opuntiæ
Frater Megillæ, quo beatus
Vulnere.
Horat. Carm. lib. 1. ode 27.
Parcus deorum cultor, et infrequens,
Insanientis dum sapientiæ
Consultus erro.
Horat. Carm. lib. 1. ode 34.