For if we consider attentively why men are pleased with metaphors we will find no other reason than that already stated: the weakness of nature which is wearied by the inflexibility of truth and plain statement and must be refreshed by an admixture of metaphors which depart somewhat from the truth. This gives the clue to the proper and legitimate use of metaphors; they are to be employed specifically, as musicians employ discordant sounds, to relieve the distaste of perfect harmony. But how frequently and at what point they should be introduced is a matter of considerable caution and skill. One warning will suffice for the present: that metaphors, hyperboles, and whatever varies from the plain and natural way of saying something should not be sought for their own sakes but as a kind of relief for nauseated nature. They are to be accepted on grounds of necessity, and consequently a good deal of moderation must be observed in their use. Thus Quintilian rightly says, "A sparing and opportune use of these figures gives lustre to speech; frequent use obscures and fills with disgust."[6] You will discover this fault often in many epigrams, especially in those of contemporary writers as I shall show by several examples later on. However, lest this doctrine should issue in too strict an austerity of diction, it should be noted that only those expressions are to be taken as metaphors that are remote from ordinary usage and offer the mind a double idea. Hence if a metaphor is so commonplace that it no longer has a figurative connotation and suggests nothing other than the notion itself for which it is used, then it should be numbered among proper rather than metaphorical expressions and does not fall in that class of tropes whose too frequent use is here censured.
On a too metaphorical style. Certain epigrams rejected for this reason.
Though poets are granted a greater indulgence in the use of tropes, nevertheless they have their own mean, or, as Cicero says, their own modesty, and there is ever an especial ornament to be derived from simplicity. Consequently those writers stray pretty far from beauty for whom, as it were, all nature plays the ham to the point that they say nothing in an ordinary way, imagine nothing in the way in which it is perceived outside of poems, but instead elevate, debase, alter, and clothe everything in a theatrical mask. For this reason we have excluded from this anthology a number of epigrams as too metaphorical: for example, these two by Daniel Heinsius, a man otherwise eminent in scholarship and letters:
Driver of light, courier of the bright pole,
Surveyor of the sky, and hour-divider,
Servant of time, circler perpetual,
Cleanser of earth, disperser of the clouds,
Ever your chariot, fiery four-in-hand,
You curb fast; you who bear on the bright day
Steal from the world once more your countenance
And of your glowing hair conceal the flame;
Tomorrow from the arms of Tethys you
Return once more: but night has sealed my sun.
By my sun he means Douza. And again:
Sweet children of the night, brothers of fire,
Small cohorts, citizens of the fiery pole,
Who wandering through the cloudless fields of air
Lead the soft choruses with a light foot
When our tired bodies are stretched softly out
And gentle sleep invades our conquered sense,
Why now as then through the enamelled halls
From the recesses, still, and the clear windows
Of the gold arch bear off his hallowed face?
Farewell, at last; you shall not see your Douza.[7]
In these epigrams, apart from the metaphors heaped up ad nauseam, and each of them harsh and absurd, a keen critic has noted another fault: namely, that nothing is more distant from the spirit of a man grieving and mourning for the death of a friend—and this is what Heinsius intended to depict—than such a wantonness of epithets. And so much for diction.
Truth, the primary virtue of ideas. How great a fault there is in untruth. Thence, of false epigrams.
We take up now the question of ideas, and postulate again that these too must conform both to the subject and to men's character. Ideas agree with the subject if they are true, if they are appropriate, and if they so to speak get into the insides of the thing. They are in accord with men's character if they fit in with natural aversions or desires.
The primary virtue of ideas is truth. Whatever is false is at variance with external reality, nor is there any beauty in falsity except in so far as it pretends to truth. From this you may gather that truth is the source of beauty, falsity of ugliness. The latter, in fact, is out of keeping not only with reality but also with human nature. For we possess an innate love of truth and an aversion to falsehood, so that what delights us when it seems to be true becomes disagreeable and unpleasant when its falseness is made manifest. This principle applies to those learned men whom we have mentioned several times now, and has led to the exclusion from this anthology of many epigrams in which the point rests on a falsehood: for example, there is the well-known one by Grotius, though simply as a poem it is noble enough: