There is no part of your book in which you exult more than in the confutation of this obnoxious paragraph. It is to be hoped, you do it on good grounds—but let us see what those grounds are.
The Bishop, in the paragraph you criticize in your vᵗʰ Chapter, had said that tropes and figures of composition, under certain circumstances, there expressed, are frequently vicious. You make a difficulty of understanding this term, and doubt whether his Lordship means vice in a critical, or moral sense. I take upon me to answer roundly for the Bishop, that he meant vice in the critical sense: for he pronounces such tropes and figures vicious, ONLY as they are a deviation from the principles of METAPHYSICS AND LOGIC; and therefore I presume he could not mean vice in the other sense, which is a deviation from the principles of ETHICS. All you say on this subject, then, might have been well spared.
This incidental question, or doubt of your’s, being cleared up, let us now attend to the more substantial grounds you go upon, in your censure of the learned Bishop.
He had been speaking of clearness and precision, as the things in language, which are least positive. Whereas, all besides, from the very power of the elements and signification of the terms, to the tropes and figures of composition, are arbitrary; and, what is more, as these are a deviation from the principles of metaphysics and logic, are frequently vicious.
In the first place, you say, it were to be wished that his Lordship had pleased to express himself with a little more precision—Want of precision is not, I think, a fault with which the Bishop’s writings are commonly charged; and I wish it may not appear in this instance, as it did lately in another, that your misapprehension of his argument arises from the very precision of his expression. But in what does this supposed want of precision consist? Why, in not qualifying this sentence, passed on the tropes and figures of Composition, which, from the general terms, in which it is delivered, falls indiscriminately upon ALL writers and speakers; for that “ALL men, who have ever written and spoken, have frequently used this mode of elocution, which is said to be frequently vicious[157].” Well, but from the word, frequently, which you make yourself so pleasant with, it appears that the Bishop had qualified this bold and dangerous position.—Yes, but this makes the position still more bold. Indeed! The Bishop is then singularly unhappy, to have his position, first, declared bold for want of being qualified, and, then, bolder still, for being so. But your reason follows.
“What makes this position still more hardy is, that, however the conclusion seems confined and restrained by the addition of that qualifying word [frequently], yet the premises are general and unlimited. It is asserted without any restriction, that figurative composition is a deviation from the principles of metaphysics and logic. If then it be vicious as it is, i. e. because [quatenus] it is such a deviation, it must be not only frequently but always vicious; a very severe censure denounced against almost every speaker, and every writer, both sacred and prophane, that ever appeared in the world[158].”
Here your criticism grows very logical; and, notwithstanding the confidence I owned myself to have in the precision of the Bishop’s style, I begin to be in pain how I shall disengage him from so exact and philosophical an objector. Yet, as the occasion calls upon me, I shall try what may be done. As these [tropes and figures of composition] are a deviation from the principles of metaphysics and logic, they are frequently VICIOUS. Since the Attribute of this proposition is so peculiarly offensive to you, your first care, methinks, should have been to gain precise and exact ideas of the subject; without which it is not possible to judge, whether what is affirmed of it be exceptionable, or no.
By tropes and figures of composition, you seem to understand metaphors, allegories, similitudes, and whatever else is vulgarly known under the name of figures of speech. For in p. 27, you speak of Allegories, Metaphors and OTHER tropes and figures, which, you say, are no more than comparisons and similitudes expressed in another form: And your concern, throughout this whole chapter, is for the vindication of such tropes and figures from the supposed charge of their being a deviation from the principles of metaphysics and logic. But now, on the other hand, I dare be confident that the Bishop meant these terms, not in this specific, but in their generic sense, as expressing any kind of change, deflexion, or deviation from the plain and common forms of language. I say, I am confident of this, 1. because the precise sense of the words is such as I represent it to be; and I have observed, though, it seems, you have not, that the Bishop is of all others the most precise in his expression. 2. Because Quinctilian authorizes this use of those terms, who tells us that—per tropos verti formas non verborum modo, sed et sensuum, et compositionis, l. viii. c. 6. And as to figuram, he defines it to be (as the word itself, he says, imports) conformatio quædam orationis, remota à communi et primum se offerente ratione, l. ix. c. 1. words, large enough to take in every possible change and alteration of common language. So that all manners and forms of language, different from the common ones, may, according to Quinctilian, be fitly denominated tropes and figures of composition. 3. I conclude this to be the Bishop’s meaning, because the specific sense of these words was not sufficient to his purpose, which was to speak of ALL kinds of tropical and figured speech. Now though allegories, metaphors and other tropes and figures, which are no more than comparisons and similitudes, expressed in another form, belong indeed to the genus of figured language, they are by no means the whole of it, as so great a master of rhetoric, as yourself, very well knows. 4. I conclude this, from the peculiar mode of his expression: if the Bishop had said simply tropes and figures of speech, I might perhaps (if nothing else had hindered) have taken him to mean, as you seem to have done, only metaphors, allegories, and other tropes and figures, expressing, in another form, comparisons and similitudes, which, in vulgar use, come under the name of tropes and figures of speech: But when he departs from that common form of expression, and puts it, tropes and figures of COMPOSITION, I infer that so exact a writer, as the Bishop, had his reasons for this change, and that he intended by it to express more than tropes and figures of speech usually convey, indeed ALL that can any way relate to the tropical and figurative use of words in literary composition.
It is now seen what the SUBJECT of this bold proposition is: namely, tropical or figured language, in general. This figured language, as it is a deviation from the principles of metaphysics and logic, is frequently vicious; i. e. is an acknowledged vice or fault in composition, as such. We now then see the force of the Predicate.
Well; but if this figured language “be vicious as it is, i. e. because, quatenus, it is such a deviation, it must not only be frequently, but always vicious.” The premises are general and unlimited: so must, likewise, be the conclusion. What sense, then, is there in the word, frequently? or what room, for that qualification?