Figures based upon Likeness. There is a large group of figures of speech based upon likeness. One thing is so much like another that it is spoken of as like it, or, more frequently, one is said to be the other. Yet if the things compared are very much alike, there is no figure. To say that a cat is like a panther is not considered figurative. It is when in objects essentially different we detect and name some likeness that we say there is a figure of speech. There is at first thought no likeness between hope and a nurse; yet were it not for hope most persons would die. Thackeray was right when he said that “Hope is the nurse of life.”
[260] The principal figures based upon likeness are metaphor, epithet, personification, apostrophe, allegory, and simile.
A metaphor is an implied comparison between things essentially different, but having some common quality. Metaphor is by far the most common figure of speech; indeed, so common is it that figurative language is often called metaphorical.
“Tombs are the clothes of the dead; a grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered.”
“Let me choose;
For as I am, I live upon the rack.”
“The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep.”
Only a little removed from metaphor is epithet. An epithet is a word, generally a descriptive adjective or a noun, used, not to give information, but to impart strength or ornament to diction. It is like a shortened metaphor. It is very often found in impassioned prose or verse. Notice that in each epithet there is a comparison; that the figure is based on likeness.
“Here are sever’d lips
Parted with sugar breath.”
“Base dog! why shouldst thou stand here?”
Personification is a figure that ascribes to inanimate things, abstract ideas, and the lower animals the attributes of human beings. It is plain that there must be some resemblance of the lower to the higher, else this figure could not be used. Personification, like the epithet, is a modification of the metaphor. Indeed, in every personification there is also a metaphor.