sting, a magnet, gilded pills, and an ill-dyed garment; finally from Greene comes a figure of a stone that retains heat. Through Radical imagery lines of unusual poetic merit arise from such unpromising and, it would seem, prosaic allusions.

In Donne and his followers and in the plays of Webster, Marston, Chapman, Tourneur and Shakespere, Radical metaphor reached its crest. In the more conservative Spenser it is scarcely to be found. The form flourished most generally where men and women eager to sound their own emotions and the emotions of one another soliloquized and conversed on the tragic stage. In the following generation Cowley in poetry and Thomas Fuller in prose best exemplify the form. No type was of course more discredited in English poetry of the eighteenth century. Beauty characterized the greater range of images open to the poets of the Romantic Revival. Radical figures seldom appear. Among the greater Victorians Browning alone uses the form frequently. Different as he is from Donne, who consumed himself inwardly and never impersonated another in verse or prose, the dramatically minded Browning often resembles Donne in the use of figures. The Elizabethan kept intellectual guard over his own emotions, Browning over the emotions of mankind. The same type of metaphor is naturally prominent in both. When the delicate taste of the Victorians in imagery yielded in popular favor to a more aggressive style, something of the daring of Elizabethan metaphor returned. The poems of George Meredith are an unusually condensed and interesting body of symbolic thought. He is indeed a bold adventurer in this type. Not only the thought but the imagery of Tourneur seems to return in such lines as these:

But as you will, we'll sit contentedly
And eat our pot of honey on the grave.

Modern Love, 29

The larger number of Meredith's figures however are not Radical. The mind of Francis Thompson inclined him to the form, both as a mystic and a descriptive poet. The following image shows him in the latter capacity.

At evening, when the lank and rigid trees

To the mere forms of their sweet day-selves drying
On heaven's blank leaf seem pressed and flattened.

247

The form has a recognized but not an important place in most contemporary verse. It belongs indeed rather to prose than to verse, for in poetry it requires skillful handling. Donne often accomplishes the transformation of the commonplace into the highly imaginative. Dante on the verge of his ultimate revelation transfigures the conception of a tailor cutting samples for a garment. Perhaps it is well that few minor poets should attempt an art in which only the masters have triumphed. In prose the Radical metaphor approaches the neutral comparison of science, becomes utilitarian, ceases to delight and is no longer poetic imagery. Although the Radical images cited in this chapter show in their minor terms no intrinsic imaginative value, they act as spurs to poetic thought. By an extraordinary feat of art they are made one with their imaginative content. Their emotional appeal is irresistible. They are not merely ingenious. They are not the exercises of wit. They are a part of the stuff of poetry. Of the Radical image of wit Swift is perhaps our foremost master. That however is matter for a later chapter. That the Radical image of poetic dignity occurs however in prose as well as in verse may be seen from the following words of Colet:

We seek not for victory in argument but for truth, which perchance may be elicited by the clash of argument, as sparks are made by the clashing of steel against steel.

1292

VI

THE INTENSIVE IMAGE

The Intensive image is one of high imaginative value in which clarity and concentration associate the minor term with pictorial art. Such metaphors are more often than others referred to as emblems or symbols. Few people would speak of these lines from Romeo and Juliet as symbolism.

yet, wer't thou as far

As that vast shore wash't with the farthest sea
I should adventure for such merchandise.

II, 2, 82 This is not Intensive but Expansive imagery. On the contrary the funereal cypress, which is an Intensive image, would very generally be called a symbol or an emblem. Let us consider these two figures in their relation to the fine arts. The cypress is a metaphor in ritual, in painting and in sculpture. Only a phenomenal achievement in painting or sculpture, however, could make the image in Romeo's lines intelligible. By highly suggestive technique, perhaps by personification, a Rodin might convey the idea of a merchant adventurer on a vast shore wash't by the farthest seas. Supposing such an extraordinary achievement, the pictorial art by which this idea is to be definitely related to a protest of affection is wanting. The second term of Romeo's figure is difficult to reproduce even literally, while the metaphorical idea seems definitely beyond the range of art. The poet is the expositor of his own images. He may point out to the reader a figurative relation here and there. He may draw upon scenes which no painter would venture to reproduce, and include the ideas of time

and motion. The metaphor in the arts is restricted in space, gives at most only a metaphor of time and motion, speaks silently without an expositor and as a rule relies on the most limited means of suggestion. This distinction between literature and the fine arts does not rest alone on points of imagery. We may be admitted into the least thought that passes through the mind of an heroine in literature, while a painting, such as the Mona Lisa, may assure us rather of the artist's thoughtfulness than of the precise nature of his ideas. Frequently effective images in painting are not self explanatory. One must have a foreknowledge of the intent of the painter to appreciate the subtlety of his symbolism, which is metaphor only to the initiated. Restricted as the type of metaphor permissible in the fine arts may be, it is often found in literature as well, and especially in that Renaissance literature which flourished contemporaneously with the greatest schools of Western painting and by far our greatest schools of symbolic painting. Imagery in painting, sculpture, pageantry, heraldry and ritual contributed immensely to imagery in literature. This contribution I have called the Intensive metaphor. Beads for example are symbolical in religion. Spenser in eulogy of Chaucer adds personification to the emblem of the rosary. His master is

On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be filed.

Metaphorical personifications appear equally in the paintings of Botticelli and in the pages of Spenser. Figures personified by the artist and the poet are often grouped and often engaged in a performance of ceremony. By each the artificiality of art is stressed. These then are among the common characteristics of symbolism in the fine arts and the Intensive Metaphor.

Allegory is, of course, an uninterrupted string of metaphors some of which are recurrent. It is closely related to

Intensive imagery, for in all its more advanced forms its continuous symbolism is conducted, like that of painting, largely by means of emblem and personification, without an expositor. Generalizations in the thought naturally induce formalities in imagery. Our immediate concern is, in part, to study the character of the Intensive image in allegory, but not to observe the relation of the figures to the narrative as a whole. Much of the material for this chapter has, then, been drawn from allegorical poetry.

Since Intensive images are associated with painting, in Elizabethan literature they resemble the symbolic figures in Renaissance painting, clear in outline, conventional in subject and attractive in color and design. Their foremost qualities are clarity and concentration. Here is a bit of word painting typical of Spenser.

And round about the same her yellow hair,

Having through stirring loosed their wonted band,
Like to a golden border did appear,

Framed in goldsmith's forge with cunning hand.

F. Q. IV, 6, 20

Thus in one of the most dramatic moments of The Fairie Queen appeared the face of Britomart to Artegal. Although the figure is not strong in the subjective element, it well illustrates Spenser's adherence to the technique of Intensive imagery. It is impossible to think of this figure without thinking of the art of the Renaissance, the painter and the goldsmith. On the contrary the figure previously cited from Romeo and Juliet is equally typical of Shakespere, and boldly transcends the possibilities of the pictorial arts. Shakespere's figure is distinctively literary. Spenser's figure confirms the sistership of the Muses. He who wishes to make symbols which the world will admire elsewhere than from the written page must imitate the art represented in Spenser. In this art the Latin peoples have excelled. Latin culture has at no time been more thor