symbolism. There is too much of peculiar interest in Elizabethan literature to pause over these familiar categories. (Poetic imagery is metaphorical, and to metaphor our interest will be restricted.) No strict definition of metaphor is I believe possible. By this I mean that no two people can so define the term that in any considerable body of poetry they will agree as to what does or does not constitute the metaphorical thoughts. A working test is however quite practicable. Metaphor is the recognition of a suggestion of one concept by another dissimilar in kind but alike in some strong ungeneric characteristic. If fancy is called "dream footed as the shadow of a cloud," fancy and the cloud are recognized as generically distinct, but alike in ineffectual fleetness. This is metaphor. The idea can be illustrated by the use of geometric circles which are neither congruent nor removed, but at some points intersect. By means of these circles the exclusion of non-metaphorical terms as too nearly congruent or too far removed may be graphically expressed. Two types of symbolism that give congruent circles are analogy and exemplification. In each the terms are alike in kind. An instance of what is presumably to be taken for analogy appears in these lines from Troilus and Cressida. How may I avoid, Although my will distaste what it elected, The wife I chose? There can be no evasion To blench from this and to stand firm by honor. II, 2, 65 If the obligations to wife and merchant represent a common principle of justice the passage is not metaphorical. There is no sufficient distinction in kind. If however one holds that no logical relation is intended, the figure is a metaphor. Analogy is a logical, exemplification a literary, figure. Johnson has well illustrated the identity of the circles in exemplification. After noting that the figure of the angel in Addison's Campaign has been called one of the noblest thoughts that ever entered into the mind of man and is "therefore worthy of attentive consideration," the critic continues: ... A poetical simile is the discovery of likeness between two actions in their general nature dissimilar, or of causes terminating by different operations in the same resemblance of effect. But the mention of another like consequence from a like cause, or of a like performance by a like agency, is not a simile but an exemplification. It is not a simile to say that the Thames waters fields as the Po waters fields. . . . When Horace says of Pindar that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse as a river swollen with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations as the bee wanders to collect honey; he in either case produces a simile; the mind is impressed with the resemblance of things generally unlike, as unlike as intellect and body. Marlborough is so like the angel in the poem that the action of both is almost the same, and performed by both in the same manner. Marlborough "teaches the battle to rage"; the angel directs the storm; Marlborough is "unmoved in peaceful thought"; the angel is "calm and serene"; Marlborough stands "unmoved amidst the shock of hosts"; the angel rides "calm in the whirlwind." The lines on Marlborough are just and noble; but the simile gives almost the same images a second time. But perhaps this thought, though hardly a simile, was remote from vulgar conceptions, and required great labor of research or dexterity of application. Of this, Dr. Madden. once gave me his opinion. "If I had set," said he, "ten school boys to write on the battle of Blenheim, and eight had brought me the angel, I should not have beer. surprised." In the first of these paragraphs Johnson shows his vigorous common sense. In the second both he and Dr. Madden prove themselves superior to the common taste of their day. They observe that exemplification has no imaginative power comparable to metaphor. Those who could mistake the image of the angel for a simile, or in the present terminology a metaphor, must have been slow in discriminating the types of symbolic imagination. Among the images superficially and distantly related to metaphor are the pun and arbitrary sign symbolism. The latter is illustrated in the algebraical symbols. It is even further removed from metaphor than the associative symbol, for the sign symbol is arbitrary to all and has a precise significance, while the associative symbol is inevitable to at least a single person and may be highly stimulating to the imagination. The pun and the sign symbol may be figured as tangent circles. The Comparison suggests three circular sheets of glass, one a colored transparency held before the other two and surrounding them. Again the likeness is superficial and precise. Take for example the thought that the sky is as grey as lead. The only similarity is one of color. This is not poetic metaphor. Neither is it poetic imagery to compare a cloud to a whale. The only similarity is one of shape. In every poetic metaphor there must be a subjective element. If a sportsman likens a drooping flag to the corpse of a brilliant bird, his image exceeds a comparison of physical objects. There is a suggestion of sadness or even of death in the listless dag hanging about its pole. To the mind of the sportsman naturally comes the idea of the bright body of a dead bird. This is a poetic metaphor. The image of the cloud and whale is metaphor but not poetic metaphor. The thought of a common greyness in lead and sea shows a sharper division of the idea into three parts instead of two, and consequently is a departure from symbolism itself. The poetic image may be called sympathetic or prejudicial. Some difficulty arises in distinguishing metaphor and synecdoche. In synecdoche there are not two circles but one with a segment in emphasis. The difficulty is, figuratively, to determine whether the second term is an independent circle or a segment of the first. Quite as perplexing as the distinction between metaphor and unmetaphorical symbolism, or between the poetic and the unsympathetic metaphor, is the distinction between imagery and literal statement in the matter of vocabulary. The word "dissection" for example might in this regard be ambiguous. Are two terms contained in this word or only one? Words which are possibly but not probably metaphorical, and especially words which have had figurative meanings which have since been dropped, may be called faded images. Most of our derivative Latin compounds illustrate the faded figure. If much that is sometimes considered metaphor may well be excluded from our present consideration, much that is not thought of as imagery by the rhetoricians may be included. Their categories are based on formal distinctions of language. When content and not form is the test, that which might otherwise be taken for literal thought becomes figurative. To describe this large class it is necessary to distinguish two types into which all metaphor may be divided. These are the Direct and the Inverse. Direct images are often unobserved by rhetorical criticism. Every metaphorical relation is composed of a major and a minor term, distinguished by the greater importance attached to the former. If someone should admire a drooping flag and think it like a bird's body, we may suppose him more attached to the flag than to the bird. If on the other hand a torn flag should suggest a nation divided against itself, we may suppose that the passing sight of a damaged flag leads to the more important thought of national dissension. In the first case, something of primary importance already in the eye and mind, a flag, receives supplementary emphasis and interpretation from a secondary idea, the bird. This is Inverse Metaphor. In the second case something of secondary importance, the flag, gives renewed vigor to an idea of primary importance, the nation. This is Direct Metaphor. It occurs when the term which is the immediate cause of the suggestion is thought of as the less important. Inverse Metaphor occurs when the term which is the immediate cause of the suggestion is thought of as the more important. Inverse Metaphor is more frequently met with in life than in literature, because in literature we are as a rule more conscious of people than of the physical scenes which they inhabit. In our daily experience images are forced upon us by nature. More especially in dramatic literature, however, the mind draws consciously upon its memory of natural objects to illustrate sensations and ideas. In this regard the modern stage is closer to life than the Elizabethan. In the dramas of Oscar Wilde, Maeterlinck, D'Annunzio and Hugo von Hofmannsthal characters are far more susceptible to suggestion from the physical scene than are those on the Elizabethan stage. Direct Metaphor, however, appears more frequently there than on the stage of Molière. An illustration of the physical scene affording a metaphorical idea may be taken from Cymbeline. Belarius and his two sons are coming at sunrise from their cave: A goodly day not to keep house, with such Whose roof's as low as ours! Stoop, boys; this gate And keep their impious turbans on, without III, 3, 1 In similar imagery is Prospero's reflexion on the mutability |