coincide with those already given for similies; some are peculiar to metaphors and allegories.

And, in the first place, it has been observed, that a simile cannot be agreeable where the resemblance is either too strong or too faint. This holds equally in metaphor and allegory; and the reason is the same in all. In the following instances, the resemblance is too faint to be agreeable.

Malcolm.

-But there's no bottom, none

In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,
Your matrons and your maids, could not fill up
The cistern of my lust.

Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 3.

The best way to judge of this metaphor, is to convert it into a simile; which would be bad, because there is scarce any resemblance between lust and a cistern, or betwixt enormous lust and a large cistern.

Again:

He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
Within the belt of rule.

Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 2.

There is no resemblance between a distempered cause and any body that can be confined within a

Poverty here must be conceived a fluid, which it

resembles not in any manner.

Speaking to Bolingbroke banished for six years:

The sullen passage of thy weary steps
Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home-return.

The following metaphor is strained beyond all endurance: Timur-bec, known to us by the name of Tamerlane the Great, writes to Bajazet, Emperor of the Ottomans, in the following terms:

Where is the monarch who dares resist us? where is. the potentate who doth not glory in being numbered among our attendants? As for thee, descended from a Turcoman sailor, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath been wreck'd in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldst take in the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the port of safety; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in the sea of the punishment thou deservest,

Such strained figures, as observed above,* are not unfrequent in the first dawn of refinement: the

* Chap, 19, Comparisons,

mind in a new enjoyment knows no bounds, and is generally carried to excess, till taste and experience discover the proper limits.

Secondly, Whatever resemblance subjects may have, it is wrong to put one for another, where they bear no mutual proportion: upon comparing a very high to a very low subject, the simile takes on an air of burlesque; and the same will be the effect, where the one is imagined to be the other, as in a metaphor; or made to represent the other, as in an allegory.

Thirdly, These figures, a metaphor especially, ought not to be crowded with many minute circumstances; for in that case it is scarcely possible to avoid obscurity. A metaphor above all ought to be short: it is difficult, for any time, to support a lively image of a thing being what we know it is not; and for that reason, a metaphor drawn out to any length, instead of illustrating or enlivening the principal subject, becomes disagreeable by overstraining the mind. Here Cowley is extremely licentious: take the following instance.

Great and wise conqu'ror, who where-e'er
Thou com'st, doth fortify, and settle there!
Who canst defend as well as get,

And never hadst one quarter beat up yet;
Now thou art in, thou ne'er will part
With one inch of my vanquish'd heart;
For since thou took'st it by assault from me,
'Tis garrison'd so strong with thoughts of thee,
It fears no beauteous enemy.

For the same reason, however agreeable long alle

gories may at first be by their novelty, they never afford any lasting pleasure: witness the FairyQueen, which, with great power of expression, variety of images, and melody of versification, is scarce ever read a second time.

In the fourth place, The comparison carried on in a simile, being in a metaphor sunk by imagin ing the principal subject to be that very thing which it only resembles; an opportunity is furnished to describe it in terms taken strictly or literally with respect to its imagined nature. This suggests another rule, That in constructing a metaphor, the writer ought to make use of such words only as are applicable literally to the imagined nature of his subject: figurative words ought carefully to be avoided; for such complicated figures, instead of setting the principal subject in a strong light, involve it in a cloud; and it is well if the reader, without rejecting by the lump, endeavour patiently to gather the plain meaning 'regardless of the figures:

A stubborn and unconquerable flame

Creeps in his veins, and drinks the streams of life.

Let us analyze this expression. That a fever may be imagined a flame, I admit; though more than one step is necessary to come at the resemblance :

a fever, by heating the body, resembles fire; and it is no stretch to imagine a fever to be a fire: Again, by a figure of speech, flame may be put for fire, because they are commonly conjoined; and therefore a fever may be termed a flame. But now admitting a fever to be a flame, its effects ought to be explained in words that agree literally to a flame. This rule is not observed here; for a flame drinks figuratively only, not properly.

King Henry to his son Prince Henry:

Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,
Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart
To stab at half an hour of my frail life.'

Second Part Henry IV. Act IV. Sc. 4.

Such faulty metaphors are pleasantly ridiculed in

the Rehearsal :

Physician. Sir, to conclude, the place you fill has more than amply exacted the talents of a wary pilot; and all these threatening storms, which, like impregnate clouds, hover o'er our heads, will, when they once are grasp'd but by the eye of reason, melt into fruitful showers of blessings on the people.

Bayes. Pray mark that allegory. Is not that good? Johnson. Yes, that grasping of a storm with the eye is admirable. Act II. Sc. 1.

Fifthly, The jumbling different metaphors in the same sentence, beginning with one metaphor and ending with another, commonly called a mixt meëtaphor, ought never to be indulged. Quintilian bears testimony against it in the bitterest terms: