Fai less is a man disposed to similes who is not only defeated in a pitched battle, but lies at the point of death mortally wounded:

Warwick.

-My mangled body shows

My blood, my want of strength; my sick heart shows

That I must yield my body to the earth,

And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe.
Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge,

Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle;

Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,

Whose top branch over-peer'd Jove's spreading tree,
And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind.

Third Part Henry VI. Act V. Sc. 3.

Queen Katherine, deserted by the king, and in the deepest affliction on her divorce, could not be disposed to any sallies of imagination: and for that reason, the following simile, however beautiful in the mouth of a spectator, is scarce proper in her own:

I am the most unhappy woman living,
Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
No friends, no hope! no kindred weep for me!
Almost no grave allow'd me! like the lily,
That once was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,
I'll hang my head and perish.

King Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 1.

Similes thus unseasonably introduced, are finely ridiculed in the Rehearsal :

Bayes. Now here she must make a simile.

Smith. Where's the necessity of that, Mr. Bayes?

Bayes. Because she's surprised; that's a general rule; you must ever make a simile when you are surprised; 'tis a new way of writing.

505. A comparison is not always faultless even where it is properly introduced. I have endeavored above to give a general view of the different ends to which a comparison may contribute: a comparison, like other human productions, may fall short of its aim; of which defect instances are not rare even among good writers; and to complete the present subject, it will be necessary to make some observations upon such faulty comparisons. I begin with observing, that nothing can be more erroneous than to institute a comparison too faint a distant resemblance or contrast fatigues the mind with its obscurity, instead of amusing it; and tends not to fulfil any one end of a comparison. The following similes seem to labor under this defect:

Albus ut obscuro deterget nubila cœlo
Sæpe Notus, neque parturit imbres.
Perpetuos: sic tu sapiens finire memento
Tristitiam, vitæque labores.

Horat. Carm. 1. i. ode 7.

K. Rich. Give me the crown.-Here, cousin, seize the crown,

Here, on this side, my hand; on that side, thine.

Now is this golden crown like a deep well,

That owes two buckets, filling one another;

The emptier ever dancing in the air,

The other down, unseen and full of water:

505. Comparisons falling short of their aim.

That bucket down, and full of tears, am
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high,

Richard II. Act IV. Sc. 8.

K. John. Oh! cousin, thou art come to set mine eye;
The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burnt;
And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail,
Are turned to one thread, one little hair;
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,
Which holds but till thy news be uttered.

King John, Act V. Sc. 10.

York. My uncles both are slain in rescuing me:
And all my followers to the eager foe
Turn back, and fly like ships before the wind,
Or lambs pursued by hunger-starved wolves.

Third Part Henry VI. Act I. Sc. 6.

The latter of the two similes is good; the former, by its faintness of resemblance, has no effect but to load the narration with a useless image.

506. The next error I shall mention is a capital one. In an epic poem, or in a poem, upon any elevated subject, a writer ought to avoid raising a simile on a low image, which never fails to bring down the principal subject. In general, it is a rule, That a grand object ought never to be resembled to one that is diminutive, however delicate the resemblance may be; for it is the peculiar character of a grand object to fix the attention, and swell the mind; in which state, to contract it to a minute object, is unpleasant. The resembling an object to one that is greater, has, on the contrary, a good effect, by raising or swelling the mind; for one passes with satisfaction from a small to a great object; but cannot be drawn down, without reluctance, from great to small. Hence the following similes are faulty:

Meanwhile the troops beneath Patroclus' care,
Invade the Trojans and commence the war.
As wasps, provoked by children in their play,
Pour from their mansions by the broad highway,
In swarms the guiltless traveller engage,

Whet all their stings, and call forth all their rage;

All rise in arms, and with a general cry

Assert their waxen domes, and buzzing progeny

Thus from the tents the fervent legion swarms,

So loud their clamor and so keen their arms.-Iliad, xvi. 812.

So burns the vengeful hornet (soul all o'er)

Repulsed in vain, and thirsty still of gore;
(Bold son of air and heat) on angry wings
Untamed, untired he turns, attacks and stings.
Fired with like ardor, fierce Atrides flew,

And sent his soul with every lance he threw.-Iliad, xvii. 642.

507. An error, opposite to the former, is the introducing a resembling image, so elevated or great as to bear no proportion to the principal subject. Their remarkable disparity, seizing the mind, never fails to depress the principal subject by contrast, instead of

506. A simile on a low image. The effect of resembling an object to one that is greater.

raising it by resemblance and if the disparity be very great, the
simile degenerates into burlesque; nothing being more ridiculous
than to force an object out of its proper rank in nature, by equalling
it with one greatly superior or greatly inferior. This will be evident
from the following comparisons:

Fervet opus, redolentque thymo fragrantia mella.
Ac veluti lentis Cvelopes fulmina massis
Cum properant. alii taurinis follibus auras
Accipiunt, redduntque: alii stridentia tingunt
Era lacu; gemit impositis incudibus Etna;
Illi inter sese magna vi brachia tollunt

In numerum; versantque tenaci forcipe ferrum.
Non aliter (si parva licet componere magnis)
Cecropias innatus apes amor urget habendi,
Munere quamque suo. Grandævis oppida curæ,
Et munire favos, et Dædaia fingere tecta.
At fessæ multâ referunt se nocte minores,
Crura thymo plena: pascuntur et arbuta passim,
Et glaucas salices, casiamque crocumque rubentem,
Et pinguem tiliam, et ferrugineos hyacinthos,
Omnibus una quies operum, labor omnibus unus.

Georgie, iv. 169.

A writer of delicacy will avoid drawing his comparisons from any image that is nauseous, ugly, or remarkably disagreeable; for however strong the resemblance may be, more will be lost than gained by such comparison. Therefore I cannot help condemning, though with some reluctance, the following simile, or rather metaphor:

O thou fond many! with what loud applause
Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
Before he was what thou wouldst have him be?
And now being trimm'd up in thine own desires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up:
And so, thou common dog, did'st thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,
And howl'st to find it.

Second Part Henry IV. Act I. Sc. 6.

508. The strongest objection that can lie against a comparison is, that it consists in words only, not in sense. Such false coin, or bastard wit, does extremely well in burlesque; but it is far below the dignity of the epic, or of any serious composition:

The noble sister of Poplicola,

The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle
That's curled by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple.

Coriolanus, Act V. Sc. 3.

There is evidently no resemblance between an icicle and a wo man, chaste or unchaste; but chastity is cold in a metaphorical sense, and an icicle is cold in a proper sense: and this verbal resemblance, in the hurry and glow of composing, has been thought

50%. An image too elevated for the principal subject.-Disagreeablo imagu

a sufficient foundation for the simile. Such phantom similes are mere witticisms, which ought to have no quarter, except where purposely introduced to provoke laughter. Lucian, in his dissertation upon history, talking of a certain author, makes the following comparison, which is verbal merely:

This author's descriptions are so cold that they surpass the Caspian snow and all the ice of the north.

Virgil has not escaped this puerility:

Galathæa thymo mihi dulcior Hyblæ.

Ego Sardois videar tibi amarior herbis.

Gallo, cujus amor tantum mihi crescit in horas,
Quantum vere novo viridis se subjicit alnus.

Nor Tasso, in his Aminta:

Picciola e' l' ape, e fa col picciol morso
Pur gravi, e pur moleste le ferite;
Ma, qual cosa é più picciola d' amore,
Se in ogni breve spatio entra, e s' asconde
In ogni breve spatio? hor, sotto a l'ombra
De le palpebre, hor trá minuti rivi
D'un biondo crine, hor dentro le pozzette
Che forma un dolce riso in bella guancia;
E pur fa tanto grandi, e si mortali,

E cosi immedicabili le piaghe.

Bucol. vii. 37.

Ibid. 41.

Bucol. x. 37.

Act II. Sc. 1.

Nor Boileau, the chastest of all writers, and that even in his Art of

Poetry:

Ainsi tel autrefois, qu'on vit avec Faret
Charbonner de ses vers les murs d'un cabaret,
S'en va mal à propos d'une voix insolente,

Chanter du peuple Hébreu la fuite triomphante,

Et poursuivant Moïse au travers des déserts,

Court avec Pharaon se noyer dans les mers.-Chant. I. 1. 21.

Mais allons voir le Vrai, jusqu'en sa source même.

Un dévot aux yeux crenx, et d'abstinence blême,

S'il n'a point le cœur juste, est affreux devant Dieu,
L'Evangile au Chrétien ne dit, en aucun lieu,
Sois devet: elle dit, Sois doux, simple, équitable:
Car d'un devot souvent au Chrétien véritable
La distance est deux fois plus longue, à mon avis,
Que du Pôle Antarctique au Détroit de Davis.

But for their spirits and souls
This word rebellion had froze them up
As fish are in a pond.

Boileau, Satire xi.

Second Part Henry IV. Act I. Sc. 8.

Queen. The pretty vaulting sea refused to drown me;
Knowing, that thou wouldst have me drown'd on shore;
With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness.

Second Part Herry IV. Act III. Sc. 6.

Here there is no manner of resemblance but in the word drown for there is no real resemblance between being drowned at sea, and dying of grief at land. But perhaps this sort of tinsel wit may

have a propriety in it, when used to express an affected, not a real passion, which was the Queen's case.

Pope has several similes of the same stamp. I shall transcribe one or two from the Essay on Man, the greatest and most instruc tive of all his performances:

And hence one master passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.

Epist. ii. 1. 181.

And again, talking of this same ruling or master passion:

Nature its mother, Habit is its nurse;
Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse;
Reason itself but gives it edge and power;

As heaven's bless'd beam turns vinegar more sour.-Ibid. 1. 45.

Lord Bolingbroke, speaking of historians:

Where their sincerity as to fact is doubtful, we strike out truth by the confrontation of different accounts; as we strike out sparks of fire by the collision of flints and steel.

Let us vary the phrase a very little, and there will not remain a shadow of resemblance. Thus:

We discover truth by the confrontation of different accounts; as we strike out sparks of fire by the collision of flints and steel.

Racine makes Orestes say to Hermoine :

Que les Scythes sont moins cruel qu' Hermoine.

Similes of this kind put one in mind of a ludicrous French song>

Again:

Je croyois Janneton

Aussi douce que belle:

Je croyois Janneton

Plus douce qu'un mouton;

Hélas! Hélas !

Elle est cent fois, mille fois, plus cruelle

Que n'est le tigre aux bois.

Hélas! l'amour m'a pris,

Comme le chat fait la souris.

Where the subject is burlesque or ludicrous, such similes are far from being improper. Horace says pleasantly,

And Shakspeare,

Quanquam tu levior cortice.-L. iii. ode 9.

In breaking oaths he's stronger than Hercules.

509. And this leads me to observe, that besides the foregoing comparisons, which are all serious, there is a species, the end and purpose of which is to excite gayety or mirth. Take the following examples:

508. Comparison in words only. Examples,