Had the Cardinal de Rohan said that this monarch left upon earth a celebrated name, his expression would have been very common; but the same phrase put in the plural while speaking only of one man, and the enumeration of the several titles of glory of Louis XIV. whieh at once justifies this bold ascription, appear to me a sublime stroke.

Massillon knew also this secret of the art. In his writings, a word, which seemed to declare a paradox, often expressed a new thought, and a very weighty and just idea. Such is that admirable apostrophe which we read in his sermon "on the Mixture of the Righteous and the Wicked." "Ye great ones of the earth! the innocent pleasure of sincerity, without which there is nothing agreeable in the commerce of mankind, is denied you, and ye have no more friends, because it is too beneficial to be one."

SECTION XXIX.

OF METAPHORS.

"I AM fond," says Montaigne, "of words corresponding with the thought." But, to represent an idea in all its energy, the vulgar expression is frequently insufficient, and then the metaphor becomes the proper word in rhetorical language.

It is essential to the two objects of which a metaphor is composed, that their relation to each other be obvious, and that they may be marked by no striking dissimilitude.

Eloquence could not exist without this language of imagination. "Speech," says Cicero, "ought equally to strike the mind and senses of all men."* Now the senses are not moved but by the liveliness of images. Nature herself, which is the original model of art, suggests the most impressive images to savages, to infants, and to the meanest ranks of people, when they are governed by a strong passion.

DUMARSAIS hath judiciously observed, that "more tropes were made use of in the markets than in the academies." It is true, those popular metaphors are often very inaccurate, and a writer ought to express them with exactness when he means to admit them into elevated language.

That absurd medley of Balthasar Gratian has been quoted with propriety as a very striking example of the abuse which may be made of figurative eloquence: "Thoughts flow from the extensive coasts of memory, embark on the sea of the imagination, arrive at the port of genius, to be registered at the custom-house of the understanding."t

* Oratio hominum sensibus et mentibus accommodata.

De Orat., 12, 55.

+ Perhaps it may be no unsuitable parallel to the fantastical metaphor of Balthasar Gratian mentioned by M. Maury, to quote from the Life of GILPIN that absurd bombast, said to have been addressed by a high-sheriff at Oxford to the students: "Arriving," says he, "at the Mount of St. Mary, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought you some fine biscuits carefully conserved for the

There must doubtless be imagination in the manner of expression; but, above all, there must be truth and judgment.

chickens of the Church, the sparrows of the spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation."-GIBBON's Rhetoric, p. 17.

The Spectator humorously describes the abuse of figurative eloquence when he says, "An unskilful author shall run metaphors so absurdly into one another, that there shall be no simile, no agreeable picture, no apt resemblance, but confusion, obscurity, and noise. Thus have I known a hero compared to a thunderbolt, a lion, and the sea; all and each of them proper metaphors for impetuosity, courage, and force; but by bad management it hath so happened that the thunderbolt hath overflowed its banks, the lion hath darted through the skies, and the billows have rolled out of the Libyan Desert."

The same author presents us with the following letter, as a specimen of the enormous abuse of metaphorical expression: "Sir,-After the many heavy lashes that have fallen from your pen, you may justly expect in return all the load that my ink can lay upon your shoulders. You have quartered all the foul language upon me that could be raked out of the air of Billingsgate, without knowing who I am, or whether I deserve to be cupped and scarified at this rate. I tell you, once for all, turn your eyes where you please, you shall never smell me out. Do you think that the panics which you sow about the parish will ever build a monument to your glory? No, sir, you may fight these battles as long as you will; but when you come to balance the account, you will find that you have been fishing in troubled waters, and that an ignis fatuus hath be

The image is false when there is a contradiction of terms; as in that phrase, "I shall ascend to the foundation of the Cartesian system." It is incoherent when it describes on one side a physical substance, and on the other a moral subject: such is that parenthesis, “I say then (and I always continue fixed upon my principles).' It is puerile and farfetched whenever it forms an affected and unusual periphrasis, as when sundials have been called "the registers of the sun." But it becomes descriptive and just when it is expressed with simplicity and energy. It is thus that Bossuet describes the demands of luxury, when he says that "every art is exhausted (literally sweats) to satisfy them."*

When Bossuet makes use of a metaphor which

wildered you, and that indeed you have built upon a sandy foundation, and brought your hogs to a fair market.”— SPECTATOR, No. 595.

* To avoid such improprieties as those mentioned by our author, it is of importance to bear in mind what Dr. BLAIR says on this subject: "A good rule has been given for examining the propriety of metaphors when we doubt whether or not they be of the mixed kind; namely, that we should try to form a picture upon them, and consider how the parts would agree, and what sort of figure the whole would present when delineated with a pencil. By these means we should become sensible whether inconsistent circumstances were mixed, and a monstrous image thereby produced, or whether the object was all along presented in one natural and consistent point of view."BLAIR's Lectures, vol. i., p. 311.

seems bold, he sometimes apologizes; and presently he rises upon that description which he does not find sufficiently great nor daring.

"Shall I speak to you," says he, in the funeral oration for Maria Theresa, "shall I speak to you concerning the death of her children? Let us figure to ourselves that young prince, whom the graces themselves appear to have formed with their hands. Forgive me this expression: methinks I still behold this flower falling. At that time the sorrowful messenger of an event so fatal, I was also the witness, when beholding the king and queen, of the most piercing grief on the one hand, and, on the other, of the most mournful lamentations; and under different forms I saw an unbounded affliction."

An idea which would be common were it not for the boldness of the imagination, which sometimes gives sensation to inanimate beings, becomes interesting under the pencil of an orator or a poet.

Eloquence, I know, hath less extensive privileges than poetry. The latter is exempted, according to the judicious observation of Boileau, from all the set forms of excuse to which prose is subjected: e. g., "Pardon this expression-so to speak-if I may venture to say so," &c. We often find, however, in excellent orators, metaphors which we should be scrupulous about hazarding in verse. Those figures are so transfused through the style that they are scarcely observed in the perusal.

Racine was doubtless struck with that expres