Interrogation, Apostrophe may also be dismissed in a few words. They obviously have no special connection with Clearness. When they are not carried to excess, however, they give an energy and vigor to one's writing, of which every reader of Carlyle will recognize the character. Nor when we think of some fine passages by De Quincey and Newman can we say that they lack a certain dignity. They are, however, devices which may very easily be misused if used merely for effect, so that one would hardly recommend them to the young writer who would like to turn out forcible and vigorous work. But we have already seen (29) how modified forms of two of these devices may be made effective in Popular Exposition. That is, they are often means for Simplicity. When one is handling some rather abstruse topic, it is often a great assistance to address the reader personally and to put questions either to oneself or to him. Of course such expedients do not usually go by the name of Apostrophe or Interrogation, but the principle at bottom is the same; it is only the use to which the device is put that differs. And having already considered this matter in another place, we need not stop any longer over it.

There remain to be mentioned Irony and Epigram. In a critical study an investigation of these figures would have its place, but I do not believe that anybody was ever yet taught outright to speak ironically or to make good epigrams. The remark that they are effective means to Force, if not to Clearness or Simplicity, must therefore be sufficient for them here.

II. FIGURES IN THEIR RELATION TO SPECIAL

PURPOSES.

84. So much for Illustration and Figure as to their purpose, as far as the more general qualities of style are concerned. But we may have other purposes in mind than Clearness and the rest, more particular purposes; we may want to make this or that attractive to the reader, or unattractive, or ridiculous, or familiar, or whatever else. The writer aware of the resources of good writing has various ways of accomplishing his end. He may do something by the kind of words that he uses,' but he may do even more by the kind of figure that he uses. Not by the kind of figure as far as form is concerned, for there is not much difference in the various figures in this respect as far as form is concerned simile is not more ridiculous than metaphor, nor personification more familiar than analogy. Figures may be more or less attractive or familiar as they are more or less simple, or clear, or forcible, but the qualities of style as influenced by figurative expression we have

1 This is a topic which I have not mentioned under the head Vocabulary. But the following part of a sentence from Newman will give the idea:

"Now the author of the Christian Year found the Anglican system all but destitute of this divine element, which is an essential property of Catholicism; a ritual dashed upon the ground, trodden on, and broken piecemeal; prayers clipped, pieced, torn, shuffled about at pleasure, until the meaning of the composition perished, and offices which had been poetry were no longer even good prose; antiphones, hymns, benedictions, invocations, shovelled away; vestments chucked off, lights quenched, jewels stolen, the pomp and circumstances of worship annihilated," etc. Essays Critical and Historical, ii. 443.

Notice the effect of the words chucked off: they do not mean much more than cast away, but they give a very different impression. Newman was speaking of what he regarded as an ignoble action; so he uses a vulgar expression, which is very marked in the otherwise heightened diction. Notice, too, the figure shovelled away.

already discussed. We are now concerned only with the subject-matter of figures.

There can be no doubt that the general character of the subject-matter of a similitude or comparison, aside from the particular points which are compared, is something that may have its influence on our impression of the object of the comparison. The general character of the image, to use our old phraseology, influences our conception of the idea. Doubtless not in every case, for often the comparison or simile neither elevates the idea in our mind nor degrades it; but in other cases its general nature has its effect. To take an extreme case we may remember the effect which a comparison with something low or mean seems always to have upon readers of poetry. To illustrate what is, perhaps, familiar enough I quote a few lines from Goldsmith:

"Homer has been blamed for the bad choice of his similes on some particular occasions. He compares Ajax to an ass in the Iliad, and Ulysses to a steak broiling on the coals in the Odyssey.

"His admirers have endeavored to excuse him by reminding us of the simplicity of the age in which he wrote; but they have not been able to prove that any ideas of dignity or importance were, even in those days, affixed to the character of an ass or the quality of a beef-collop; therefore they were very improper illustrations for any situa tions in which a king ought to be represented.

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Virgil has degraded the wife of King Latinus by comparing her, when she was actuated by the Fury, to a top which the boys lash for diversion.”—Essay xxi, On the Use of Metaphors.

Making some allowance for the pedantry of the critics of whom Goldsmith writes, it is obvious enough that one thinks of Ajax very differently when he is presented to us as being like an ass and when he is compared to a lion, let us say. It would seem natural enough that our general

estimation of the image, the kind of thing to which the idea is compared, should make us feel in this way or that about the idea. And if such is the case we want to know how to avail ourselves of the power which is thus put into our hands.

It would hardly be according to our plan to attempt a careful classification of figures from this point of view. It would be immensely difficult, and so complicated as to be of no more service to you than a simpler arrangement at once unscientific and incomplete. I shall only try to suggest to you by a few examples the possibilities in this direc

tion.

We may say, first, that the subject-matter of the image may be such as to arouse a sympathetic interest on our part, or just the reverse. To attain our first end we must make the comparison with something that is interesting or attractive to the reader. The greater number of stock comparisons were originally of this kind: a hero was compared to a lion by those who admired the lion; a beauty was compared to a swan, for instance, or to a flower, by such as felt swans and flowers to be beautiful. Nowadays such figures have not much effect, because they have become conventional to a great degree, but even a conventional figure may have a sudden force given it by a great poet, as when Wordsworth writes of Milton :

"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart:

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea." One can strike out more original figures which will have more effect or less, according as they strike the fancy of one reader or another.

As we can arouse sympathy with the idea, or interest, by one sort of image, so we can preclude it by another kind. There was some difference between the ancient myth of Circe, who turned the companions of Ulysses into swine, and Milton's story of Comus, who changed each one that drank of his cup into that kind of animal which he most

resembled. Those who are compared to swine are so far removed from our sympathy (although the hog is a worthy animal), whereas the comparison to a "wolf, or bear, or ounce, or tiger" is not so bad by any means. Hence we feel an interest in Circe which we do not feel in Comus, for we laugh at the victims of the one and we rather respect the victims of the other. Even in the later forms of the old story Picus turned to a woodpecker and Anonymus changed to an elephant have no real hold on our sympathies.'

As to the effect of the ridiculous, we all know how strong an effect has even accidental association with something humorous. Thus one reader spoiled for himself that passage in The Idylls of the King beginning

"Then Geraint,

For now the wine made summer in his veins,"

by thinking that Geraint must have drunk a good deal, for one swallow does not make a summer. The ridiculous. association with a trivial pun always took away from his subsequent appreciation of the passage. On the same principle it is considered a sharp dodge to affix some ridiculous nickname to a person or party, for by that means, justly or unjustly, some degree of prejudice must be overcome. You may recall here De Quincey's fun over "the transfigured coachman of the Bath mail": "In spite of his blooming face some infirmities he had; and one particularly (I am very sure no more than one) in which he too much resembled a crocodile. This lay in his monstrous inaptitude for turning round. The crocodile I presume owes that inaptitude to the absurd length of his back; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from the absurd breadth of his back, combined, probably, with some growing stiff

As the readers of Keats' Endymion will observe (bk. iii. 1. 540); Hawthorne (Circe's Palace in Tanglewood Tales) has been a little more successful with King Picus, but he wisely left the elephant to himself.