And low or liquid, or hoarse and loud, 5. 6. 7. 8. A little child sits in its father's door, Chatting and singing with careless tongue: Words measure power; and they measure thine: Words measure destiny. Power to declare Words measure life'; and they measure its joy'. 9. But notwithstanding the value of words as measures of life, and power, and destiny, it should be remembered that it is only intellect and emotion that make them valuable. "Language," as Professor Goldwin Smith forcibly says, "is not a musical instrument into which, if a fool breathe, it will make melody. LESSON XXVIII. ORIGIN AND USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. [Analysis.-1. Earliest account of names.—2. Literal meaning of early names.-3. Names imitative of the objects represented. Illustration.-4. Further illustrations of imitative words.-5. Impossible to assign names to all objects. First remedy, to group objects into classes.-6. Second remedy.-7. Illustrated by the use of the word head.-8. Origin and growth of figurative language. Cicero's account.-9. The same views expressed by Vida.-10. The figurative expressions "flourished" and planted."-11. The subject further illustrated by the use of the word "voice.”—12. Effects of the use of appropriate figures of speech. Importance of these figures in poetry. Illustration from Thomson.-13. An illustration, in two forms, from Horace. -14. Further use of these figures. A happy illustration-explained.-15. How we describe objects as very beautiful, etc.-the effect. An illustration from Akenside.— 16. Caution to youthful writers. What must be, further, borne in mind.-17. What writings generally reject figures. Example. The proper place for figures.] 1. "AND out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." 2. We may suppose that, in like manner, the descendants of Adam gave names to the different objects which they saw, or thought of; and so long as each object had its own name, and no other was applied to it, all names of objects had a literal meaning. 3. There is little doubt that, in the infancy of language, whenever names were given to objects in which some particular sound or motion was conspicuous, the names were made to imitate, as far as possible, the nature of the objects represented. Thus, in all languages, we find a multitude of words evidently constructed on this principle. As a familiar illustration of this truth, a certain bird is termed the cuckoo, and another the whippoorwill, from the peculiar sounds which they emit. 4. When one sort of wind is said to whisper, another to whistle'2; when the lightning is said to flash, and the thunder to roar'; when a serpent is said to hiss', a fly to buzz', a dog to bark', a tiger to growl', a cat to purr', a chicken to peep', birds to chirp', and falling timber to crash'; when a stream is said to flow', and hail to rattle'; when we speak of the eagle's scream', the yell of the panther', the twitter of the swallow'; of bleating lambs', and lowing herds'; of the moan of pain', the groan of anguish, and the tolling of the passing bell'—the analogy between the sound of the word, and the thing signified', is plainly discernible'. 5. But how soon would the infinite number and variety of the objects in nature exhaust the most extended vocabulary! Could every beast that roamed the plains, every fowl of the air, and every tenant of the waters, have a name of its own'? It could not have been long before it became necessary to group objects into classes, so that one word might designate a great and unknown number of individuals! Thus the words elephant, lion, bear, wolf, sheep'eagle, owl, robin, swallow'-trout, perch, bass, mullet', etc., would each stand for a class, or division, of the animal kingdom. And the same with the names of objects in the vegetable world and the mineral kingdom. 6. But the difficulty would not end here; and in the very infancy of language men would be compelled, in order to lay less burden on their memories, to make one word, which they had already appropriated to a certain idea or object, stand for some other idea or object, between which and the primary one they found, or fancied, some resemblance. 7. Thus, as the head is that part of the body which contains the brain, or governing power, the same word would, ere long, begin to be applied to whatever is uppermost, foremost, or the most prominent among other objects. Hence we now find such figurative expressions as the head of an army, a column, a state, a family, a school: we speak of the head of the Nile, and the heads of a discourse; a boil and 2 Apply Rule II. where the particulars are not emphatic. The rising inflection is but slight after the commas, but plainly marked after the semicolons. As the particulars become more emphatic, toward the close of the verse, the falling inflection is used, according to Rule III.; and this gives greater variety to the reading. a conspiracy are alike said to come to a head: and a man is figuratively said to have a good head, when we mean a good intellect. 8. Hence the origin and abundance of figurative words, which find currency in all languages, both from choice and necessity; and men of lively imaginations are every day adding to their number. Nearly two thousand years ago Cicero gave this same account of the origin of figurative language, when he said, "As garments were first contrived to defend our bodies from the cold, and afterward were employed for the purpose of ornament and dignity', so figures of speech, introduced by want, were cultivated for the sake of entertainment." 9. We find the same views expressed by a modern Latin poet, who says "First from necessity the figure sprung; For things that would not suit our scanty tongue, Those they transferred that bordered on the true : Thence, by degrees, the noble license grew."-VIDA. 10. How naturally figurative expressions spring up, and how much they add to the force and beauty of language, we will illustrate by a few examples. When we design to intimate the period at which a state enjoyed most reputation and glory, this idea is readily connected, in our imagination, with the flourishing period of a plant or a tree; and we lay hold of this associated idea, and say, "The Roman empire flourished most under Augustus." The Psalmist used the same figure to denote the prosperity of the righteous, when he said, "The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord, shall flourish in the courts of oùr God." 11. The word voice was originally invented to signify the articulate sounds formed by the organs of speech: but as by means of it men signify their ideas and intentions to one another, the word voice, ere long, came to be used to signify any intimation of will, or judgment, or power, though given without the least interposition of voice, in its literal sense. Thus we speak of listening to the voice of conscience, the voice of nature, the voice of God. Job speaks of the thunder as the voice of God. "Canst thou thunder with a voice like him ?" up their voice." And the Psalmist says, "The floods lifted Even that form of the verb, by which its subject is represented as the doer, the doer and the object, or the object of an action, is called the Active Voice, the Middle Voice, the Passive Voice, etc., because the form itself makes known, or proclaims, the relation of the subject to the action. 12. As the familiarity of common words, to which our ears are much accustomed, tends to degrade style, the use of appropriate figures of speech bestows upon it dignity and elevation. Assistance of this kind is often needed in prose compositions, when the subject is elevated; but poetry could. not exist without it. Hence figures form the constant language of poetry. To say that "the sun rises" is trite and common; but it becomes a magnificent image when expressed as we find it in Thomson's Seasons: But yonder comes the powerful king of day, 13. To say that "all men are subject alike to death," presents only a commonplace idea; but the thought rises and fills the imagination when painted thus: "With equal pace, impartial fate Knocks at the palace, as the cottage gate:"* or, when thus expressed: “We all must tread the paths of fate : And ever shakes the mortal urn, On Charon's boat-ah! never to return." Horace, by FRANCIS. 14. Appropriate figures of speech delight by the novelty of the ideas which they suggest; they place the principal subject of thought in a new and striking light; by the aid of association they throw around it all the charms of fancy, Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede, pauperum tabernas Regumque turres.-Horace. More literally: "Pale death, with equal pace, knocks at the cottages of the poor, and the palaces of kings." |