Chapter 1

_SOCIETY FOR PURE ENGLISH_

_TRACT No. XI_

THREE ARTICLES ON METAPHOR

By E.B., H.W. Fowler & A. Clutton-Brock

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES & CORRESPONDENCE

_At the Clarendon Press_

1922

THREE ARTICLES ON METAPHOR

I. NOTES ON THE FUNCTION OF METAPHOR

The business of the writer is to arouse in the mind of his reader the fullest possible consciousness of the ideas or emotion that he is expressing.

To this end he suggests a comparison between it and something else which is similar to it in respect of those qualities to which he desires to draw attention. The reader's mind at once gets to work unconsciously on this comparison, rejecting the unlike qualities and recognizing with an enhanced and satisfied consciousness the like ones. The functions of simile and metaphor are the same in this respect.

Both simile and metaphor are best when not too close to the idea they express, that is, when they have not many qualities in common with it which are not cogent to the aspect under consideration.

The test of a well-used metaphor is that it should completely fulfil this function: there should be no by-products of imagery which distract from the poet's aim, and vitiate and weaken the desired consciousness.

A simile, in general, need not be so close as a metaphor, because the point of resemblance is indicated, whereas in a metaphor this is left to the reader to discover.

When a simile or metaphor is from the material to the immaterial, or vice versa, the analogy should be more complete than when it is between two things on the same plane: when they are on different planes there is less dullness (that is, less failure to produce consciousness), and the greater mental effort required of the reader warrants some assistance.

The degree of effort required in applying any given metaphor should be in relation to the degree of emotion proper to the passage in which it is used. Only those metaphors which require little or no mental exertion should be used in very emotional passages, or the emotional effect will be much weakened: a far-fetched, abstruse metaphor or simile implies that the writer is at leisure from his emotion, and suggests this attitude in the reader.--[E.B.]

II. SOME NOTES ON METAPHOR IN JOURNALISM

Live and dead metaphor; some pitfalls; self-consciousness and mixed metaphor.

1. Live and Dead Metaphor.

In all discussion of metaphor it must be borne in mind that some metaphors are living, i.e. are offered and accepted with a consciousness of their nature as substitutes for their literal equivalents, while others are dead, i.e. have been so often used that speaker and hearer have ceased to be aware that the words are not literal: but the line of distinction between the live and the dead is a shifting one, the dead being sometimes liable, under the stimulus of an affinity or a repulsion, to galvanic stirrings indistinguishable from life. Thus, in _The men were sifting meal_ we have a literal use of _sift_; in _Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat_, 'sift' is a live metaphor; in _the sifting of evidence_, the metaphor is so familiar that it is about equal chances whether _sifting_ or _examination_ will be used, and a sieve is not present to the thought--unless, indeed, some one conjures it up by saying _All the evidence must first be sifted with acid tests_, or _with the microscope_; under such a stimulus our metaphor turns out to have been not dead, but dormant. The other word, _examine_, will do well enough as an example of the real stone-dead metaphor; the Latin _examino_, being from _examen_ the tongue of a balance, meant originally to weigh; but, though weighing is not done with acid tests or microscopes any more than sifting, _examine_ gives no convulsive twitchings, like _sift_, at finding itself in their company; _examine_, then, is dead metaphor, and _sift_ only half dead, or three-quarters.

2. Some pitfalls. A, Unsustained Metaphor; B, Overdone Metaphor; C, Spoilt Metaphor; D, Battles of the Dead; E, Mixed Metaphor.

A. Unsustained Metaphor

_He was still in the middle of those twenty years of neglect which only began to lift in 1868_. The plunge into metaphor at _lift_, which presupposes a mist, is too sudden after the literal _twenty years of neglect_; years, even gloomy years, do not lift.

_The means of education at the disposal of the Protestants and Presbyterians of the North were stunted and sterilized._ 'The means at disposal' names something too little vegetable or animal to consort with the metaphorical verbs. Education (personified) may be stunted, but means may not.

_The measure of Mr. Asquith's shame does not consist in the mere fact that he has announced his intention to ..._ Metaphorical measuring, like literal, requires a more accommodating instrument than a stubborn fact.

B. Overdone Metaphor

The days are perhaps past when a figure was deliberately chosen that could be worked out with line upon line of relentless detail, and the following well-known specimen is from Richardson:--

_Tost to and fro by the high winds of passionate control, I behold the desired port, the single state, into which I would fain steer; but am kept off by the foaming billows of a brother's and sister's envy, and by the raging winds of a supposed invaded authority; while I see in Lovelace, the rocks on one hand, and in Solmes, the sands on the other; and tremble, lest I should split upon the former or strike upon the latter_.

The present fashion is rather to develop a metaphor only by way of burlesque. All that need be asked of those who tend to this form of satire is to remember that, while some metaphors do seem to deserve such treatment, the number of times that the same joke can safely be made, even with variations, is limited; the limit has surely been exceeded, for instance, with 'the long arm of coincidence'; what proportion may this triplet of quotations bear to the number of times the thing has been done?--_The long arm of coincidence throws the Slifers into Mercedes's Cornish garden a little too heavily. The author does not strain the muscles of coincidence's arm to bring them into relation. Then the long arm of coincidence rolled up its sleeves and set to work with a rapidity and vigour which defy description_.

Modern overdoing, apart from burlesque, is chiefly accidental, and results not from too much care, but from too little. _The most irreconcilable of Irish landlords are beginning to recognize that we are on the eve of the dawn of a new day in Ireland_. 'On the eve of' is a dead metaphor for 'about to experience', and to complete it with 'the dawn of a day' is as bad as to say, _It cost one pound sterling, ten_ instead of _one pound ten_.

C. Spoilt Metaphor

The essential merit of real or live metaphor being to add vividness to what is being conveyed, it need hardly be said that accuracy of detail is even more necessary in metaphorical than in literal expressions; the habit of metaphor, however, and the habit of accuracy do not always go together.

_Yet Taurès was the Samson who upheld the pillars of the Bloc._

_Yet what more distinguished names does the Anglican Church of the last reign boast than those of F.D. Maurice, Kingsley, Stanley, Robertson of Brighton, and even, if we will draw our net a little wider, the great Arnold?_

_He was the very essence of cunning, the incarnation of a book-thief._

Samson's way with pillars was not to uphold them; we draw nets closer, but cast them wider; and what is the incarnation of a thief? too, too solid flesh indeed!

D. Battles of Dead Metaphors

In _The Covenanters took up arms_ there is no metaphor; in _The Covenanters flew to arms_ there is one only--_flew to_ for _quickly took up_; in _She flew to arms in defence of her darling_ there are two, the arms being now metaphorical as well as the flying; moreover, the two metaphors are separate ones; but, being dead, and also not inconsistent with each other, they lie together quietly enough. But dead metaphors will not lie quietly together if there was repugnance between them in life; e'en in their ashes live their wonted fires, and they get up and fight.

_It is impossible to crush the Government's aim to restore the means of living and working freely_. 'Crush' for baffle, 'aim' for purpose, are both dead metaphors so long as they are kept apart, but the juxtaposition forces on us the thought that you cannot crush an aim.

_National military training is the bedrock on which alone we can hope to carry through the great struggles which the future may have in store for us_. 'Bedrock' and 'carry through' are both moribund or dormant, but not stone-dead.

_The vogue of the motor-car seems destined to help forward the provision of good road-communication, a feature which is sadly in arrear_. Good road-communication may be a feature, and it may be in arrear, and yet a feature cannot be in arrear; things that are equal to the same thing may be equal to each other in geometry, but language is not geometry.

They are cyphers living under the _shadow_ of a great man.

He stood, his feet _glued_ to the spot, his eyes _riveted_ on the heavens.

The Geddes report is to be _emasculated_ a little in the Cabinet, and then _thrown_ at the heads of the Electorate.

Viscount Grey's suggestion may, in spite of everything, prove the _nucleus_ of _solution_.

The superior stamina of the Oxonian told in no _half-hearted measure_. [Even careful writers are sometimes unaware of the comical effect of some chance juxtaposition of words and ideas, whereby a dormant metaphor is set on its legs. Thus Leslie Stephen in his life of Swift wrote: _Sir William Temple, though he seems to have been vigorous and in spite of gout a brisk walker, was approaching his grave_. And again when he was triumphantly recording the progress of agnosticism he has: _Even the high-churchmen have thrown the Flood overboard_. [ED.]]

E. Mixed Metaphors

For the examples given in D, tasteless word-selection is a fitter description than mixed metaphor, since each of the words that conflict with others is not intended, as a metaphor at all. 'Mixed metaphor' is more appropriate when one or both of the terms can only be consciously metaphorical. Little warning is needed against it; it is so conspicuous as seldom to get into speech or print undetected.

_This is not the time to throw up the sponge, when the enemy, already weakened and divided, are on the run to a new defensive position_. A mixture of prize-ring and battlefield.

In the following extract from a speech it is difficult to be sure how many times metaphors are mixed; readers versed in the mysteries of oscillation may be able to decide:

_No society, no community, can place its house in_ _such a condition that it is always on a rock, oscillating between solvency and insolvency. What I have to do is to see that our house is built upon a solid foundation, never allowing the possibility of the Society's life-blood being sapped. Just in proportion as you are careful in looking after the condition of your income, just in proportion as you deal with them carefully, will the solidarity of the Society's financial condition remain intact. Immediately you begin to play fast and loose with your income the first blow at your financial stability will have been struck._

A real poet losing himself in the _meshes_ of a foolish _obsession_.

Johnson tore the _hearts_ out of books ruthlessly in order to extract the _honey_ out of them expeditiously. Are we to let the _pendulum_ swing back to the old _rut_? Those little houses at the top of the street, _dwarfed_ by the _grandiloquence_ on the opposite side, are too small, too.

3. Self-consciousness and Mixed Metaphor.

The gentlemen of the Press regularly devote a small percentage of their time to accusing each other of mixing metaphors or announcing that they are themselves about to do so (What a mixture of metaphors! If we may mix our metaphors. To change the metaphor), the offence apparently being not to mix them, but to be unaware that you have done it. The odd thing is that, whether he is on the offensive or the defensive, the writer who ventures to talk of mixing metaphors often shows that he does not know what mixed metaphor is. Two typical examples of the offensive follow:

_The _Scotsman_ says: 'The crowded benches of the Ministerialists contain the germs of disintegration. A more ill-assorted majority could hardly be conceived, and presently the Opposition must realize of what small account is the manoeuvring of the Free-Fooders or of any other section of the party. If the sling be only properly handled, the new Parliamentary Goliath will be overthrown easily enough. The stone for the sling must, however, be found on the Ministerial side of the House, and not on the Opposition side.' Apparently the stone for the sling will be a germ. But doubtless mixed feelings lead to mixed metaphors._ In this passage, we are well rid of the germs before we hear of the sling, and the mixture of metaphors is quite imaginary.

Since literal benches often contain literal germs, but 'crowded benches' and 'germs of disintegration' are here separate metaphors for a numerous party and tendencies to disunion, our critic had ready to his hand in the first sentence, if he had but known it, something much more like a mixture of metaphors than what he mistakes for one.

_'When the Chairman of Committees--a politician of their own hue--allowed Mr. Maddison to move his amendment in favour of secular education, a decision which was not quite in accordance with precedent, the floodgates of sectarian controversy were opened, and the apple of discord--the endowment of the gospel of Cowper-Temple--was thrown into the midst of the House of Commons.' What a mixture of metaphor! One pictures this gospel-apple battling with the stream released by the opened floodgates._ In point of fact, the floodgates and the apple are successive metaphors, unmixed; the mixing of them is done by the critic himself, not by the criticized; and as to _gospel-apple,_ by which it is hinted that the mixture is triple, the original writer had merely mentioned in the _gospel_ phrase the thing compared by the side of what it is compared to, as when one explains _the Athens of the North_ by adding _Edinburgh._

Writers who are on the defensive apologize for _change_ and _mixture_ of metaphors as though one was as bad as the other; the two sins are in fact entirely different; a man may change his metaphors as often as he likes; it is for him to judge whether the result will or will not be unpleasantly florid; but he should not ask our leave to do it; if the result is bad, his apology will not mend matters, and if it is not bad no apology was called for. On the other hand, to mix metaphors, if the mixture is real, is an offence that should have been not apologized for, but avoided. Whichever the phrase, the motive is the same--mortal fear of being accused of mixed metaphor.

_...showed that Free Trade could provide the jam without recourse being had to Protective food-taxes: next came a period in which (to mix our metaphors) the jam was a nice slice of tariff pie for everybody, but then came the Edinburgh Compromise, by which the jam for the towns was that there were to be..._ When _jam_ is used in three successive sentences in its hackneyed sense of consolation, it need hardly be considered in the middle one of them a live metaphor at all; however, the as-good-as-dead metaphor of jam _is_ capable of being stimulated into life if any one is so foolish as to bring into contact with it another half-dead metaphor of its own (i.e. of the foodstuff) kind, and it _was_, after all, mixing metaphors to say the jam was a slice of pie; but then the way of escape was to withdraw either the jam or the pie, instead of forcing them together down our throats with a ramrod of apology.

_Time sifts the richest granary, and posterity is a dainty feeder. But Lyall's words, at any rate--to mix the metaphor--will escape the blue pencil even of such drastic editors as they_. Since all three metaphors are live ones, and _they_ are the sifter and the feeder, the working of these into grammatical connexion with the blue pencil does undoubtedly mix metaphors. But then our author gives us to understand that he knows he is doing it, and surely that is enough. Even so some liars reckon that a lie is no disgrace provided that they wink at a bystander as they tell it, even so those who are addicted to the phrase 'to use a vulgarism' expect to achieve the feat of being at once vulgar and superior to vulgarity.

_Certainly we cannot detect the suggested lack of warmth in the speech as it is printed, for in his speech, as in the Prime Minister's, it seems to us that (if we may change the metaphor) exactly the right note was struck_.

_We may, on the one hand, receive into our gill its precise content of the complex mixture that fills the puncheon of the whole world's literature, on the other--to change the metaphor--our few small strings may thrill in sympathetic harmony to some lyrical zephyrs and remain practically unresponsive to the deep-sea gale of Aeschylus or Dante_.

Why, yes, gentlemen, you may change your metaphors, if it seems good to you, but you may also be pretty sure that, if you feel the necessity of proclaiming the change, you had better have abstained from it.

_Two of the trump cards played against the Bill are (1) that 'it makes every woman who pays a tax-collector in her own house', and (2) that 'it will destroy happy domestic relations in hundreds of thousands of homes'; if we may at once change our metaphor, these are the notes which are most consistently struck in the stream of letters, now printed day by day for our edification in the_ Mail. This writer need not have asked our leave to change from cards to music; he is within his rights, anyhow, and the odds are, indeed, that if he had not reminded us of the cards we should have forgotten them in the intervening lines, but how did a person so sensitive to change of metaphor fail to reflect that it is ill playing the piano in the water? 'A stream of letters', it is true, is only a picturesque way of saying 'many letters', and ordinarily a dead metaphor; but once put your seemingly dead yet picturesque metaphor close to a piano that is being played, and its notes wake the dead--at any rate for readers who have just had the word _metaphor_ called to their memory.--H.W. FOWLER.

III. DEAD METAPHORS

Metaphor becomes a habit with writers who wish to express more emotion than they feel, and who employ it as an ornament to statements that should be made plainly or not at all. Used thus, it is a false emphasis, like architectural ornaments in the wrong place. It demands of the reader an imaginative effort where there has been no such effort in the writer, an answering emotion where there is none to be answered. And the reader gets the habit of refusing such effort and such emotion; he ceases even to be aware of metaphors that are used habitually. He may not consciously resent them; but unconsciously his mind is wearied by them as the eye by advertisements often repeated. By their sameness they destroy expectation so that, even if the writer says anything in particular, it seems to be all generalities.

Here is an instance of habitual metaphor, not manufactured for this tract, but taken from an article by a well-known writer. He is speaking of the career of Mr. Lloyd George:

There was nothing like it in the histories of the ancient European monarchies, hide-bound by caste and now lying on the scrap-heaps of Switzerland and Holland. In the more forward nations, the new republics, men have indeed risen from humble beginnings to high station, but not generally by constitutional means and usually only (as now in Russia) by wading to their places through blood. The dizzy height to which Lloyd George has attained, not as a British statesman only but also as a world celebrity, seems to leave the foreign nations breathless. It is a spectacle that has of itself some of the thrill and fascination of romance.

Here are metaphors that might be used, or have been used, so as to surprise the reader; but in this case they are stock-ornaments to a passage that needs no ornament. If the metaphors in the first sentence were alive to us they would be mixed; at least the transition from monarchies hide-bound by caste to monarchies lying on scrap-heaps would be too sudden; but we hardly notice it because we hardly notice the metaphors. And there is an inconsistency in the notion of rising by wading which, again, we do not notice only because we are so used to rising and wading as metaphors that both have lost their power as images. Mr. Lloyd George has waded to such a dizzy height that he seems to leave foreign nations breathless; and we should be breathless at the thought of such an impossibility if the metaphors were not dead.

It is indeed the mark of a dead metaphor that it escapes absurdity only by being dead. The term has been used for metaphors that have lost all metaphorical significance; but these, perhaps, are better called buried metaphors. I prefer to use the word _dead_ of metaphors not yet buried but demanding burial. 'Risen from humble beginnings' is perhaps a buried metaphor; 'wading to their places through blood' is a dead one. It has been used so often that it jades instead of horrifying us; it is a corpse that fails to make us think of corpses. But in the next sentence the writer returns to the metaphor of rising and elaborates it so that it is no longer buried, though certainly dead. We are vaguely aware of the sense of this passage, but the metaphors are a hindrance, not a help, to our understanding of it.

Writers fall into habitual metaphor when they fear that their thought will seem too commonplace without ornament; and, because the motive is unconscious, they choose metaphors familiar to themselves and their readers. The article from which I have quoted contains many such metaphors. Mr. Lloyd George is 'like other men only cast in bigger mould'. He is 'clearly no plaster saint'. 'You cannot think of him in relation to the knock-out blow except as the man who gives, not receives, it.' 'He has never lost his head on the dizzy height to which he has so suddenly attained. He is clearly in no danger of the intoxicating impulse of the people who find themselves for the first time on great eminences, to leap over. In a word, he is not spoiled.' Here the writer, as he would put it, gives himself away. All that metaphor means only that Mr. George is not spoiled, and the fact that he is not spoiled would be established better by instances than by metaphors.

Then we are told that some of Mr. George's feats 'seem to partake of the nature of legerdemain'. 'He sways a popular assembly by waves of almost Hebraic emotion.' 'No man has ever had his ear closer to the ground and listened more attentively to the tramp of the oncoming multitudes.' He 'held Great Britain's end up' at the International conference. A 'magnificent tribute was paid to him by Earl Balfour' but it 'did not put him alone on a pinnacle'. And then we read of the whirligig of time, of 'clouds of misunderstanding which point to the coming of a storm'; of how 'foreign nations suddenly became aware that a new star had swum into the world's ken'; of how 'the situation of this country is perilous with so much Bolshevik gunpowder moving about', and how 'it has required a strong heart and a clear head to keep the nation from falling either into the sloughs of despond or the fires of revolution'.