The "mixing" occurs when two different figures apply. ing to the same object are used in immediate connection; as where Tennyson says, as if one had to dip in order to see, or could see with a dipper:

For I dipt into the future far as human eye could see.

-Locksley Hall.

Or Addison, as if he could bridle a ship, or launch a horse:

I bridle in my struggling muse with pain,
That longs to launch into a bolder strain.

-Letter from Italy.

A still more important consideration with reference to these figures, and one that underlies the entire use of the language embodying them, is to determine in what circumstances thought and feeling should be expressed in them rather than in plain language. Fortunately, as an aid to our answer, both forms of language are natural to conversation; and by finding out their uses here, we may come to understand the principles that should control their use in poetry. To begin with, we must bear in mind that the object of language is to cause others to share our mental processes, to communicate to them the substance of our ideas and their associated feelings. In doing this, it represents both what a man has observed in the external world and what he has experienced in his own mind—not either one or the other, but invariably both of them. If a man, for instance, show us a photograph of something that he has seen, he holds before our eyes precisely what has been before his own eyes; but if he describe the scene in words, he holds before our mind only those parts of it that have attracted his attention; and not only so, but added to these parts many ideas and emotions of his own that were not in the scene but occurred to him when viewing it.

A similar added element from the man's mind accompanies every endeavor of his to tell what he has heard, or even, at some other time, thought or felt. From these facts, it follows that the aim of language, so far as this can be determined by what it actually and necessarily does, is to cause the same effects to be produced in the hearer's mind that are experienced in the speaker's mind. Now if one, when talking, conceive that this is an easy aim to attain; that what he has heard or seen or thought or felt, needs only to be told in clear, intelligible phraseology, in order to produce in another the same effects as in himself, then he will be content with conventional modes of expression; he will use in the main plain language, whether referring to what he has heard, as in this:

And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,

Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;

While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,

Or whispering, with white lips,-"The foe! they come ! they come !

Or to what he has seen, as in this:

Then from the shining car

-Childe Harold, 3: Byron.

Leaped Hector with a mighty cry, and seized
A ponderous stone, and, bent to crush him, ran
At Teucer, who had from his quiver drawn
One of his sharpest arrows, placing it
Upon the bowstring. As he drew the bow,
The strong-armed Hector hurled the jagged stone,
And smote him near the shoulder, where the neck
And breast are sundered by the collar-bone,-
A fatal spot. The bowstring brake; the arm
Fell nerveless; on his knees the archer sank,
And dropped the bow. Then did not Ajax leave

His fallen brother to the foe, but walked
Around him, sheltering him beneath his shield,
Till two dear friends of his-Menestheus, son
Of Echius, and Alastor nobly born-
Approached, and took him up and carried him,
Heavily groaning, to the hollow ships.

-Iliad, 8: Bryant's Tr.

Or to what he has thought, as in this:

By the world,

I think my wife be honest, and think she is not;
I think that thou art just, and think thou art not.
I'll have some proof.

-Othello, iii., 3: Shakespear.

Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn;
Sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on;
And turn again; and she can weep, sir, weep;
And she 's obedient, as you say,―—obedient,—
Very obedient.

Or to what he has felt, as in this:

Six feet in earth my Emma lay;

And yet I loved her more,

For so it seemed, than till that day
I e'er had loved before.

And turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the churchyard yew,
A blooming girl whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.

A basket on her head she bare;

Her brow was smooth and white;
To see a child so very fair,

It was a pure delight!

There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;

I looked at her, and looked again,

And did not wish her mine!

-Idem, iv., I.

On the other hand, however, if a man conceive that the end at which he is aiming is difficult to attain; that what he has heard, or seen, or thought, or felt, either on account of its own nature, or of the nature of those whom he is addressing, is hard for them to realize in its full force, and with all its attendant circumstances, then, as his object is to convey not merely an apprehension but a comprehension, both complete and profound, of that of which he has to speak, he will dwell upon it; he will repeat his descriptions of it; he will tell not only what it is, but what it is like; in other words, he will try to produce the desired effect, by putting extra force into his language, and, in order to do this, inasmuch as the force of language consists in its representative element, he will augment the representation by multiplying his comparisons; his language will become figurative. It will be so for the same reason that the language of a savage or a child, even when giving utterance to less occult ideas, is figurative, because he feels that the words at his command are inadequate to express or impress his meaning completely. Notice the exemplifications of these statements in the following, referring to what has been heard: A cry that shivered to the tingling stars, And as it were one voice, an agony

Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills

All night in a waste land where no one comes.

-Mort d'Arthur: Tennyson.

And the wide hum of that wild host
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast,
As rose the Muezzin's voice in air
In midnight call to wonted prayer;
It rose, that chanted mournful strain,
Like some lone spirit's o'er the plain ;
'T was musical, but sadly sweet,
Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,

And take a long, unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown.

To what has been seen:

-The Siege of Corinth: Byron.

As when the ocean billows, surge on surge,
Are pushed along to the resounding shore
Before the western wind, and first a wave
Uplifts itself, and then against the land
Dashes and roars, and round the headland peaks
Tosses on high and spouts its spray afar,
So moved the serried phalanxes of Greece
To battle, rank succeeding rank, each chief
Giving command to his own troops.

To what has been thought:

-Iliad, 4: Bryant's Tr.

I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew,

Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;
I had rather hear a brazen can'stick turn'd,

Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree;

And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry.

'Tis like the forc'd gait of a shuffling nag.

— Henry IV., iii., 1: Shakespear.

She moves as light across the grass
As moves my shadow large and tall;
And like my shadow, close yet free,
The thought of her aye follows me,
My little maid of Moreton Hall,

-A Mercenary Marriage: D. M. Mulock.

And to what has been felt:

Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown !

The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's eye, tongue, sword;
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair State,

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,

Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.

-Hamlet, iii., I: Shakespear.