metaphor" in the same way as we found that the first was to the "far-fetched simile." Using "mixed metaphors" is a fault from which, as most of us know, our very best poets are not altogether exempt. Shakespear makes Hamlet ask

Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

And Milton says:

-Hamlet, iii., I.

How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled!

-Comus.

careless at times.

Poets, like other people, are Very likely this fact will account for these passages. Possibly, however, the mixed metaphors were used with a design,-in the first case, to represent confusion of thought, and in the second antithesis. But what are we to say of the following from Tennyson?

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

"Be it so," the other, "that we still may lead
The new light up and culminate in peace."

-Idem.

There are several questions which passages like these suggest, passages so numerous as to be almost characteristic of the style of Tennyson. Are they consciously designed to crowd the form with that which shall ornament it? Do they add to the attractiveness of the form? Do they do this without interfering with the pureness of its representation? Have they any thing to do with the fact that those who have never read poetry of the school of Tennyson need to learn how to understand it? If people of our own day need to learn this, will not people of future days need to do the same? If so, after this kind of poetry ceases to be the fashion, will anybody ever take the trouble to learn to understand it?-in other words, is there not danger that this poetry, simply because its representation is not pure, will not become classic? Possibly it may. Even the quotations just given are no more mixed in their way than some of the music of Wagner; and that is supposed to be the music of the future. Music, certainly, develops a taste for itself, and changes its methods in every age. At least such has always been its history in the past. Is it the same with poetry? There are sufficient excellencies in that of Tennyson to cause it to deserve to live. He has been the favorite poet of most of us, and has exerted incomparably more poetic influence upon his age than any of his contemporaries. But if he is to live, will it be in spite of, or on account of, faults such as we are now considering? If on account of them, and if future poets are to imitate and develop his peculiarities, what is to become of poetry? Notice what some of his followers are doing

already. This is from Gerald Massey's New Year's Eve in Exile. There is much in this poet's writings that is fine, and his spirit is earnest, but these are the very reasons why he should avoid a mixture such as this:

But God's in heaven, and yet the Day shall dawn-
Break from the dark upon her golden wings,
Her quick, ripe splendors rend and burn the gloom,
Her living tides of glory burst, and foam,
And hurry along the darken'd streets of night.
Cloud after cloud shall light a rainbow-roof,
And build a Triumph-Arch for conquering Day
To flash her beauty-trail her grandeurs through,
And take the World in her white arms of light.
And Earth shall fling aside her mask of gloom,
And lift her tearful face. O there will be
Blood on it thick as dews! The children's blood
Splasht in the Mother's face! And there must be
A red sunrise of retribution yet!

-New Year's Eve in Exile: Massey.

Here we have a thing that comes on golden wings and bursts her living tides, that is at once quick and ripe, and that rends and burns, and this thing is a day which usually dawns slowly; we have also clouds that light a rainbow, and also build what appears to be a similar rainbow Arch, which they, and not the sun, would have to do, if it were to be seen in the east, where alone the day could trail her grandeurs through it at sunrise. Finally, what connection there is between the sentence beginning, "The children's blood," and the context one fails to recognize, unless in the poet's mind the subject, which is the Day, has become mixed with something else. It has. The word world, used in illustration, has made him think of earth; but only for a little. Soon the word blood makes him think of red sunrise; not one of glory now, but-of retribution. In this matter of mixing metaphors, however, of all

poets able to do better work, Swinburne caps the climax. In the following single sentence, at least so we must judge where we have nothing but the punctuation marks to indicate the sense, we are told of fire kissing and killing, which is like light riotous and red flaming round bent—a word suggested by the round, perhaps-brows; and at the same time the fire, or the brows, or Semiramis, or the dead body-nobody can tell which-is kindling like dawn steely snows where treading feet feel snaky lines of blood hiss, in which, as is evident (?), they resemble creeping things that writhe but do not have, as one might suppose, stings to scare adulterers from an imperial bed, bowed -possibly boughed misspelt-with a load of lust. After this, the same blood, or something else, goes on to chill, as if that could put it out, a gust that made her body a fire, which now seems to have passed over the whole body from the brow to the heel, and is about to change a high bright spirit from taint of fraud. One supposing that no practical end is to be attained by trying to have poets avoid alloyed illustrative representation, will be in a fair way to have his doubts removed after he has made one honest attempt to put into plain prose these remarkable adventures of the amorous fire as related in this choice specimen of florid poetic art:

As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss,

He saw the light of death, riotous and red,
Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis
Re-risen and mightier, from the Assyrian dead,
Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice,
The steely snows of Russia, for the tread
Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss
The snaky lines of blood violently shed
Like living creeping things

That writhe but have no stings

To scare adulterers from the imperial bed
Bowed with its load of lust,

Or chill the ravenous gust

That made her body a fire from heel to head;

Or change her high bright spirit and clear,

For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear.

-Song for the Centenary of W. S. Landor.

The artistic mistake here, just as in the case of that allied to the "far-fetched simile," is that the figure, the design of which, when rightly used, is to represent, does not represent. It does the opposite. Instead of making the thought more concrete, and thus giving it more definiteness of form, it gives it indefiniteness.

But there is another mistake made in these methods, which is psychological as well as artistic. As has been seen, in all of these cases in which the clearness of representation is obscured by the excess of it, the course of the thought turns from the main subject, as if the writer had forgotten it, while going on to develop that which is suggested by the illustration. In the quotation above from Massey, for example, it is easy enough to see that, in the fifth line from the last, the phrase mask of gloom suggested tearful face, and this again dews, and this blood, and this the splashing of it, and all these things together, the red sunrise of retribution. In the quotation from Swinburne, beginning

All over the gray soft shallow,

quoted on page 312, we hear first of a bird; this suggests a brood; this suggests world's coursing skies, this suggests blossoms, this flowers, this putting flowers in a bosom, etc., while, in the last passage quoted from him, fire suggests light, kindling light suggests dawn, dawn suggests its effects on snow, snow the effects of feet treading it, treading suggests crawling, and crawling suggests