at length, on the improvement of taste, no metaphor or simile, except it be of a striking kind, is admitted into any refined composition.

Young writers are very apt to employ a superfluity of comparisons and other figures. The following passage, which I quote from a promising poet who died at a premature age, may perhaps be considered as liable to this censure:

Belov'd of heaven, his fair Levina grew

In youth and grace, the Naiad of the vale:
Fresh as the flow'r amid the sunny show'rs
Of May, and blither than the bird of dawn,
Both roses' bloom gave beauty to her cheek,
Soft temper'd with a smile. The light of heav'n,
And innocence, illum'd her virgin-eye,
Lucid and lovely as the morning star.
Her breast was fairer than the vernal bloom
Of valley-lily, op'ning in a show'r ;-

Fair as the morn, and beautiful as May,

The glory of the year, when first she comes
Array'd, all beauteous, with the robes of heav'n;
And, breathing summer breezes, from her 'ocks
Shakes genial dews, and from her lap the flowers.
Bruce's Lochleven.

Between an exemplification and a simile a difference is to be remarked. A simile is founded upon the discovery of likeness between two actions, in their general nature dissimilar, or of causes terminating by different operations in some resemblance of effect. But the mention of another like consequence from a like cause, or of a like performance by a like agency, is not a simile, but an exemplification. It is not a simile to say, that the Thames waters fields, as the Po waters fields; or that as Hecla vomits flames in Iceland, so Ætna vomits flames in Sicily. When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders in quest of honey; he, in either case, produces a simile: the mind is impressed with the resemblance of things generally unlike, as

unlike as intellect and body. But if Pindar had been described as writing with the copiousness and grandeur of Homer, or Horace had informed us that he reviewed and finished his own poetry with the same care as Isocrates polished his orations, he would instead of similitude, have exhibited almost identity; he would have given the same portraits with different names. When Addison represents the English as gaining a fortified pass, by repetition of attack, and perseverance of resolution, their obstinacy of courage, and vigour of onset, are well illustrated by the sea that breaks, with incessant battery, the dikes of Holland. This is a simile: but when the same author, after having celebrated the beauty of Marlborough's person, tells us that "Achilles thus was formed with every grace," he does not employ a simile but a mere exemplification. A simile may be compared to two lines converging at a point, and it is more excellent as the lines approach from greater distance; an exemplification may be considered as two parallel lines, which run on together without approximation, never far separated, and never joined.*

When comparisons are addressed to the understanding, their purpose is to instruct; when to the heart, to please. The latter of these purposes is accomplished by various means: first, by suggesting some unusual resemblance or contrast; secondly, by presenting an object in the strongest light; thirdly, by associating an object with others that are agreeable; fourthly, by elevating, and, fifthly, by depressing an object. Of the two following comparisons, the former seems intended to instruct, the latter to please.

As wax would not be adequate to the purpose of signature, if it had not the power to retain as well as to receive the impression, the same holds of the soul with respect to sense and imagination. Sense is its receptive power; imagination its retentive. Had it sense without imagination, it would not be as wax, but as water, where, though all impressions be instantly made, yet as soon as they are made they are instantly lost.-Harris's Hermes.

* Johnson's Lives of English Poets,

Yet, wand'ring I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,
One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been :

Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,

All wild in the silence of Nature it drew

From each wandering sunbeam a lonely embrace;
For the night-weed and thorn overshadow'd the place
Where the flow'r of my forefathers grew.

Campbell.

Akenside, one of the most classical of all the English poets, has drawn an elegant and pleasing simile from the ancient descriptions of the famous statue of Memnon at Thebes in Upper Egypt:

For as old Memnon's image, long renown'd
By fabling Nilus to the quivering touch
Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string
Consenting, sounded through the warbling air
Unbidden strains; even so did Nature's hand
To certain species of external things,
Attune the finer organs of the mind:
So the glad impulse of congenial powers,
Or of sweet sound, or fair proportion'd form,
The grace of motion, or the bloom of light,
Thrills through imagination's tender frame
From nerve to nerve; all naked and alive
They catch the spreading rays; till now the soul
At length discloses every tuneful spring,
To that harmonious movement from without
Responsive.

Pleasures of Imagination.

One of the means by which comparisons afford us pleasure, is the suggestion of some unusual resemblance or contrast. This remark it will be necessary to illustrate by particular instances.

Thus they their doubtful consultations dark
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless chief:
As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heaven's cheerful face, the low'ring element

Scowls o'er the darken'd landscape snow and shower;
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet
Extends his ev'ning beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.

Milton

Sweet are the uses of Adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in her head.

See how the Morning opes her golden gates,
And takes her farewell of the glorious Sun:
How well resembles it the prime of youth,
Trimm'd like a yonker prancing to his love!
As the bright stars, and milky way,
Shew'd by the night, are hid by day;
So we in that accomplish'd mind
Help'd by the night new graces find,
Which, by the splendour of her view
Dazzled before, we never knew.

Shakspeare.

Shakspeare.

Waller.

None of these similes, as they appear to me, tends to illustrate the principal subject; and therefore the chief pleasure which they afford, must arise from suggesting resemblances that are not obvious.

The next effect of comparison, in the order mentioned, is to place an object in a conspicuous point of view.

There is a joy in grief when peace dwells with the sorrowful. But they are wasted with mourning, O daughter of Toscar, and their days are few. They fall away like the flower on which the sun looks in his strength, after the mildew has passed over it, and its head is heavy with the drops of night.-Ossian.

Why did not I pass away in secret, like the flower of the rock that lifts its fair head unseen, and strews its withered leaves on the blast?-Ossian.

She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at Grief.

Shakspeare.

As streams which with their winding banks do play,
Stopp'd by their creek, run softly through the plain;
So in th' ear's labyrinth the voice doth stray,
And doth with easy motion touch the brain.

Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the height of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanc'd, behold, with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise.

Davies.

So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky:
Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But these attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way:

Th' increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes;
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.

Pope.

This last comparison, in the opinion of Dr. Johnson, is perhaps the best that English poetry can shew.*

The long-demurring maid,

Whose lonely unappropriated sweets
Smil'd like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,
Not to be come at by the willing hand.
But hope and fear alternate sway my soul,
Like light and shade upon a waving field,
Coursing each other, when the flying clouds
Now hide and now reveal the sun of heaven.

Blair's Grave.

Home's Alonzo.

Another effect of comparison is to embellish the principal subject by associating it with others that are of an interesting nature. Similes of this kind have also a separate effect; they diversify the narration by means of new images which are not strictly necessary to the comparison. They are short episodes, which, without drawing us from the principal subject, afford delight by their beauty and variety.

He scarce had ceas'd, when the superior fiend

Was moving towards the shore: his pond'rous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round,

Behind him cast; the broad circumference

Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views

At ev'ning from the top of Fesole,

Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers or mountaius, in her spotty globe.

Milton.

With regard to similes of this kind, it will readily occur to the reader that, when a resembling subject is once properly introduced, the mind is transitorily

* Johnson's Lives of English Poets.