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 Taurčs 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