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EXERCISE.

Let the student examine the following compari sons, and decide whether they are correct or faulty, and whether they were probably used to illustrate, embellish, elevate, or degrade.

"I have ventured,

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,

This many summers in a sea of glory."

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"At five she had to attend her colleague, a hateful old toad-eater,

as illiterate as a chamber-maid, as proud as a whole German chap- degra

ter."

"The project of mending a bad world, by teaching people to give new names to old things, reminds us of Walter Shandy's scheme for compensating the loss of his son's nose by christening him Trismegistus."

“The public mind in our country resembles the sea when the tide is rising. Each successive wave rushes forward, breaks and rolls back; but the great flood is steadily coming on."

"True art has nothing to do with such ephemeral and local affairs as Poor Laws and Poor Law Boards; and whenever art tries to serve such a double purpose, it is like an egg with two yolks-ncither is ever hatched."

"Curses, like chickens, always come home to roost."

"She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm in the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat, like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief."

"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost."

"The music of Carryl, like the memory of joys that are past, was pleasant and mournful to the soul."

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20. Definition.-AN Allusion is an implied Comparison. Any fact, character, object, or choice expression, supposed by a speaker to be well known to his hearers, may be alluded to, without being fully described, in such a way as to add force or beauty to the thought which he wishes to express. Thus allusions are illimitable in number and variety in modern literature.

Allusions may vary in perspicuity, from such clear statements of likeness as to be almost like formal comparisons, to such indistinct references as to be noticed only by persons of quick perception who are thoroughly familiar with the subject alluded to.

21. Scriptural Allusions.-The most frequently used are Scriptural allusions, or references to some passage, description, or thought in the Bible. A modern writer relates a fancied dream in which the Bible was annihilated; such an annihilation—if it should carry all Scriptural quotations and allusions with it-would make fearful chasms in the books of all modern nations; indeed, except a few works purely scientific, it would scarcely leave a complete book in the Christian world!

Patrick Henry, in his oft-quoted eloquent speech, exclaimed: "Gentlemen may cry Peace, Peace, when

there is no peace!" Was he not thinking of what he had often heard from Jeremiah vi. 14—"They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace?"

Take another example from the writings of a clergyman:

"Each one is sent to teach us something, and all together they have a lesson which is beyond the power of any to teach alone. But if they come together, we should break down, and learn nothing. The smoking flax would be put out."

Reference here is made to an expression of Isaiah "The smoking flax shall he not quench."

"Misery," says Goethe, "becomes as prosaic and familiar to me as my own hearth, but nevertheless I do not let go my idea, and will wrestle with the unknown angel, even should I halt upon my thigh.}'

Those who remember the story of Jacob and the angel, as related in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis, perceive the force of this allusion.

The Bible is an inexhaustible fountain, not only of thought but of expressions, which may be employed with a great variety of signification, added to the associations of their original meaning, and of the times and places in which they have been heard. It indicates, however, a poor and depraved taste to use Scriptural allusions in such a way as to clothe Bible language with incongruous associations, or to offend religious feelings.

22. Classical Allusions.-What are called classical allusions are common in writers who have, or pretend to have, read carefully the best works in the Greek and

CLASSICAL ALLUSIONS.

97

Latin languages. As these have for some centuries been studied by learned men, it is assumed that all scholars are familiar with them, and thus facts and expressions are used as illustrations, or

"To point a moral or adorn a tale.”

"The inundation of lawless power," said Robert Hall, "after covering the rest of Europe, threatens England; and we are exactly, most critically placed in the only aperture where it can be successfully repelled, in the Thermopyla of the universe."

Who has not heard of the brave Leonidas and the three hundred Spartans with him, who at the narrow defile of Thermopyla resisted, till the last one fell, the torrents of Persians who attempted to force a passage through?

"The railway and telegraph," says Dr. D. D. Whedon, "are breaking up the hostile demarcations which once divided and inflamed mankind-and so wing-footed Mercury is tearing up old Terminus."

Mercury was the message-bearer, or errand-boy, of the gods; Terminus defended "the ancient landmarks which the fathers had set."

There is a classical allusion in the following good advice given to Gil Blas, by the ingenious author of that work:

"You may meet with people inclined to divert themselves with your credulity, but don't be duped, nor believe yourself, though they should swear it, the eighth wonder of the world."

This evidently alludes to a favorite notion of the ancients that the world had only seven great wonders, which they enumerated.

23. Miscellaneous Allusions. Good speakers and writers often make allusions to writings which every

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well-informed person is presumed to have read, such as "Pilgrim's Progress," "Esop's Fables," "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments," "Plutarch's Lives," and the leading events of history.

Allusions may be made to customs, to phrases, to science, to almost every known object of thought, and often they are understood by only a few who hear them.

Dr. Bushnell, in a lecture before a learned assembly, said:

"The universities will be filled with a profound spirit of religion, and the bene orasse will be a fountain of inspiration."

Who could understand that who did not know that Luther's favorite motto was "Bene orasse est bene studuisse;" that is, "To have prayed well is to have studied well?"

Fuller, in describing an elegant writer, says:

"He was excellent at the flat hand of rhetoric, which gives rather pats than blows; but he could not bend his fist to dispute."

This has special force to one reminded of the remark of Cicero, that Zeno compared Rhetoric and Logic respectively to the flat hand and the fist.*

Some allusions are exceedingly beautiful, because they suggest a new meaning to old expressions. Thus Longfellow, describing a tract of country troubled with insects because the people had killed the birds, says:

"Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town,
Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly

Slaughtered the Innocents."

* Cicero, de Oratore, lib. xxxii.

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