'twelve knots an hour' from the mode of measuring the vessel's speed. The designation 'quarters' points to the laying out of a camp into four parts. The blood' is a standing figure for the life. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.' 'I abjure all roofs.' A passenger in a cab is a fare. 'She gave her hand.' Safe from the vulgar eye.'

All states can reach it, and all heads conceive. (Pope.)

An auld wife's tongue's a feckless matter

To gie ane fash. (Eurns.)

It is by this figure that a person's age is often named by the season corresponding to it: a maiden of sixteen summers, a man of seventy winters. The poets carry this further, and designate the seasons themselves by their most characteristic month: 'a babe a double April old,' 'his one and twentieth May' (Tennyson).

On the same principle a person is named by the part of his character suited to the occasion. Thus spoke the tempter.'" 'The avenger of blood was on his track. When the Deity is mentioned by one of his attributes, the proper suiting has to be observed. 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' 'The Lord of Hosts is on our side.' It would be an impropriety to say, 'The Almighty knows our thoughts'.

'This subject reminds me of what I was told at Calais from a very good hand.' It is not the hand that tells.

(2.) The reverse operation of using the Whole for the Part is a species of Synecdoche: as the smiling year, for the spring; 'cursed be the day when a man-child was born'.

As in the case already mentioned of putting the genus for the species, this must be a rare figure, since it runs contrary to the general principle regulating vividness of impression. It may sometimes happen that there is something in the aspect of a whole that arrests the mind more forcibly than the part would do. The phrase 'the Roman world' is intended to impress the vastness of the Roman empire.

The poets sometimes use 'the year' with an epithet for special seasons; thus

TRANSFERRED EPITHET.

Arrayed

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for spring;

In all the colours of the flushing year (Thomson),

The lavish moisture of the melting year (Id.),

for summer;

Thine the full harvest of the golden year (Pope),

for autumn.

(3.) The name of the Material is put for the thing made.

The 'steel' designates a sword or other steel weapon. 'Gold' is a poetical name for money, and 'Silver' (siller) is used by the Scotch as a homely equivalent. A copper is a penny. Linen' is a name for linen garments. So'the marble speaks'. The wine has been ten years in the wood,' 'Sheepskin' is used for diploma.

The effect here, as in the first case, is to suggest the visible aspect of a thing, and thereby to assist us in imagining it. It is one of the devices of concrete presentation, with a view to the picturesque.

3. Among figures of Contiguity is to be ranked the TRANSFERRED EPITHET.

This means the shifting of an epithet from its proper subject to some allied circumstance, the result often being an apparent incongruity.

A restless pillow' is an expression for the restlessness of the person lying on the pillow. It is effective partly by being short, and partly from suggesting at once the exact situation.

Who shall tempt with wandering feet
The dark, unfathomed, bottomless abyss ?

a

"The cheapest market,' 'the open air,' a liberal hand,' 'a dark lantern,' 'an inattentive station,' 'a counting house,' criminal court,'' a fat living,' 'easy circumstances.'

The little fields made green

By husbandry of many thrifty years.

The numerous worthies of the maiden reign.

Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

This is one of the most usual and efficient ways of attaining brevity. It has the further effect of hitting the relevant circumstance. A drowsy ear' is the ear of a

drowsy man; the fitness is due to the circumstance that the man's ear is the sense addressed, and made impervious by his drowsiness. The relevance may, however, consist in the suggestion of a contrast; for example, 'to wrap himself in honest rags'.

The poets carry the figure still further

Melissa shook her doubtful curls. (Tennyson.)
This new-made lord, whose splendour plucks
The slavish hat from the villager's head.

(Id.)

His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill. (Thomson.)

So Carlyle says: 'A lackey presented an obsequious cup of coffee'.

4. The process of designating things by contiguous circumstances is a means of enlarging the vocabulary.

The necessity of providing, somehow, names for important meanings throws us upon a variety of expedients. One of these has been already adverted to (the Metaphor). The operation now explained is answerable for a number of our most familiar and useful names. The examples above given are sufficient to indicate the fact; many of them have lost all the efficacy that they may have had originally as figures of speech, and rank as part of our regular vocabulary.

The following are additional instances. The names for money-crown, sovereign, guinea, napoleon-are figures of contiguity; while others, as note, circulating medium, are general names specialized, and come under similarity. In business, the word itself, and the names security, partnership, assets, firm, goods, are of contiguity origin, the motives being easily assignable.

In military language, the same process prevails-army, navy, force, service, regiment, foot, horse, engineers, rank and file, the line, uniform.

In law, we have-court, case, solicitor, brief, counsel, hearing, affidavit, sentence, judgment.

In government, we have-a board, a dispatch, a register, voters, pot wallopers, presidency (house of president), Council of Ten (Venice).

The names for good and bad manners have their principal source in associations of contiguity-civil, urbane, cultivated, breeding, polish, rustic, boorish.

Stump orator, stringed and wind instruments.

ENLARGING THE VOCABULARY.

Tools-Davy, Jemmy.

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Rubric-from red letters in church services, used in the directions to the priest or reader.

The 'forty-five'.
Farewell.

5. While some of the names obtained from contiguity enter into the staple of our vocabulary, others are merely rhetorical synonyms.

The turf' is not essential for designating the meaning, but it is an agreeable variation.

A 'roll' is much the same as a 'list'. A watering-place, a summer resort, a place of worship,--merely vary the expression of the things designated. The Son of David' has a certain advantage in respect of the importance of the parent.

6. As with metaphors, so with words obtained under the present figure: the keeping of the figure needs to be preserved, so long as the origin is borne in mind.

The word 'ranks' designates the common soldiery as actually formed into rank. To apply it to the men sitting in their barracks would be felt as an incongruity, seeing that the primary meaning is still prominent.

Eye service' has still the original force of the figure. When Tennyson speaks of Earl Doorm as calling 'for flesh and wine to feed his spears,' there is apparent incongruity; but the incongruity helps the effect intended -to suggest a fierce band of retainers used only for fighting.

In innumerable cases, however, the original meaning is so little felt, that there is scarcely any need for taking the same precaution. A 'roll' has ceased to suggest a rolled up parchment or sheet of paper. The bar' has still a slight figurative relevance as regards a court of law, or a house of Parliament, but none as regards the legal profession. 'Green wood' has lost the signification of green as a colour.

The final remark to be made upon the wide range of this figure, as now set forth, is the occasion given to multiply the meanings of words, and produce the effect so inimical to clearness-namely, ambiguity. The same holds of the derivation of names by metaphor.

FIGURES FOUNDED ON CONTRAST.

1. It is a first principle of the human mind, that we are affected only by change of impression. Among the many consequences of this law is the efficacy of contrast in verbal composition.

According to the greatness of the change is the intensity of the feeling. Hence in computing the impression due to a present cause, we need to state what was the previous condition of the mind. Sunshine is agreeable, according as we have been previously in darkness or shade.

In knowledge likewise, there is a shock of transition. Light is known by passing out of the Dark. High is contrasted with Low; Straight with Crooked; Hard with Soft; Male with Female. Red is contrasted with all the other colours of the spectrum.*

It is the prevailing habit of language to express only one term of these couples and to leave the other to be implied or understood." We say a man is free, without adding that he is not bound or constrained in any way, although this is equally necessary to the full meaning. When we call a line straight,' we might also say it is not crooked, but generally leave this to be mentally supplied.

There are occasions, however, when the full statement of the opposite, or obverse, side of a feeling or a fact, is of value in making a thing either more impressive or else more intelligible. Now, as this is, so to speak, a departure from the habitual or common form of language, which is content with naming one side alone, we call it a figurative usage, and hence look upon Contrast as a Figure of Speech. More

* A remarkable illustration of the principle of correlation in language is furnished by the earliest known forms of human speech, especially the Egyptian hieroglyphics. In this language there is a considerable number of primitive words designating simple ideas, which bear two opposite significations. Examples are the words signifying good-bad, high-low, give-take, bring-send, hill-dale, up-down, withwithout, &c. Such words are accounted for on the assumption that primitive races, in expressiug to themselves any conception, needed to have the two opposite phases present to their minds, and not merely implied, as in the later forms of language. Both sides of the contrast were therefore recalled by the word; the side that was intended on any particular occasion appears to have been indicated by gesture (which still forms a great part of the language of uncivilized races), while in the hieroglyphic writings it is shown by additional symbols or simple pictures accompanying the words. The phenomenon has been called 'countersense,' and was not confined to Egyptian, though most fully preserved to us in its primitive forms in that language. Relics of it can still be traced even in languages of the IndoEuropean family: for example, Latin altus (high and low), cedere (to go and to come); Greek axon (leisure and industry); English let (to permit and to prevent); German borgen (to lend and to borrow), &c. See an article entitled 'Countersense,' in the Contemporary Review for April, 1884, by Dr Carl Abel.