HORAT. Carm. lib. i. ode 6.
Elle shall our fates be number'd with the dead.
Iliad, book v. l. 294.
Commutual death the fate of war confounds.
Iliad, book viii. l. 85, and book xi. l. 117.
Speaking of Proteus.
Instant he wears, elusive of the rape,
The mimic force of every savage shape.
Odyssey, book iv. l. 563.
Rolling convulsive on the floor, is seen
The piteous object of a prostrate queen.
Ibid. book iv. l. 652.
The mingling tempest weaves its gloom.
Autumn, l. 337.
A various sweetness swells the gentle race.
The distant waterfall swells in the breeze.
Winter, l. 738.
In the tenth place, When a subject is introduced by its proper name, it is absurd to attribute to it the properties of a different subject to which the word is sometimes applied in a figurative sense:
Hear me, Oh Neptune! thou whose arms are hurl'd
From shore to shore, and gird the solid world.
Odyssey, book ix. l. 617.
Neptune is here introduced personally, and not figuratively, for the ocean: the description, therefore, which is only applicable to the latter, is altogether improper.
It is not sufficient that a figure of speech be regularly constructed, and be free from blemish: it requires taste to discern when it is proper, when improper; and taste perhaps is our only guide. One, however, may gather from reflection and experience, that ornaments and graces suit not any of the dispiriting passions, nor are proper for expressing any thing grave and important. In familiar conversation, they are in some measure ridiculous: Prospero, in the Tempest, speaking to his daughter Miranda, says,
The fringed curtains of thine eyes advance,
And say what thou seest yond.
No exception can be taken to the justness of the figure; and circumstances may be imagined to make it proper; but it is certainly not proper in familiar conversation.
In the last place, Though figures of speech have a charming effect when accurately constructed and properly introduced, they ought, however, to be scattered with a sparing hand; nothing is more luscious, and nothing consequently more fatiating, than redundant ornaments of any kind.
FIGURE is used, in Theology, for the mysteries represented or delivered obscurely to us under certain types, or actions in the Old Testament. Thus manna is held a figure or type of the eucharist; and the death of Abel a figure of the suffering of Christ.
Many divines and critics contend, that all the actions, histories, ceremonies, &c. of the Old Testament, are only figures, types, and prophecies, of what was to happen under the New. The Jews are supposed
Figure II
Filaments. to have had the figures or shadows, and we the substance.
FIGURE is also applied in a like sense to profane matters; as the emblems, enigmas, fables, symbols, and hieroglyphics, of the ancients.