SIMILES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 318, 3 October 1908, Page 12

SIMILES.

Reviewing a book of ferse recently, lha Nation " (London) quoted with approbation this simile : •" Where, broad and beautiful, the highway . , sweeps, • Like a great hope towards (he starry fane." The reviewer added: "Such a" simile shows, not only a poet's perception, but a poet's craft." "But does it?" asks a correspondent, who proceeds to give reasons for his' dissent. _ Surely a simile, to be successful (he says), must liken an abstract thing to' a concrete thing, or a concrete thing to a concrete thing. It must never liken a concrete thing to an abstract thing. In other words, the thing adduced in illustration must always bo capable of being visualised. And the reason for this is plain. The object of a simile is to sharpen an impression. Now, you cannot sharpen an impression by prayiug in aid the abstract; you must call up beforo the mind a concrete imago. Thus Mr. Lucas wishes to sharpen the impressitm produced by the words, "Broad and beautiful, the highway sweeps," and he attempts to do so by likening the highway to a great hope. But he fails because yon cannot visualise a hope. If, on tho other hand, ho had been writing of a great hope, and had likened it to a broad highway, sweeping towards the stars, ho would havo splendidly succeeded, because the simile instantly presents to the mind an image which sharpens, in an extraordinary way, the original impression. Literature, both prose and poetry, teems with instances of this (as I venture to think) inflexible rule of rhetoric. We. all know the magnificent similes of Scripture: "The shadow of a great rock in a weary land"; "Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." From tho poets I quoto three instances, entirely at random. The first is Shakespeare's:— , "Waß it the proud full sail of his great rorsS Bound for the prize of all to precious yon?" The second is Wordsworth's :— "Truth fails not; but her ratward forms . . . .... drop liko the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air Or the unimaginable touch of Time!" 'And tho third —well, everybody knows the third. It contains ouo of the finest similes, and is, perhaps, tho finest sonnet ending in literature " Then felt I like some wutcher of. the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken, Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other in a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien."