CATACHRESIS.

A Catachresis (from the Greek kata, against, and chrasmai, to use,) is an abuse or false use of a word, by which it is wrested from its original application, and made to express something which is at variance with its etymology. It is a sort of blundering denomination, chiefly caused by retaining the name of an object after the qualities from which it derived that name are changed. The thing that is made, for example, is often designated by that of the substance from which it is fabricated. Thus, a vessel in which we boil liquids is called a Copper because, in most cases, it is made of that material; and this figure is a Metonymy. But, such vessels are occasionally made of other metals, still retaining the name of Coppers; and it is this misnomer which is called a Catachresis. The cases in which the name of the forming substance is substituted for the thing formed are numerous. Gold and Silver are common names for coined money has simply the name of paper. God said unto Adam, Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' These phrases, however, are Metonymies and not Catachreses. When boats were made of the Bark of trees, the denomination of Barks was given to them by the former kind of Trope; but when they came to be built of other

money; and paper

materials the term Bark became Catachrestical. The word Inkhorn is still written, although the Ink-holder is now generally made of glass; and the lovers of genuine English even prefer the former name, accounting the latter (Ink-holder), or even Inkstand, as a fastidious innovation. We should have too much to do, were we to re-model all our idiomatical words and phrases, so as to render them literally accurate. Besides, it would, in many cases, be impossible; for the original etymon is often either lost or forgotten.

ANTONOMASIA.

Antonomasia (Greek anti for, or in place of, and onomazo, I name,) is a figure by which we put a common name for a proper, or a proper for a common name. Thus the Roman Orator' signifies Cicero; and Anacreon is called the Bard of Teios.' Gibbon's Roman History abounds with such transpositions: Rome is 'the Country of the Cæsars;' Constantinople is the Imperial City;' and Constantine is the Protector of the Church.' Similar expressions are to be found in almost every page of that work: the Antonomasia is a figure which constitutes a marked characteristic, in the style of the Historian of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.'

In the second species of Antonomasia, a glut

ton is said to be a Heliogabulus; a courtezan is a Messalina; and a tyrant is a Nero.

SYLLEPSIS, OR COMPREHENSION.

That sort of Trope, by which a word is taken in two different senses (as the literal and the metaphorical) in the same phrase, has the Greek name Syllepsis, equivalent to the Latin Comprehensio. Thus, when we say 'His temper is as sour as a Crab-apple, the word sour is used literally as to the Crab-apple; but metaphorically as applied to témper. The following translation, from Ovid, furnishes us with an example:

“I burn, I burn, as when through ripen'd corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne!
Phaon to Ætna's scorching fields retires;

While I consume with more than Ætna's fires!"

This figure requires careful management, without which it is apt to degenerate into a pun. Indeed its distinction from the latter rests solely on the currency of the metaphor, which prevents the comparison from exciting surprise. In the well-known Epitaph upon a bad Architect,'

"Lie heavy on him Earth; for he

Laid many a heavy load on thee,"

the point consists in the two-fold meaning of the word heavy; but, in the musings of Childe Harold

over the tomb of a Roman Lady, a double application of the same word passes unnoticed; being sunk in the interest of the subject and covered by the beauties of the stanza:

"Perchance she died in youth: it may be, bowed
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb
That weighed upon her gentle dust. A cloud
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom
Heaven gives its favourite-early death; yet shed
A sunset charm around her, and illume
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,

Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red."

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CHAPTER X.

FIGURES OF THOUGHT.

Having thus briefly defined the principal divisions of Verbal Metaphors, it will be proper, before proceeding farther, to speak of those forms of expression which are applicable to thoughts rather than to individual words,-to the figures of the mind rather than to Tropes. The phrases Metaphorical language' and Figurative language' are often used synonymously. In an extended sense, Figures of Speech are, metaphorically, the forms, shapes, or figures, in which the thoughts of the speaker are exhibited to his auditors: such as, Allegory, Personification, Irony, or any other mode of expression; and it is his business to shape his discourse, so as it may best suit his purpose: whether it be to amuse, to instruct, or to persuade.

Although we have thus distinguished between Figures of Thought and Tropes which are Figures of Words, the whole structure of language is so interwoven with Metaphor, that we may consider what follows merely as a continuation