COMPARISON.

THE situation in which man is placed, requires some acquaintance with the nature, power, and qualities, of those objects by which he is surrounded. For acquiring a branch of knowledge so essential to our happiness and preservation, motives of interest and of reason are not alone sufficient; and nature has providentially superadded curiosity, a vigorous principle which is never at rest. This principle strongly attaches us to those objects which have the recommendation of novelty: it incites us to compare things together, for the purpose of discovering their differences and resemblances.

Resemblance between objects of the same kind, and dissimilitude between those of different kinds, are too obvious and familiar to gratify our curiosity in any degree; its gratification lies in discovering differences where resemblance prevails, and resemblances where difference prevails. Thus a difference in individuals of the same kind of plants or animals is deemed a discovery, while the many particulars in which they agree, are neglected; and in, different kinds, any resemblance is eagerly remarked, without attending to the many particulars in which they differ.

Objects of different senses cannot often be properly compared together; for they are totally separated from each other, and have no circumstance in common to admit either resemblance or contrast. Objects of hearing may be compared together, as also those of taste, of smell, and of touch: but objects of sight are the principal source of comparison; because in speaking or writing, things can be compared only in idea, and the ideas of

sight are more distinct and lively than those of any other sense.

It must however be observed that two objects are sometimes happily compared together, though, strictly speaking, they resemble each other in nothing. Though they are dissimilar, they yet agree in the effects which they produce upon the mind: they raise a train of similar or concordant ideas; so that the remembrance of the one serves to strengthen the impression made by the other.

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

This seems happy and delicate; yet surely no kind of music bears any immediate resemblance to a feeling of the mind. Had it been compared to the voice of the nightingale, or the murmur of the stream, as it would have been by some ordinary poet, the likeness would have been more distinct; but, by founding his simile upon the effect which Carryl's music produced, the poet, while he conveys a very tender image, gives us, at the same time, a much stronger impression of the nature and strain of that music. The following similes are of the same description.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard; that went down to the skirts of his garments.-Psalms.

Delightful is thy presence, O Fingal! it is like the son of Cromla, when the hunter mourns his absence for a season, and sees him between the clouds.-Ossian.

Often, like the evening sun, comes the memory of former times on my soul.-Ossian.

When a nation emerging from barbarism begins to cultivate the fine arts, figurative language is often, by the love of novelty, carried beyond all bounds of moderation. Thus, in the first poetical efforts of every nation, we find metaphors and similes founded on the slightest and most distant resemblances. These, losing their grace with their novelty, wear gradually out of repute; and

at length, on the improvement of taste, no metaphor or simile, except it be of a striking kind, is admitted into any refined composition.

Young writers are very apt to employ a superfluity of comparisons and other figures. The following passage, which I quote from a promising poet who died at a premature age, may perhaps be considered as liable to this censure:

Belov'd of heaven, his fair Levina grew

In youth and grace, the Naiad of the vale:
Fresh as the flow'r amid the sunny show'rs
Of May, and blither than the bird of dawn,
Both roses' bloom gave beauty to her cheek,
Soft temper'd with a smile. The light of heav'r,
And innocence, illum'd her virgin-eye,
Lucid and lovely as the morning star.
Her breast was fairer than the vernal bloom
Of valley-lily, op'ning in a show'r ;-
Fair as the morn, and beautiful as May,
The glory of the year, when first she comes
Array'd, all beauteous, with the robes of heav'n;
And, breathing summer breezes, from her locks
Shakes genial dews, and from her lap the flowers.
Bruce's Lochleven.

Between an exemplification and a simile a difference is to be remarked. A simile is founded upon the discovery of likeness between two actions, in their general nature dissimilar, or of causes terminating by different operations in some resemblance of effect. But the mention of another like consequence from a like cause, or of a like performance by a like agency, is not a simile, but an exemplification. It is not a simile to say, that the Thames waters fields, as the Po waters fields; or that as Hecla vomits flames in Iceland, so Ætna vomits flames in Sicily. When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders in quest of honey; he, in either case, produces a simile: the mind is impressed with the resemblance of things generally unlike, as

unlike as intellect and body. But if Pindar had been described as writing with the copiousness and grandeur of Homer, or Horace had informed us that he reviewed and finished his own poetry with the same care as Isocrates polished his orations, he would instead of similitude, have exhibited almost identity; he would have given the same portraits with different names. When Addison represents the English as gaining a fortified pass, by repetition of attack, and perseverance of resolution, their obstinacy of courage, and vigour of onset, are well illustrated by the sea that breaks, with incessant battery, the dikes of Holland. This is a simile: but when the same author, after having celebrated the beauty of Marlborough's person, tells us that "Achilles thus was formed with every grace," he does not employ a simile but a mere exemplification. A simile may be compared to two lines converging at a point, and it is more excellent as the lines approach from greater distance; an exemplification may be considered as two parallel lines, which run on together without approximation, never far separated, and never joined.

When comparisons are addressed to the understanding, their purpose is to instruct; when to the heart, to please. The latter of these purposes is accomplished by various means: first, by suggesting some unusual resemblance or contrast; secondly, by presenting an object in the strongest light; thirdly, by associating an object with others that are agreeable; fourthly, by elevating, and, fifthly, by depressing an object. Of the two following comparisons, the former seems intended to instruct, the latter to please.

As wax would not be adequate to the purpose of signature, if it had not the power to retain as well as to receive the impression, the same holds of the soul with respect to sense and imagination. Sense is its receptive power; imagination its retentive. Had it sense without imagination, it would not be as wax, but as water, where, though all impressions be instantly made, yet as soon as they are made they are instantly lost.-Harris's Hermes.

Johnson's Lives of English Poets,

Yet, wand'ring I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,
One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been :

Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,

All wild in the silence of Nature it drew

From each wandering sunbeam a lonely embrace;
For the night-weed and thorn overshadow'd the place
Where the flow'r of my forefathers grew.

Campbell.

Akenside, one of the most classical of all the English poets, has drawn an elegant and pleasing simile from the ancient descriptions of the famous statue of Memnon at Thebes in Upper Egypt:

For as old Memnon's image, long renown'd
By fabling Nilus to the quivering touch
Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string
Consenting, sounded through the warbling air
Unbidden strains; even so did Nature's hand
To certain species of external things,
Attune the finer organs of the mind:
So the glad impulse of congenial powers,
Or of sweet sound, or fair proportion'd form,
The grace of motion, or the bloom of light,
Thrills through imagination's tender frame
From nerve to nerve; all naked and alive
They catch the spreading rays; till now the soul
At length discloses every tuneful spring,
To that harmonious movement from without
Responsive.

Pleasures of Imagination.

One of the means by which comparisons afford us pleasure, is the suggestion of some unusual resemblance or contrast. This remark it will be necessary to illustrate by particular instances.

Thus they their doubtful consultations dark
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless chief:
As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heaven's cheerful face, the low'ring element

Scowls o'er the darken'd landscape snow and shower;
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet
Extends his ev'ning beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.

Milton