The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1884-10-15
INDIA RICE MILLS
Rn1ls In vsrss and Prose.

Dean Swift at one time contemplated writ
ing an essay on English bulls and blunders,
and if he had critically examined the works
of even our best writers, he would have found
numerous examples. Although the bull has
obtained for itself "a local habitation and
name," it is to be found in various quarters.
1t may, indeed, be considered an extension of
the mixed metaphor. Miss EdgewOrth defines
bull as "a laughable confusion of ideas
definition which is likewise applicable to
the mixed metaphor The latter arises when
in the same expression metaphors from dill
ferent subjects are combined. or, in other
words, when incompatible operations are put
together. A bull, on the other hand, involves
contradiction. One part Of it must render the
other impossible. Poets, while indulglng in
bold fights Of ford expression, frequently
verge on mixed metaphor. Many of the mixed
metaphors in Shakespeare, Milton, and in the
works of other great writers, however, are
redeemed because they are considered elegant
aud expressive, and because Of their effective
ness and originality Such, for instance, as
the line from Young:
Her voice il but the shadow Of a sound.
And that beautiful passage in Samson
Agonistes, - where the blind hero bemoans
his lost sight:
To live a life half dead, living death,
Aud buried; but oh, yet more miserable!
Myself, my sepucher moving grave.
Again, in paradise LOST
And in the lowest deep, a lower still
That threatens 10 dcYOur me- opens wide.
And the well-known line from Shakespeare:
towards die many times before their death.
In "Hamlet's" Cake arms against sea
of troubles" it has been suggested that, to
remove the incongruity, the word 'siege"
should be read for "sea." Tue lines from
"Addisons" poem on the victories Of MARI
borough:
bride in my struggling musc with pain,
That longs to launch into a holder strain
Where three different actions are enioined,
have often been quoted as an example Of mix
ed metaphor.
In a very old romance we fud one Of the
characters saying to another, who has thre-
atened to bring him before the Areopagus:
'Wait short time and you will have the OPP
pOrtunity of accusing me Of your murder too
and from Heraud's epic poem "The Judg-
ment Of the Flood" is taken the following
good speciment Of verbal absurdities:
GlOomed DER his brow, the internal diadcm,
Like a black craig projected DER cliff,
White a. the surge, the barrier Of the main;
And like blasted orb once overnight;
His eye a ruin burned, and on his check
Immortal beauty hidcously shone.
In one of the poems of James Hogg, the
"Etlrick Shepherd" occurs the couplet
And forced q man 10 sing a sang
That meier could sing a sing ava.
Itsurely must be to much singing that Der
went Conway refers when, in Forget Ne
Not" he speaks of "melodious discord."
Allan Cunningham would have US believe that
he had discovered a new sense, for in the
amulet" he says
feel the fragrance OF the thorus
Where lovers love to meet.
This, however, is surpassed by Conway,
who has made a more remarkable discovery,
as witness the lines:
or rose OF sweet Provence
All hunE their odors to the listening sense.
1t is something TO feel smell and to hear
one; but the late Lord Lytton was still more
sensitive, for he writes;
I hear the vain shadows glide.