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AIRS AND GRACES

But there is the opposite fault. The judicious archaist, as we have said, will abstain from palpable modernisms, especially from modern slang. The following extracts are taken from an old woman's reminiscences of days in which a 'faultless attire' included 'half high boots, knee-breeches very tight above the calf (as the fashion was then), a long-tailed cutaway coat, ...':

But the Captain, who, of course, lacks bowels of mercy for this kind of thing, says that if he had been Caesar, 'Caius would have got the great chuck. Yes, madam, I would have broke Mister Caius on the spot'.–Crockett.

But if you once go in for having a good time (as Miss Anne in her innocence used to remark) you must be prepared to...–Crockett.

...as all girls love to do when they are content with the way they have put in their time.–Crockett.

Metaphor

Strictly speaking, metaphor occurs as often as we take a word out of its original sphere and apply it to new circumstances. In this sense almost all words can be shown to be metaphorical when they do not bear a physical meaning; for the original meaning of almost all words can be traced back to something physical; in our first sentence above, for instance, there are eight different metaphors. Words had to be found to express mental perceptions, abstract ideas, and complex relations, for which a primitive vocabulary did not provide; and the obvious course was to convey the new idea by means of the nearest physical parallel. The commonest Latin verb for think is a metaphor from vine-pruning; 'seeing' of the mind is borrowed from literal sight; 'pondering' is metaphorical 'weighing'. Evidently a metaphor of this kind is quite different in origin from such a phrase as 'smouldering' discontent; the former we may call, for want of a better word, 'natural' metaphor, as opposed to the latter, which is artificial. The word metaphor as ordinarily used suggests only the artificial kind: but in deciding on the merits or demerits of a metaphorical phrase we are concerned as much

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