Society for Pure English, Tract 11 | Page 3

the same thing may be equal to each other in geometry, but language is not geometry.
They are cyphers living under the shadow of a great man.
He stood, his feet glued to the spot, his eyes riveted on the heavens.
The Geddes report is to be emasculated a little in the Cabinet, and then thrown at the heads of the Electorate.
Viscount Grey's suggestion may, in spite of everything, prove the nucleus of solution.
The superior stamina of the Oxonian told in no _half-hearted measure_. [Even careful writers are sometimes unaware of the comical effect of some chance juxtaposition of words and ideas, whereby a dormant metaphor is set on its legs. Thus Leslie Stephen in his life of Swift wrote: _Sir William Temple, though he seems to have been vigorous and in spite of gout a brisk walker, was approaching his grave_. And again when he was triumphantly recording the progress of agnosticism he has: _Even the high-churchmen have thrown the Flood overboard_. [ED.]]

E. Mixed Metaphors
For the examples given in D, tasteless word-selection is a fitter description than mixed metaphor, since each of the words that conflict with others is not intended, as a metaphor at all. 'Mixed metaphor' is more appropriate when one or both of the terms can only be consciously metaphorical. Little warning is needed against it; it is so conspicuous as seldom to get into speech or print undetected.
_This is not the time to throw up the sponge, when the enemy, already weakened and divided, are on the run to a new defensive position_. A mixture of prize-ring and battlefield.
In the following extract from a speech it is difficult to be sure how many times metaphors are mixed; readers versed in the mysteries of oscillation may be able to decide:
_No society, no community, can place its house in_ _such a condition that it is always on a rock, oscillating between solvency and insolvency. What I have to do is to see that our house is built upon a solid foundation, never allowing the possibility of the Society's life-blood being sapped. Just in proportion as you are careful in looking after the condition of your income, just in proportion as you deal with them carefully, will the solidarity of the Society's financial condition remain intact. Immediately you begin to play fast and loose with your income the first blow at your financial stability will have been struck._
A real poet losing himself in the meshes of a foolish obsession.
Johnson tore the hearts out of books ruthlessly in order to extract the honey out of them expeditiously. Are we to let the pendulum swing back to the old _rut_? Those little houses at the top of the street, dwarfed by the grandiloquence on the opposite side, are too small, too.
3. Self-consciousness and Mixed Metaphor.
The gentlemen of the Press regularly devote a small percentage of their time to accusing each other of mixing metaphors or announcing that they are themselves about to do so (What a mixture of metaphors! If we may mix our metaphors. To change the metaphor), the offence apparently being not to mix them, but to be unaware that you have done it. The odd thing is that, whether he is on the offensive or the defensive, the writer who ventures to talk of mixing metaphors often shows that he does not know what mixed metaphor is. Two typical examples of the offensive follow:
_The Scotsman says: 'The crowded benches of the Ministerialists contain the germs of disintegration. A more ill-assorted majority could hardly be conceived, and presently the Opposition must realize of what small account is the manoeuvring of the Free-Fooders or of any other section of the party. If the sling be only properly handled, the new Parliamentary Goliath will be overthrown easily enough. The stone for the sling must, however, be found on the Ministerial side of the House, and not on the Opposition side.' Apparently the stone for the sling will be a germ. But doubtless mixed feelings lead to mixed metaphors._ In this passage, we are well rid of the germs before we hear of the sling, and the mixture of metaphors is quite imaginary.
Since literal benches often contain literal germs, but 'crowded benches' and 'germs of disintegration' are here separate metaphors for a numerous party and tendencies to disunion, our critic had ready to his hand in the first sentence, if he had but known it, something much more like a mixture of metaphors than what he mistakes for one.
_'When the Chairman of Committees--a politician of their own hue--allowed Mr. Maddison to move his amendment in favour of secular education, a decision which was not quite in accordance with precedent, the floodgates of sectarian controversy were opened, and the apple of discord--the endowment of the gospel of Cowper-Temple--was thrown into the midst of the House