“There is a rocky wart upon the mountain'sor they may even be coarse. For it does not follow that because Cicero was perfectly justified in talking of “the sink of the state,”2 when he desired to indicate the foulness of certain men, we can approve the following passage from an ancient orator: “You have lanced the boils of the state.”
brow.
”
[14]
While a temperate and timely use of metaphor is
[p. 309]
a real adornment to style, on the other hand, its
frequent use serves merely to obscure our language
and weary our audience, while if we introduce them
in one continuous series, our language will become
allegorical and enigmatic. There are also certain
metaphors which fail from meanness, such as that
of which I spoke above1:
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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