CHAPTER IX.. Of Those Things That Grace an Oration, and Make It Delightful.

OF THOSE THINGS THAT GRACE AN ORATION, AND MAKE IT DELIGHTFUL.

Forasmuch as there is nothing more delightful to a man, than to find that he apprehends and learns easily; it necessarily follows, that those words are most grateful to the ear, that make a man seem to see before his eyes the things signified.

And therefore foreign words are unpleasant, because obscure; and plain words, because too manifest, making us learn nothing new. But metaphors please; for they beget in us, by the genus, or by some common thing to that with another, a kind of science. As when an old man is called stubble; a man suddenly learns that he grows up, flourisheth, and withers like grass, being put in mind of it by the qualities common to stubble and to old men.

That which a metaphor does, a similitude does the same; but with less grace, because with more prolixity.

Such enthymemes are the most graceful, which neither are presently very manifest, nor yet very hard to be understood; but are comprehended while they are uttering, or presently after, though not understood before.

The things that make a speech graceful, are these; antitheta, metaphors, and animation.

Of antitheta and antithesis hath been spoken in the precedent chapter.

Of metaphors, the most graceful is that which is drawn from proportion.

Aristotle, in the twelfth chapter of his Poetry, defines a metaphor to be the translation of a name from one signification to another; whereof he makes four kinds, 1. From the general to the particular. 2. From the particular to the general. 3. From one particular to another. 4. From proportion.

A metaphor from proportion is such as this; A state without youth, is a year without a spring.

Animation is that expression which makes us seem to see the thing before our eyes. As he that said, The Athenians poured out their city into Sicily; meaning, they sent thither the greatest army they could make. And this is the greatest grace of an oration.

If therefore in the same sentence there concur both metaphor and this animation, and also antithesis, it cannot choose but be very graceful.

That an oration is graced by metaphor, animation, and antithesis, hath been said: but how it is graced, is to be said in the next chapter.

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