1pFFjZK

ARISTOTLE 9 1
water dripping upon it,
as both * keep shrinking. A successful
simile is one which is virtually a metaphor. For we may
compare the shield to " " "
Ares's goblet or the ruin to a tatter
of a house " ;
or we may describe f Niceratus as a " Philoctetes
stung by Pratys," using the simile of Thrasymachus
when he saw Niceratus after his defeat by Pratys in the
rhapsody with his hair still dishevelled and his face unwashed.
It is here that poets are most loudly condemned for failure
and most warmly applauded for success, when they so form
their simile that the two members of it correspond, as e.g.
" Like parsley curled his legs he bears "
or
"
Just as I Philammon tilting at the quintain."
These expressions and all others like them are similes; and
that similes are metaphors is a truth which has been already
stated more than once.
Proverbs again are metaphors from one species to another,
e.g. when somebody has invited a person's help
.
f .
.
, ,
f , Proverbs.
in the hope of gaming by
it and has afterwards
"
found it to be a source of injury, 'Tis as the Carpathian
>f the hare "; for they are both the victims of this fate.
c
The sources of clever sayings and the reasons of their
leverness have now been pretty fully discussed.
All approved hyperboles arc also metaphors,
as when it is
-aid of a man whose face is bruised, " You mijjht
have taken him for a basket of mulberrir-." For
a bruise like a mulberry
is
something purple; but it is the
* Thr winking of the shortsighted person and tin- sputtering >f the lamp
i))lc
by the verb ffvidycvfat.
t Ni< r.itus seems to have engaged in a rhapsodical contest with Pratys.
J I'hilnmmon was a celebrated ath
It is
supposed that some Carpathian had brought some hares or rabbits
into his island and that- they had multiplied and devoured all his crops.