great many histories must be written—and among them your History of Metaphor.
Poet. Why?
Hist. As an antidote to the bad effects of poetry. You accuse me of pretending to feed people on solid fact, while in reality I give them husks and chaff. But your deceits are more dangerous. You pretend to pour out the sparkling water of truth while in reality you give them the intoxicating heady wine of metaphor. I have seen men on the streets drunk with a single metaphor.
Poet. Then my history would be a dangerous thing, for plainly it would contain many metaphors.
Hist. Yes, but deprived of their power to work evil. Nothing comes under the calm light of history without being purified. You would record the first known occurrence of a metaphor, do all needful honour to its inventor, criticise its later employments, and thus diminish the danger of its being taken by the ignorant for an argument, or, still worse, for a fact. As it is, intoxication abounds.
Poet. That is the fault of the victims. Good wine is a good thing, though it be occasionally misused.
Hist. But its misuse is not so disastrous as the misuse of metaphor. Take the metaphor of an army. How many miserable beings, suffocating in the atmosphere of party quarrels, derive a momentary elation from its misuse. "The Liberals have won the battle all along the line;" or, "The fighting has been severe, but the Conservatives have rallied round the ancient standard and carried the day nobly." Here, it is plain, the essence of the comparison is lacking. If opposing armies had been wont to count heads and announce that the victory lay with the larger, no heroic associations would have gathered around war. More than that, you must suppose that the counting of heads is secret, that anysoldier
