admiration of the judicious, who disappears, and is loft in his fubject while we are reading, and occurs only to our reflection afterwards. Those after-reflections, however, will do him ample juftice, and more than make him amends for our seeming to have loft fight of him for a Time.

Ta LECTURE

LECTURE XXVII.

Of METONYMY.

WE have feen the extensive influence of associa

tion in forming all the pleasures of imagination that we have hitherto enumerated, and we have feen the probability of that opinion, which represents all our intellectual pleafures as derived originally from fenfible impreffions, variously mixed, combined, and transferred from one object to another, by that principle. Some of these were remote, and perhaps, to perfons unused to fuch fpeculations, obfcure effects of that great and universal agent in the affections of the human mind. We shall now take a view of fome of the more manifest and immediate effects of it, in transferring ideas belonging to fome words upon others related to them.

From hence, in particular, refults the ftriking effect of the rhetorical figures called metonymy and fynecdoche. Thefe terms are applied when, instead of the proper name of any thing or attribute, a name is borrowed from another object, which ftands in any other relation to it than that of actual refemblance, which is referred to metaphor.

It

It is almoft endless to enumerate all the relations of things which afford a foundation for this figure of speech. Some of the principal of them are thofe of cause and effect, in all its varieties, the fubjeet and its attributes, or circumstances; the agent and the inftrument; general and particular, abftract and concrete terms: and the whole and its part, which alone is referred to fynecdoche. For example, we put the effect for the cause when we fay day arofe, instead of saying the fun arofe; an attribute, or - circumftance, for the fubject in cedant arma toga; a particular for a general term, when we fay a Mecenas for a patron of learning, and a Nero for a tyrant; an abftract for a concrete term, when we fay, favours conferred upon infenfibility, rather than upon the infenfible. Examples might easily be given of the converfe of all these, and of many others.

The advantage of using such terms, borrowed from related objects, instead of proper terms, is that, at the fame time that the new name fufficiently characterises the object we intend to express, fo that it is impoffible to mistake it, the figurative expreffion transfers upon it fome foreign idea, which will serve to improve the sense of the paffage, Moreover, it tends agreeably to engage and exercife the faculties of a reader to take him a little out of the way of common expreffion. This figure, likewife, greatly aflifts perfonification, by which a compofition is greatly animated, as it exhibits living and thinking objects.

When

When Virgil fays, Bibet Germania Tigrim, using the name of a country for that of the inhabitants, it is impoffible the reader fhould hesitate a moment about the true fenfe of the paffage (for were there the least danger of a mistake the term would have been improper) feveral ideas, particularly that of immobility, neceffarily adhering to the name of the country, augment the improbability of the fact, and thereby heighten and improve the expreffion. A fimilar effect is produced, and a fimilar advantage is gained by Herodotus, when he fays, the whole theatre, inftead of the perfons in the theatre, burst into tears. There is alfo the fame happiness in thofe familiar expreffions, the eloquence of the bar, and of the pulpit.

When a perfon is called a Mecenas, ideas of ho nour and esteem are more readily transferred to... him, than if he were called in plainer terms a promoter of learning, and a patron of learned men. Every pleafing idea of this kind hath been fo long and fo intimately connected with the name of that favourite of Auguftus, that we thereby convey more definite and stronger ideas than we could by any. other, though longer form of expreffion. With the fame advantage is a tyrant called a Nero,, a poet a Second Homer, and a philofopher a Second Sir Ifaac Newton. There is a kind of accumulation of meaning in thefe expreffions, by means of long, extenfive, and repeated affociations of ideas. In all these cases, likewife, the consciousness a reader

hath

hath of his being fenfible of the force of thefe expreffions, in confequence of his being acquainted with the characters alluded to, gives no fmall pleafure.

We fee that, in many cafes, the name of a part of a thing will fuggeft the idea of the whole with greater clearnefs and ftrength than the name of the whole itfelf. For the idea of fome principal part may have a clofer connection with the idea of the whole, than even the name of the whole hath with its own proper correfponding idea. Nor will this appear to be any paradox, if we confider that the name of any thing cannot raife a diftinct idea of the whole, without raifing that of its feveral parts. It is evident that thefe fcripture-expreffions, Give us this day our daily bread; and, Having food and raiment be therewith content, fuggeft a ftronger, and, in fact, no lefs determinate an idea of all that is intended by them, than any more general and comprehenfive terms would have done. Alfo when Æneas, in Virgil, fays only Hoftis habet muros, though the walls were but a part of the city, and, in themselves confidered, the lealt valuable part; yet, as they were that part of it in which its strength chiefly confifted, to fay that the enemy were in poffeffion of them, fignifies their being mafters of the whole town, more fully than if the whole town had been exprefsly mentioned.

By the help of this figure, a writer may very happily introduce, and keep in view, thofe peculiar

proper