CHAPTER IX.

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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