Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/219

Rh This, as you know, was a burning question; and its unseasonable introduction threw a chill on the spirits of all our party.

Burning and chill are both live metaphors, they are grammatically connected by its, and they are inconsistent; there is therefore confusion.

The uncertainty which hangs over every battle extends in a special degree to battles at sea.–Spectator.

Extends is usually dead; and if in this case it is living, it is also suitable.

A centre and nucleus round which the scattered remnants of that party might rally after the disastrous defeat.–Spectator.

The main or external metaphor is that of an army. Now any metaphor that is applicable to a literal army is also applicable to a metaphorical one: but 'rally round a nucleus' is a confusion of metaphor, to whichever it is applied; it requires us to conceive of the army at the same time as animal and vegetable, nucleus being literally the kernel of a nut, and metaphorically a centre about which growth takes place. An army can have a nucleus, but cannot rally round it.

Sir W. Laurier had claimed for Canada that she would be the granary and baker of the Empire, and Sir Edmund Barton had claimed for Australia that she would be the Empire's butcher; but in New Zealand they had not all their eggs in one basket, and they could claim a combination of the three.

This is quoted in a newspaper as an example of mixed metaphor. It is nothing of the kind: they in New Zealand are detached from the metaphor.

We move slowly and cautiously from old moorings in our English life, that is our laudable constitutional habit; but my belief is that the great majority of moderate churchmen, to whatever political party they may belong, desirous as they are to lift this question of popular education out of the party rut,...

'A rut', says the same newspaper, 'is about the very last thing we should expect to find at sea, despite the fact that it is ploughed'. There is mention of ruts at sea; the two metaphors are independent. If the speaker had said