Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/220

206 'Moderate churchmen, moving at length from their old moorings, are beginning to lift this question out of the party rut', we should have had a genuine confusion, the moorings and the rut being then inseparable. Both this sentence and the preceding one, the reader may think, would have been better without the second metaphor; we agree, but it is a question of taste, not of correctness.

...the keenest incentive man can feel to remedy ignorance and abolish guilt. It is under the impelling force of this incentive that civilization progresses.–Spectator.

This illustrates the danger of deciding hastily on the deadness of a metaphor, however common it may be. Probably any one would have said that the musical idea in incentive had entirely vanished: but the successive attributes keenness and impelling force are too severe a test; the dead metaphor is resuscitated, and a perceptible confusion results.

Her forehand drive–her most trenchant asset.–Daily Mail.

Another case of resuscitation. Trenchant turns in its grave; and asset, ready to succumb under the violence of athletic reporters, has yet life enough to resent the imputation of a keen edge. As the critic of 'ruts at sea' might have observed, the more blunt, the better the assets.

And the very fact that the past is beyond recall imposes upon the present generation a continual stimulus to strive for the prevention of such woes.–Spectator.

We impose a burden, we apply a stimulus. It looks as if the writer had meant by a short cut to give us both ideas; if so, his guilt is clear; and if we call impose a mere slip in idiom, the confusion is none the less apparent.

Sword of the devil, running with the blood of saints, poisoned adder, thy work is done.

These are independent metaphors; and, as thy work is done is applicable to each of them, there is no confusion.

In the hope that something might be done, even at the eleventh hour, to stave off the brand of failure from the hide of our military administration.–Times.

To stave off a brand is not, perhaps, impossible; but we