Study each simile you find, and state the exact meaning of each literally. Compare your statement with the figurative one and see if the latter is clearer, more forcible, or more beautiful. If any one of the similes seems less vivid than your own literal statement, ask yourself if the fault is your own in that you are not thoroughly familiar with the basis of the figure. It is not necessary that your judgment should be unassailable. The value of the proceeding lies in the exercise of your attention and reason. Your judgments will improve, your appreciation grow keener and more delicate. _Metaphor:_ "Everywhere I see in the world the intellect of man, That sword, the energy, his subtle spear, The knowledge, which defends him like a shield." This is another quotation from Browning in which he says intellect is a sword and energy a spear, thereby assuming a comparison and using the figure _metaphor_, while in the last line he uses the simile "like a shield." Ingersoll calls the grave "the windowless palace of rest," and Whittier refers to it in a beautiful metaphor as "the low green tent whose curtain never outward swings." _Synecdoche and Metonymy._ Another group of figures consists in naming one thing for something else closely associated with it in thought. When this relation is that of a part to the whole or of the whole to a part, the figure is synecdoche. Thus, when Browning says "pert tongue and idle ear consort 'neath the archway" he conveys the idea that idle gossips gather beneath the archway and with sharp tongues talk over the failings of their neighbors, and he uses synecdoche in making the ear and the tongue, parts of the body, signify the person. Our everyday language is full of these figures in which a part of an object is named to represent the whole. We speak of owning "twenty head of cattle," of hiring "ten hands," of seeing "fifteen sails," when we mean that we own twenty cattle, that we hire ten men, that we see fifteen boats. When the relation expressed is that of a sign or symbol and that which is signified or symbolized, a cause and its effect, a material and that which is made from it, or is some other similar association of ideas, the figure is metonymy. We speak of "the pulpit" when we mean the ministry, the "stage" when we mean the theatrical world, and thus use concrete symbols to represent abstract ideas. Again, we frequently make use of such an expression as "Have you read Pope or Dryden?" when we refer to the works rather than to the writer, and thus substitute cause for effect. "Columns of glittering steel advanced" contains another form of metonymy, that in which a material (steel) is named for that made from it (spears).