If an image forces itself upon a writer because it and it alone
will express his meaning, then it is his image, no matter how often it
has been used before; and in that case it will arrest the attention of
the reader. But the effect of habitual and dead metaphor is to dull
attention. When a phrase like 'the lap of luxury' catches the eye, the
mind relaxes but is not rested; for we are wearied, without exercise,
by commonplace.
Further, the use of dead metaphor weakens a writer's sense of the
connexion between mood and manner. All the metaphors which I have
quoted are fit for the expression of some kind of emotion rather than
for plain statement of fact or for lucid argument; yet they are used
commonly in statements of fact and in what passes for argument. Indeed
one of their evils is that they make a writer and his readers believe
that he is exercising his reason when he is only moving from trite
image to image. If eloquence is reason fused with emotion, writing, or
speaking, full of dead metaphors is unreason fused with sham emotion.
I add in illustration a further list of dead metaphors lately noticed:
'Branches of the same deadly Upas Tree. Turning a deaf ear to. The
flower of our manhood. Taking off the gloves. Written in letters of
fire. Stemming the tide. Big with possibilities. The end is in sight.
A place in the sun. A spark of manhood. To dry up the founts of pity.
Hunger stalking through the land.
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