OBS.—­A Metaphor is commonly understoood [sic—­KTH] to be only the tropical use of some single word, or short phrase; but there seem to be occasional instances of one sentence, or action, being used metaphorically to represent an other.  The following extract from the London Examiner has several figurative expressions, which perhaps belong to this head:  “In the present age, nearly all people are critics, even to the pen, and treat the gravest writers with a sort of taproom familiarity.  If they are dissatisfied, they throw a short and spent cigar in the face of the offender; if they are pleased, they lift the candidate off his legs, and send him away with a hearty slap on the shoulder.  Some of the shorter, when they are bent to mischief, dip a twig in the gutter, and drag it across our polished boots:  on the contrary, when they are inclined to be gentle and generous, they leap boisterously upon our knees, and kiss us with bread-and-butter in their mouths.”—­WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

III.  An Allegory is a continued narration of fictitious events, designed to represent and illustrate important realities.  Thus the Psalmist represents the Jewish nation under the symbol of a vine:  “Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt:  thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.  Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root; and it filled the land.  The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.”—­Psalms, lxxx, 8-10.

OBS.—­The Allegory, agreeably to the foregoing definition of it, includes most of those similitudes which in the Scriptures are called parables; it includes also the better sort of fables.  The term allegory is sometimes applied to a true history in which something else is intended, than is contained in the words literally taken.  See an instance in Galatians, iv, 24.  In the Scriptures, the term fable denotes an idle and groundless story:  as, in 1 Timothy, iv, 7; and 2 Peter, i, 16.  It is now commonly used in a better sense.  “A fable may be defined to be an analogical narrative, intended to convey some moral lesson, in which irrational animals or objects are introduced as speaking.”—­Philological Museum, Vol. i, p. 280.

IV.  A Metonymy is a change of names between things related.  It is founded, not on resemblance, but on some such relation as that of cause and effect, of progenitor and posterity, of subject and adjunct, of place and inhabitant, of container and thing contained, or of sign and thing signified:  as, (1.) “God is our salvation;” i.e., Saviour. (2.) “Hear, O Israel;” i.e.  O ye descendants of Israel. (3.) “He was the sigh of her secret soul;” i.e., the youth she loved. (4.) “They smote the city;” i.e., the citizens. (5.) “My son, give me thy heart;” i.e., affection. (6.) “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah;” i.e., kingly power. (7.) “They have Moses and the prophets;” i.e., their writings.  See Luke, xvi, 29.