APPENDIX.

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there is a distinction to be made between the unnatural and the merely improbable: a fiction is unnatural when there is some assignable reason against the events taking place as described,-when men are represented as acting contrary to the character assigned them, or to human nature in general; as when a young lady of seventeen, brought up in ease, luxury, and retirement, with no companions but the narrow-minded and illiterate, displays (as a heroine usually does) under the most trying circumstances, such wisdom, fortitude, and knowledge of the world, as the best instructors and the best examples can rarely produce without the aid of more mature age and longer experience. -On the other hand, a fiction is still improbable, though not unnatural, when there is no reason to be assigned why things should not take place as represented, except that the overbalance of chances is against it; the hero meets in his utmost distress, most opportunely, with the very person to whom he had formerly done a signal service, and who happens to communicate to him a piece of intelligence which sets all to rights. Why should he not meet him as well as any one else? all that can be said is, that there is no reason why he should. The infant who is saved from a wreck, and who afterwards becomes such a constellation of virtues and accomplishments, turns out to be no other than the nephew of the very gentleman, on whose estate the waves had cast

him, and whose lovely daughter he had so long sighed for in vain: there is no reason to be given, except from the calculation of chances, why he should not have been thrown on one part of the coast as well as another. Nay, it would be nothing unnatural, though the most determined novelreader would be shocked at its improbability, if all the hero's enemies, while they were conspiring his ruin, were to be struck dead together by a lucky flash of lightning: yet many denouements which are decidedly unnatural, are better tolerated than this would be. We shall, perhaps, best explain our meaning by examples, taken from a novel of great merit in many respects. When Lord Glenthorn, in whom a most unfavourable education has acted on a most unfavourable disposition, after a life of torpor, broken only by short sallies of forced exertion, on a sudden reverse of fortune, displays at once the most persevering diligence in the most repulsive studies, and in middle life, without any previous habits of exertion, any hope of early business, or the example of friends, or the stimulus of actual want, to urge him, outstrips every competitor, though every competitor has every advantage against him; this is unnatural.— When Lord Glenthorn, the instant he is stripped of his estates, meets, falls in love with, and is conditionally accepted by, the very lady who is remotely entitled to those estates; when, the instant he has fulfilled the conditions of their marriage, the family of the person possessed of the estates becomes extinct, and by the concurrence of circumstances, against every one of which the chances were enormous, the hero is re-instated in all his old domains; this is merely improbable. The distinction which we have been pointing out may be plainly perceived in the events of real life; when any thing takes place of such a nature as we should call, in a fiction, merely improbable, because there are many chances against it, we call it a lucky or unlucky

accident, a singular coincidence, something very extraordinary, odd, curious, &c.; whereas any thing which, in a fiction, would be called unnatural, when it actually occurs, (and such things do occur,) is still called unnatural, inexplicable, unaccountable, inconceivable, &c. epithets which are not applied to events that have merely the balance of chances against them." Quarterly Review, No. xlviii. p 354, 355.

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Analogy does not mean the similarity of two things, but the similarity, or sameness, of two relations. There must be more than two things to give rise to two relations: there must be at least three; and in most cases there are four. Thus A may be like B, but there is no analogy between A and B: it is an abuse of the word to speak so, and it leads to much confusion of thought. If A has the same relation to B which C has to D, then there is an analogy. If the first relation be well known, it may serve to explain the second, which is less known: and the transfer of name from one of the terms in the relation best known to its corresponding term in the other, causes no confusion, but on the contrary tends to remind us of the similarity that exists in these relations; and so assists the mind instead of misleading it.

"In this manner things most unlike and discordant in their nature may be strictly analogous to one another. Thus a certain proposition may be called-the basis of a system. The proposition is to the system what the basis is to a building. It serves a similar office and purpose; and this last relation being well known is of use to illustrate the other which was less known. E. g. The system rests upon it: it is useless to proceed with the argument till this is well established: if this were removed, the system must fall. The only cautions requisite in the use of this kind of analogy are,

FIRST, not to proceed to a comparison of the corresponding terms as they are intrinsically in themselves or in their own nature, but merely as they are in relation to the other terms respectively; and, SECONDLY, not to presume that because the relation is the same or similar in one or two points, therefore it is the same or similar in all.

"The FIRST of these errors cannot be committed in the instance before us, because the two things are of such different natures that they have no one point of resemblance. But when the first and the third term are not only corresponding in relation, but chance also to be of a kindred nature, or when, from the circumstance of one being visible and the other invisible, their discrepancies do not strike us, it often happens that a comparison is pursued between the things themselves, and this is one cause of the promiscuous use of the terms similitude and analogy. As for example, when Locke, having once established the comparison, proceeds to talk of Ideas as if they were really images in the mind, or traces in the brain.

"It is from observing this tendency in men to regard the metaphorical or analogous name as bringing along with it something of the nature of the thing it originally signified, that Mr. Stewart is led to make the remark not less original than just, that it is well for the understanding, though it may be a loss to the fancy, when a metaphorical word has lost its pedigree *—that is, when it no longer excites the primary idea denoted by it, and is reduced by custom to a plain and direct appellation in its secondary sense. He suggests alsof

* Philosophical Essays, Ess. v. c. 3.

Ibid. In the analysis here given of analogy, it will be perceived by those who are conversant with Mr. Stewart's writings, that I have ventured to depart widely from his use of the word. Indeed M. Prevot's etymology, as given in a passage quoted with approbation by Mr. Stewart, vol. ii. c. iv. sect. 4. appears to me quite erroneous,