by gradually _mincing_ his whole body he destroyed himself”;[2] and
“Pythes continued fighting on his ship until he was entirely _hacked to
pieces_.”[3] Such terms come home at once to the vulgar reader, but
their own vulgarity is redeemed by their expressiveness.

[Footnote 2: vi. 75.]

[Footnote 3: vii. 181.]


XXXII

Concerning the number of metaphors to be employed together Caecilius
seems to give his vote with those critics who make a law that not more
than two, or at the utmost three, should be combined in the same place.
The use, however, must be determined by the occasion. Those outbursts of
passion which drive onwards like a winter torrent draw with them as an
indispensable accessory whole masses of metaphor. It is thus in that
passage of Demosthenes (who here also is our safest guide):[1]

[Footnote 1: See Note.]

2
“Those vile fawning wretches, each one of whom has lopped from his
country her fairest members, who have toasted away their liberty, first
to Philip, now to Alexander, who measure happiness by their belly and
their vilest appetites, who have overthrown the old landmarks and
standards of felicity among Greeks,--to be freemen, and to have no one
for a master.”[2] Here the number of the metaphors is obscured by the
orator’s indignation against the betrayers of his country.