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It must, therefore, be stated emphatically that man's highest linguistic device for making ideas lively and beautiful, constituting the power of literature, must also characterize all superior conversation. A good talker will not avoid such figurativeness; he will seek it, he will try to create it. When Goldsmith told Johnson that if he wrote a fable of fishes, the mighty lexicographer would make his goldfish talk like whales, he eloquently soared into this poetic method. But so too does the fellow who speaks of a whale of a laugh. It is also to be noted that in ordinary conversation such suggestive expressions need not and should not be quite as ethereal or flowery as in poetry. Conversation is colloquial and may have a tang of earth. In ordinary talk, for example, speaking of milk as ambrosia, unless in jest, would be too dainty. While again, calling it as college people often do, cow juice or moo juice is unacceptable because it degrades a wholesome food, yet calling it arrested ice cream or coffee bleacher would be enlivening and picturesque. |
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