78 On Figurative Language. 
and are plainly owing to the want of proper 
words.” He errs, however, in’ my opinion; 
in adding soon after, “that necessity is not 
the principal source of' this form of speech; 
but that tropes have! arisen more frequently, 
and spread themselves wider from the influ- 
ence’ which imagination possesses over lan- 
guage.” This indeed may he true in rézard 
to those figurative expressions for which 
proper ones might readily be found, which 
spring only from a wanton search after analo- 
gies, and which add neither force nor justtiess 
to a sentiment ; but it can by no means be 
true concerning those tropés of which the great 
body of a language consists, and without the 
assistance of which we can scarcely utter a — 
sentencé. It will appear too, front the man- 
ner in ‘which I shall endeavour to trace the rise 
and origin of figurative diction, that we do 
not owe much of it to the influence of imagi- 
nation, but that the want of proper words of 
sufficient force and significance, has obliged 
men to supply the deficiency in the best 
manner they were able. 
I regard the appropriating of distinct names 
to sensible objects as the first step in the 
formation of language; and, therefore, I con- 
sider nouns as the basis of the whole super- 
structure. Without nouns there cannot, in — 
4 
