XIV The Hyperbolist
“He was owner of a piece of ground not larger
Than a Lacedemonian letter.”
—Longinus.
“He was so gaunt, the case of a flagelet was a mansion for him.”
—Shakespeare.
The habit of this talker is to exaggerate. He abides not by simple truth in the statement of a fact or the relation of a story. What he sees with his naked eye he describes to others in enlarged outlines, filled up with colours of the deepest hues. What he hears with his naked ears he repeats to others in words which destroy its simplicity, and almost absorb its truthfulness. A straw is a beam, a mole-hill a mountain. His ducks are geese, his minnows are perch, and his babes cherubs. The fading light of the evening he merges into darkness, and the mellow rays of the morning into the dazzling sunshine of noonday. He turns the pyramid on its apex, and the mountain on its peak. If he has a slight ache in the head, he is distracted in his senses, and a brief indisposition of his friend is a sickness likely to be of long duration and serious consequence.
Simple truth is not sufficient for the Hyberbolist to set forth his views and feelings in conversation. He wishes to convey the idea that he has seen and experienced things in number, quality, and circumstances exceeding anything within the range of your knowledge and experience. He is wishful that you should “wonder” and utter words of exclamation at his statements. If you do not, he may perchance repeat himself with enlarged hyperbolisms; and should you then hear in a matter-of-course manner, he may give you up as one stoical or phlegmatic in your temperament.
The following lines, written by Dr. Byrom in the last century, will serve to show the nature and growth of hyperbolism in many instances; especially in the repetition of facts:—
“Two honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand,
One took the other briskly by the hand;
‘Hark ye,’ said he, ‘’tis an odd story this,
About the crows!’ ‘I don’t know what it is,’
Replied his friend.—‘No! I’m surprised at that;
Where I come from, it is the common chat.
But you shall hear: an odd affair indeed!
And, that it happen’d, they are all agreed;
Not to detain you from a thing so strange,
A gentleman that lives not far from ’Change,
This week, in short, as all the Alley knows,
Taking a puke, has thrown up three black crows.’
‘Impossible!’ ‘Nay, but it’s really true;
I have it from good hands, and so may you.’
‘From whose, I pray?’ So having nam’d the man,
Straight to enquire his curious comrade ran.
‘Sir, did you tell?’—relating the affair.
‘Yes, sir, I did; and if it’s worth your care,
Ask Mr. Such-a-one, he told it me,—
But, by-the-bye, ’twas two black crows, not three.’
Resolv’d to trace so wondrous an event,
Whip, to the third, the virtuoso went.
‘Sir,’—and so forth. ‘Why, yes; the thing is fact,
Though in regard to number not exact;
It was not two black crows, but only one;
The truth of that you may depend upon.
The gentleman himself told me the case.’—
‘Where may I find him?’—‘Why, in such a place.’
Away goes he, and having found him out,
‘Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt;’
Then to his last informant he referr’d,
And begg’d to know, if true what he had heard,
‘Did you, sir, throw up a black crow?’—‘Not I.’
‘Bless me! how people propagate a lie!
Black crows have been thrown up, three, two, and one:
And here, I find, all comes, at last, to none!
Did you say nothing of a crow at all?’
‘Crow—Crow—perhaps I might, now I recall
The matter over.’—’And, pray, sir, what was’t?’
‘Why I was horrid sick, and, at the last,
I did throw up, and told my neighbour so,
Something that was—as black, sir, as a crow.’”
An Englishman and a Yankee were once talking about the speed at which the trains travelled in their respective countries. The Englishman spoke of the “Flying Dutchman” travelling sixty miles an hour.
“We beat that hollow,” said the Yankee. “Our trains on some lines travel so fast that they outgo the sound of the whistle which warns of their coming, and reach the station first.”
Of course the “Britisher” gave the palm to his American cousin, and said no more about English locomotive travelling.
Hyberbolism is a fault too much cultivated and practised among the “young ladies” of our schools and homes. They think it an elegant mode of speaking, and seem to rival each other as to which shall best succeed. An ordinary painting of one of their friends is “an exquisitely fine piece of workmanship, and really Reynolds himself could scarcely exceed it.” And that bouquet of wax flowers on the side-board “are not surpassed by the products of nature herself.” That young man lately seen in company at the house of Mrs. Hood “is one of the handsomest young gentlemen that I ever beheld; indeed, Miss Spencer, I never saw any one to equal him in reality or in picture.” To tell the truth, courteous reader, this said “young gentleman” was scarcely up to an ordinary exhibition of that sex and age of humanity; but this young lady, for some reason or other, could not help speaking of him as the “highest style of man.”
Our children are even found indulging in this exaggerated mode of speech, as the following may illustrate:—
“Oh, mother,” said Annie, as she threw herself into a chair, on her return from a walk, “I cannot stir another step.”
“Why, Annie,” answered her mother, “I thought your walk was pleasant, and not tiring at all.”
“It was such a long one,” said Annie; “I thought we should never have got home again. I would not walk it again for all the world.”
“But did you not enjoy the walk in the fields, Annie?”
“Oh, no; there were so many cows that I was frightened to death.”
“What a little angel our baby is,” said Nancy, one day to her sister, “I feel as though I could eat it up.”
“O what a monstrous brute our governess is!” said Marian to a school-fellow one afternoon, because she had corrected her rather sharply for some misdemeanour.
“I say, Fred, we have strawberries in our garden as big as my fist,” said David one day to him.
Fred opened his eyes in wonder, and said, “I should like to see them.”
Fred went to see them, and David’s garden strawberries were found to be no larger than one of his ordinary-sized marbles.
“Come,” says James to Harry, “let us go and get some blackberries; there are oceans of them on yonder hedge.”
“Oceans!” said James in wonder.
“Yes, oceans; only you must mind in getting them that you don’t fall into the ditch, or you will be over your head in mud.”
James went with Harry, and found that the blackberries were as sparse on the hedge as plums in his school pudding, and as for mud to cover him, he saw scarcely enough to come over his boots.
Another boy says, “I am so thirsty, I could drink the sea dry.” Another, “I learned my lessons to-day in no time.” Another, standing in the cold, says, “I am frozen to death.” Another, in the heat, says, “I am as hot as fire.” “My father’s horse is the best in the kingdom,” says John. “My father’s is the best in the world,” says Alexander in reply. “Oh, how it did hail in our parts yesterday,” said a boy to his schoolmate; “the hail-stones were as big as hens’ eggs.” “That’s nothing,” said his rival in return; “in our parts it rained hens and chickens.” “Well,” said the other, despairing of going beyond that, “that was wonderful; I never heard of it raining like that before.”
The above kind of talk may by some be regarded as only “inoffensive ebullitions” of childhood and youth. It is not said that moral guilt may be its immediate consequence; but is it a kind of talk altogether innocent? Does it sound truthful? Is it a habit to be encouraged or connived at? Should not all who have the education and training of young persons correct the evil when it appears, and in the place of it cultivate that speech which is made up of words of “truth and soberness”?
The Hyperbolist not only shows himself in talk which magnifies beyond the natural, the simple, and the true; but which also diminishes. “He said nothing of any account—nothing worth your hearing,” observed one friend to another, respecting a certain lecturer; when perhaps he uttered thoughts of weight and force worthy the attention of highest wisdom. He expressed this hyperbolism to allay some disappointment which his friend felt in not hearing him. “The affair is really of such little consequence that it is not worth your while to think about it;” at the same time it involved questions of vital importance to him. This he said to divert his mind from brooding over it to his injury. “I never saw such a small watch in all my life; it was hardly bigger than a sixpence;” and yet it was of the ordinary size of a lady’s watch. “It is no distance to go, and the hill is nothing to climb; you will get there in the time you are standing hesitating;” and this a father said to induce his son to go into the country on an errand for which he showed strong disinclination. “The duties are of such a trifling nature, you may perform them with perfect ease;” so said a minister to persuade a member of his church to undertake a responsible office against which he had conscientious objections.
Thus the Hyperbolist stands on either side of truth, and takes from or adds to, according to the temper of his mind and the object he wishes to accomplish. On whichever side he stand his talk is alike blamable.
Let me, in conclusion, caution my readers, and especially my young readers, against the formation and practice of this intemperate habit in talking. It is of no service to truth. It does no good to you or others, but harm. It will grow upon you, and may end in the habit of absolute false speaking. You do not mean now to be recognized as telling lies: you would perhaps shudder at the thought; but what you now shudder at, you may fall into, by the inadvertent formation of habitual exaggerated talk. Therefore guard against these excessive and thoughtless hyperbolisms of speech. Speak of things, persons, and places as you see them, not as you fancy; speak to convey correct views, not to excite wonder or to rival others in “large talk,” and in “strange things.” Simple truth is always more welcome in society than swollen fiction. The frog in the fable killed itself by trying to be as big as the ox; so you are in danger of killing truth when you inflate it beyond its own natural proportions. Truth needs no extraneous aids to commend it; or, as Cowper says,—
“No meretricious graces to beguile,
No clustering ornaments to clog the pile,
From ostentation as from weakness free,
Majestic in its own simplicity.”
“The apocrypha,” says the Rev. J. B. Owen, “into which you may elaborate your observations will ultimately be sifted from the canonical, and you will appear before society as interpolaters, inserting your own spurious statements among the genuine records of facts already received as simple, authentic truths. Have the modesty to suppose that others know a thing or two as well as yourselves. The scraps of facts which may lie scattered among the profusion of your hyperbolisms may be old acquaintances of your hearers. Let them speak for themselves in their own artless, ingenuous way, and take their own chance of success to whatever branch of the lovely family of truth they may belong.
“Hyperbole is a fault of no trivial importance in conversation. Carried, as it generally is, to such an extent, it is nothing more nor less than equivalent to lying. It frequently places the Hyperbolist in a position of distrustful scrutiny and strong doubt, on the part of those with whom he converses. His authentication of a rumour reacts as its contradiction. He himself robs it of a large amount of evidence, by welcoming the proof of anybody else as better than his own. He anticipates the discount which will be made off his commodity, and so adds exorbitancy to his statements, which will leave a balance in hand after all. But people will not be deceived again and again. His credit becomes damaged. His moral bill returns dishonoured. His extravagance of diction, like extravagance in expenditure, involves him in difficulties, and thus the immediate fate of mendacity symbolizes that awful retribution which will finally exclude all liars from the society of the good and true.”
“Old Humphrey,” in speaking of a painter who over-coloured his pictures, was wont to express the defect by saying, “Too much red in the brush.” It would be well for the Hyperbolist to have some friend at his elbow, when he over-colours things, to say, “Too much red in the brush.”