cause of the uneducated man's use of the word _like_ is
interesting. He makes a statement, uses an adjective, and--especially
if the statement relates to his own feelings or to something
unfamiliar--he tacks on the word _like_, spoken in a peculiarly
explanatory tone of voice. What does the word mean there? Is it merely
a habit, a 'gyte,' as Tony would say? And why the word _like_?

When a poet wishes to utter thoughts that are too unformulated, that
lie too deep, for words--

Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me--

he has recourse to simile and metaphor. Take, for example, the
transience of human life, a subject on which at times we most of us
have keen vague thoughts that, we imagine, would be so profound could
our tongues but utter them.

Blake's Thel is a symbol of the transience of life.

O life of this our Spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
Why fade these children of the Spring, born but to smile and fall?

"Thel, the transient maiden, is.... What is Thel?" says Blake, in
effect. Thel cannot be described straightforwardly. "What then is Thel
_like_?"

Ah! Thel is like a watery bow, and like a parting cloud,
Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows on the water,
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face,
Like the dove's voice, like transient day, like music in the air.

[Sidenote: _DIALECT_]

Shakespeare, in a corresponding difficulty, uses one convincing simile:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Drummond of Hawthornden exclaims:

This Life, which seems so fair,
Is like a bubble blown up in the air
By sporting children's breath....

Bacon speaks more boldly and concisely. He forsakes simile for
metaphor, leaving the word _like_ to be understood.

The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man
Less than a span....

Were Tony to try and express himself by the same means, he would say:
"The world's a bubble, like, and the life of man less than a span,
like."

_Like_, in fact, with the poor man as with the poet, connotes simile
and metaphor. The poor man's vocabulary, like the poet's, is quite
inadequate to express his thoughts. Both, in their several ways, are
driven