Racine, in the tragedy of Phædra, describing the sea-monster that destroyed Hyppolitus, conceives the sea itself to be struck with ter ror as well as the spectators:

Le flot qui l'apporta recule epouvanté.

A man also naturally communicates his joy to all objects around, animate or inanimate :

-As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odour from the spicy shore

Of Araby the Blest; with such delay

Well pleas'd they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer'd with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.

Paradise Lost, b. 4.

I have been profuse of examples, to show what power many passions have to animate their objects. In all the foregoing examples, the personification, if I mistake not, is so complete as to afford conviction, momentary indeed, of life and intelligence. But it is evident from numberless instances, that personification is not always so complete it is a common figure in descriptive poetry, understood to be the language of the writer, and not of the persons he describes: in this case, it seldom or never comes up to conviction, even momentary, of life and intelligence. I give the following examples:

First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day, and all th' horizon round
Invested with bright rays; jocund to run

His longitude through heaven's high road: the gray
Dawn and the Pleiades before him danc'd,

Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the moon,
But opposite, in levell'd west was set

His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him; for other light she needed none.

Faradise Lost, b. 7. l. 370.*

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund Day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.

Romeo and Juliet, act 3. sc. 7.

But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.-Hamlet, act 1. sc. 1.

It may, I presume, be taken for granted, that in the foregoing instances, the personification, either with the poet or his reader, amounts not to a conviction of intelligence, that the sun, the moon. the day, the morn, are not here understood to be sensible beings. What then is the nature of this personification? I think it must be referred to the imagination. The inanimate object is imagined to be a sensible being, but without any conviction, even for a moment, that it really is so. Ideas or fictions of imagination have power to raise

*The chastity of the English language, which in common usage distinguishes by genders no words but what signify beings male and female, gives thus a fine opportunity for the prosopopoeia; a beauty unknown in other languages, where every word is masculine or feminine.

emotions in the mind; and when any thing inanimate is, in imagination, supposed to be a sensible being, it makes, by that means, a greater figure than when an idea is formed of it according to truth. This sort of personification, however, is far inferior to the other in elevation. Thus personification is of two kinds. The first being more noble, may be termed passionate personification; the other, more humble, descriptive personification; because seldom or never is personification in a description carried to conviction.

The imagination is so lively and active, that its images are raised with very little effort; and this justifies the frequent use of descriptive personification. This figure abounds in Milton's Allegro and Penseroso.

Abstract and general terms, as well as particular objects, are often necessary in poetry. Such terms, however, are not well adapted to poetry, because they suggest not any image. I can readily form an image of Alexander or Achilles in wrath; but I cannot form an image of wrath in the abstract, or of wrath independent of a person. Upon that account, in works addressed to the imagination, abstract terms are frequently personified; but such personification rests upon imagination merely, not upon conviction.

Sed mihi vel Tellus optem prius ima dehiscat;

Vel Pater omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam,

Ante pudor quam te violo, aut tua jura resolvo.-Æneid, iv. l. 24.

Thus to explain the effects of slander, it is imagined to be a voluntary agent.

-No, 'tis Slander;

Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue
Out-venoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath

Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie

All corners of the world, kings, queens, and states,

Maids, matrons: nay, the secrets of the grave

This viperous Slander enters.-Shakspeare, Cymbeline, act 3. sc. 4.

As also human passions.

Take the following example:

-For Pleasure and Revenge

Have ears more deaf than adders, to the voice

Of any true decision.-Troilus and Cressida, act 2. sc. 4.

Virgil explains fame and its effects by a still greater variety of action. And Shakspeare personifies death and its operations in a manner singularly fanciful.

-Within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king,

Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;

Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if his flesh, which walls about our life,

Were brass impregnable: and humour'd thus,

See Appendix, containing definitions and explanations of terms, § 28. † Eneid, iv. 173.

FIGURES.

Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle walls, and farewell king.

Richard II. act 3. sc. 4.

Not less successfully is life and action given even to sleep:

King Henry. How many thousands of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep? O gentle Sleep,

Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, Sleep, ly'st thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why ly'st thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch.
A watch-case to a common larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deaf'ning clamours in the slippery shrouds,
That, with a hurly, Death itself awakes?
Can'st thou, O partial Sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and the stillest night,
With all the appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a King? Then, happy low! lie down;
Uneasy lies a head that wears a crown.

Second Part, Henry IV. act 3. sc. 1.

I shall add one example more, to show that descriptive personification may be used with propriety, even where the purpose of the discourse is instruction merely :

Oh! let the steps of youth be cautious,

How they advance into a dangerous world :
Our duty only can conduct us safe.

Our passions are seducers; but of all,

The strongest Love. He first approaches us

In childish play, wantoning in our walks:
If heedlessly we wander after him,
As he will pick out all the dancing-way,
We're lost, and hardly to return again.
We should take warning: he is painted blind,
To show us, if we fondly follow him,
The precipices we may fall into.

Therefore, let Virtue take him by the hand:
Directed so, he leads to certain joy.-Southern.

Hitherto success has attended our steps; but whether we shall complete our progress with equal success, seems doubtful; for when we look back to the expressions mentioned in the beginning, thirsty ground, furious dart, and such like, it seems no less difficult than at first, to say whether there be in them any sort of personification. Such expressions evidently raise not the slightest conviction of sensibility; nor do I think they amount to descriptive personification;

because, in them, we do not even figure the ground or the dart to be animated. If so, they cannot at all come under the present subject. To shew which, I shall endeavour to trace the effect that such expressions have in the mind. Doth not the expression angry ocean, for example, tacitly compare the ocean in a storm to a man in wrath? By this tacit comparison, the ocean is elevated above its rank in nature; and yet personification is excluded, because, by the very nature of comparison, the things compared are kept distinct, and the native appearance of each is preserved. It will be shewn afterward, that expressions of this kind belong to another figure, which I term a figure of speech, and which employs the seventh section of the present chapter.

Though thus in general we can distinguish descriptive personification from what is merely a figure of speech, it is, however, often difficult to say, with respect to some expressions, whether they are of the one kind or of the other. Take the following instances:

The moon shines bright in such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise; in such a night,
Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan wall,
And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents

Where Cressid lay that night.-Merchant of Venice, act 5. sc. 1.

-I have seen

Th' ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,

To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds.―Julius Cæsar, act 1. sc. 6.

With respect to these and numberless other examples of the same kind, it must depend upon the reader, whether they be examples of personification, or of a figure of speech merely. A sprightly imagination will advance them to the former class, with a plain reader they will remain in the latter.

Having thus at large explained the present figure, its different kinds, and the principles upon which it is founded; what comes next in order is, to shew in what cases it may be introduced with propriety, when it is suitable, when unsuitable. I begin with observing, that passionate personification is not promoted by every passion indifferently. All dispiriting passions are averse to it; and remorse, in particular, is too serious and severe to be gratified with a phantom of the mind. I cannot, therefore, approve the following speech of Enobarbus, who had deserted his master Antony:

Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon!
When men revolted shall upon record
Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did
Before thy face repent-

Oh sovereign mistress of true melancholy !

The poisonous damp of night dispunge upon me;

That life, a very rebel to my will,

May hang no longer on me.-Antony and Cleopatra, act 4. sc. 7.

If this can be justified, it must be upon the Heathen system of theology, which converted into deities the sun, moon, and stars.

Secondly, After a passionate personification is properly introduced, it ought to be confined to its proper province, that of gratifying the

passion, without giving place to any sentiment or action but what answers that purpose; for personification is at any rate a bold figure, and ought to be employed with great reserve. The passion of love, for example, in a plaintive tone, may give a momentary life to woods and rocks, in order to make them sensible of the lover's distress; but no passion will support a conviction so far stretched, as that these woods and rocks should be living witnesses to report the distress to others.

Ch'i' t'ami piu de la mia vita,

Se tu nol sai, crudele,

Chiedilo à queste selve

Che te'l diranno, et te'l diran con esse

Le fere loro e i duri sterpi, di sassi

Di questi alpestri monti,

Ch'i' ho si spesse volte

Inteneriti al suon de' miei lamenti.-Pastor Fido, act 3. sc. 3.

No lover who is not crazed will utter such a sentiment. It is plainly the operation of the writer, indulging his inventive faculty without regard to nature. The same observation is applicable to the following passage:

In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire

With good old folks, and let them tell their tales

Of woful ages, long ago betid:

And ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief,

Tell them the lamentable fall of me,

And send thy hearers weeping to their beds.

For why the senseless brands will sympathize

The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,

And in compassion weep the fire out.—Richard II. act 5. sc. 2.

One must read this passage very seriously to avoid laughing. The following passage is quite extravagant. The different parts of the human body are too intimately connected with self, to be personified by the power of any passion; and after converting such a part into a sensible being, it is still worse to make it be conceived as rising in rebellion against self:

Cleopatra. Haste, bare my arm, and rouse the serpent's fury.
Coward flesh!-

Would'st thou conspire with Cæsar to betray me,
As thou wert none of mine? I'll force thee to't.

Dryden, All for Love, act 5.

Next comes descriptive personification; upon which I must observe, in general, that it ought to be cautiously used. A personage in a tragedy, agitated by a strong passion, deals in warm sentiments; and the reader, catching fire by sympathy, relishes the boldest personifications. But a writer, even in the most lively description, taking a lower flight, ought to content himself with such easy personifications as agree with the tone of mind inspired by the description. Nor is even such easy personification always admitted; for, in plain narrative, the mind, serious and sedate, rejects personification altogether. Strada, in his history of the Belgic wars, has the following passage, which, by a strained elevation above the tone of the subject, deviates into a burlesque.