-As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozembic, 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. iv.

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 heav'n's high road: the grey
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.

Paradise Lost, b. vii. l. 970*

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

Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 7.

But look, the mora, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 1.

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 prosopopæia; a beauty unknown in other languages, where every word is masculine or feminine.

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 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 convic

tion.

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 adapled 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, ab

See Appendix, containing definitions and explanations of terms, sect 28.

stract 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, queeus, and states,
Maids, matrons; nay, the secrets of the grave
This viperous Slander enters.

Shakspeare, Cymbeline, Act III. 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 II. 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 monarchise, 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 ;

Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle-walls, and farewell king.
Richard II. Act III. 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 eye-lids 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?
Oh 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 the 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 appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a king? Then, happy tow! lie down;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Second Part, Henry IV. Act III. 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 cautions,
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, wantening 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 show 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 shown afterward, that expressions of this kind belong to another figure, which I term a figure of speech, and which employs the se venth 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