The second rule is, never to personify any object in this way, but such as has some dignity in itself, and can make a proper figure in this elevation to which we raise it. The observance of this rule is required, even in the lower degrees of Personification; but still more, when an address is made to the personified object. To address the corpse of a deceased friend is natural, but to address the clothes. which he wore, introduces mean and degrading ideas.; So also, addressing the several parts of one's body, as if they were animated, is not congruous to the dignity of passion. For this reason, I must condemn the following passage, in a very beautiful Poem of Mr. Pope's, Eloisa to Abelard:

Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd.
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where, mix'd with God's, his lov'd idea lies:
Oh! write it not, my hand! - his name appears
Already written: - blot it out, my tears!

Here are several different objects and parts of the body personified; and each of them is addressed or spoken to; let us consider with what propriety. The first is, the name of Abelard: "Dear fatal name! rest ever," &c. To this no reasonable objection can be made. For, as the name of a person often stands for the person himself, and suggests the same ideas, it can bear this Personification with sufficient dignity. Next, Eloisa speaks to herself; and personifies her heart for this purpose: "Hide it, my heart, within " that close," &c. As the heart is a dignified part of the human frame, and is often put for the mind or affections, this also may pass without blame. But, when from her heart she passes to her hand, and tells

her hand not to write his name, this is forced and unnatural; a personified hand is low, and not in the style of true passion; and the Figure becomes still worse, when, in the last place, she exhorts her tears to blot out what her hand had written. "Oh! write "it not," &c. There is, in these two lines, an air of epigrammatic conceit, which native passion never suggests; and which is altogether unsuitable to the tenderness which breathes through the rest of that excellent poem.

In prose compositions, this Figure requires to be used with still greater moderation and delicacy. The same liberty is not allowed to the imagination there, as in poetry. The same assistances cannot be obtained for raising passion to its proper height by the force of numbers, and the glow of style. However, addresses to inanimate objects are not excluded from prose; but have their place only in the higher species of oratory. A public Speaker may on some occasions very properly address religion or virtue; or his native country, or some city or province, which has suffered perhaps great calamities, or been the scene of some memorable action. But we must remember, that as such addresses are among the highest efforts of eloquence, they should never be attempted, unless by persons of more than ordinary genius. For if the orator fails in his design of moving our passions by them, he is sure of being laughed at. Of all frigid things, the most frigid are the awkward and unseasonable attempts sometimes made towards such kinds of Personification, especially if they be long continued. We see the writer or speaker toiling, and labouring, to express the language of some passion, which he neither feels himself, nor can make us feel. We remain not only cold, but frozen; and are at full leisure to criticise on the ridiculous figure which the personified object makes, when we ought to have been transported with a glow of enthusiasm. Some of the French writers, particularly Bossuet and Fletcher, in their sermons and funeral orations, have attempted and executed this Figure, not without warmth and dignity. Their works are exceedingly worthy of being consulted, for instances of this, and of several other ornaments of style. Indeed, the vivacity and ardour of the French genius is more suited to this bold species of oratory, than the more correct but less animated genius of the British, who in their prose works very rarely attempt any of the high Figures of eloquence.* So much

* In the "Oraisons Funebres de M. Bossuet," which I consider as one of the master-pieces of modern eloquence, Apostrophes and addresses to personified objects frequently occur, and are supported with much spirit. Thus, for instance, in the funeral oration of Mary of Austria, Queen of France, the author addresses Algiers, in the prospect of the advantage which the arms of Louis XIV. were to gain over it: "Avant lui la France, presque sans vais"seaux, tenoit en vain aux deux mers. Maintenant, on les voit "couvertes depuis le Levant jusqu'au couchant de nos flottes "victorieuses: & la hardiesse Françoise port par tout la terreur

avec le nom de Louis. Tu cederas, tu tomberas sous se vain" queur, Alger! riche des depouilles de la Chretienté. Tu disois "en ton cœur avare, je tiens le mer sous ma loix, et les nations " sont ma proie. La legereté de tes vaisseaux te donnoit de la "confiance. Mais tu te verras attaqué dans tes murailles, comme " un oisseau ravissant qu'on iroit chercher parmi ces rochers, & dans " sons nid, où il partage son butin à ses petits. Tu rends dejà tes "esclaves. Louis a brisé les fers, dont tu acablois ses sujets," &c. In another passage of the same oration, he thus apostrophizes the Isle of Pheasants, which had been rendered famous for being the scene of those conferences in which the treaty of the Pyren

for Personifications, or Prosopopœia in all its different forms.

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Apostrophe is a Figure so much of the same kind, that it will not require many words. It is an address to a real person; but one who is either absent or dead, as if he were present and listening to us. It is so much allied to an address to inanimate objects personified, that both these figures are sometimes called Apostrophes. However, the proper Apostrophe is in boldness one degree lower than the address to personified objects; for it certainly requires a less effort of imagination to suppose persons present who are dead or absent, than to animate insensible beings, and direct our discourse to them. Both figures are subject to the same rule of being prompted by passion, in order to render them natural; for both are the

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language of passion or strong emotions only. Among the poets Apostrophe is frequent; as in Virgil.

- Pereunt Hypanisque Dymasque
* Confixi a sociis; nec te, tua plurima, Pantheu
Labentem pietas, nec Apollinis infula texit! *

t

The poems of Ossian are full of the most beautiful instances of this Figure: "Weep on the rocks of " roaring winds, O maid of Inistore; bend thy fair " head over the waves, thou fairer than the ghost of "the hills, when it moves in a sunbeam at noon over "the silence of Morven! He is fallen! Thy youth " is low; pale beneath the sword of Cuthullin !" + Quinctilian affords us a very fine example in prose; when, in the beginning of his sixth book, deploring the untimely death of his son, which had happened during the course of the work, he makes a very moving and tender Apostrophe to him. “Nam quo " ille animo, qua medicorum admiratione, mensium " octo valetudinem tulit? ut me in supremis conso"latus est? quam etiam jam deficiens, jamque non "noster, ipsum illum alienatæ mentis errorem circa " solas literas habuit? Tuosne ergo, O meæ spes " inanes! labentes oculos, tuum fugientem spiritum "vidi? Tuum corpus frigidum, exangue complexus, "animam recipere, auramque communem haurire " amplius potui? Tene, consulari nuper adoptione " ad omnium spes honorum patris admotum, te, avun"culo prætori generum destinatum; te, omnium spe "Atticæ eloquentiæ candidatum, parens superstes