pestas, classem impetu disjecit, prætoriam hausit; quasi non vecturam amplius Cæsarem, Cæsarisque fortunam.-Dec. I. 1. 1.

Neither do I approve, in Shakspeare, the speech of King John, gravely exhorting the citizens of Angiers to a surrender; though a tragic writer has much greater latitude than an historian. Take the following specimen :

The cannons have their bowels full of wrath;

And ready mounted are they to spit forth

Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls.-Act II. Sc. 3.

Secondly, If extraordinary marks of respect to a person of low rank be ridiculous, no less so is the personification of a low subject. This rule chiefly regards descriptive personification; for a subject can hardly be low that is the cause of a violent passion; in that cir cumstance, at least, it must be of importance. But to assign any rule other than taste merely, for avoiding things below even descriptive personification, will, I am afraid, be a hard task. A poet of superior genius, possessing the power of inflaming the mind, may take liberties that would be too bold in others. Homer appears not extravagant in animating his darts and arrows; nor Thomson in animating the seasons, the winds, the rains, the dews; he even ventures to animate the diamond, and doth it with propriety:

-That polish'd bright,

And all its native lustre let abroad,

Dares, as it sparkles on the fair one's breast,
With vain ambition emulate her eyes.

But there are things familiar and base, to which personification can not descend. In a composed state of mind, to animate a lump of matter even in the most rapid flight of fancy, degenerates into burlesque :

How now! What noise! that spirit's possess'd with haste,
That wounds th' unresisting postern with these strokes.
Shakspeare, Measure for Measure, Act IV. Sc. 6

-Or from the shore

The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,

And sing their wild notes to the list'ning waste.

Speaking of a man's hand cut off in battle:

Thomson, Spring, 1. 23.

Te decisa suum, Laride, dextera quærit:
Semianimesque micant digiti: ferrumque retractant.

Eneid, x. 895.

The personification here of a hand is insufferable, especially in a plain narration; not to mention that such a trivial incident is too minutely described

The same observation is applicable to abstract terms, which ought not to be animated unless they have some natural dignity. Thomson, in this article, is licentious; witness the following instances out of many :

O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills!
On which the power of cultivation lies,

And joys to see the wonders of his toil.-Summer, 1. 1485.

Then sated Hunger bids his brother Thirst
Produce the mighty bowl;

Nor wanting is the brown October, drawn
Mature and perfect, from his dark retreat
Of thirty years, and now his honest front

Flames in the light refulgent.—Autumn, l. 516.

516. Thirdly, It is not sufficient to avoid improper subjects: some preparation is necessary in order to rouse the mind; for the imagination refuses its aid, till it be warmed at least, if not inflamed. Yet Thomson, without the least ceremony or preparation, introduceth each season as a sensible being:

From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,

Child of the sun, refulgent Summer comes,

In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth.
He comes attended by the sultry hours,

And ever fanning breezes, on his way;

While from his ardent look, the turning Spring

Averts her blushful face, and earth and skies

All smiling to his hot dominion leaves.—Summer, l. 1.

See Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad with all his rising train,

Vapors, and clouds, and storms.- Winter, 1. 1.

This has violently the air of writing mechanically without taste. It is not natural that the imagination of a writer should be so much heated at the very commencement; and, at any rate, he cannot expect such ductility in his readers. But if this practice can be justified by authority, Thomson has one of no mean note: Vida begins his first eclogue in the following words:

Dicite, vos Musæ, et juvenum memorate querelas;
Dicite; nam motas ipsas ad carmina cautes

Et requiesse suos perhibent vaga flumina cursus.

Even Shakspeare is not always careful to prepare the mind for this bold figure. Take the following instance:

Upon these taxations,

The clothiers all, not able to maintain
The many to them 'longing, have put off
The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers; who,
Unfit for other life, compell'd by hunger,

And lack of other means, in desp'rate manner

Daring th' event to th' teeth, are all in uproar,

And Danger serves among them.- Henry VIII. Act I. Sc. 4.

Fourthly, Descriptive personification, still more than what is passionate, ought to be kept within the bounds of moderation. A reader warmed with a beautiful subject, can imagine, even without passion, the winds, for example, to be animated; but still the winds

515. How descriptive personification should be used. Degrees of it.-Personification of a low subject.-Things too familiar and base to be personified.

are the subject; and any action ascribed to them beyond or contrary to their usual operation, appearing unnatural, seldom fails to banish the illusion altogether: the reader's imagination, too far strained, refuses its aid; and the description becomes obscure, instead of being more lively and striking. In this view the following passage describing Cleopatra on shipboard, appears to me exceptionable:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with 'em.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Sc. 3.

The winds in their impetuous course have so much the appearance of fury, that it is easy to figure them wreaking their resentment against their enemies, by destroying houses, ships, &c.; but to figure them love-sick, has no resemblance to them in any circumstance. In another passage, where Cleopatra is also the subject, the personification of the air is carried beyond all bounds:

The city cast

Its people out upon her; and Antony
Inthron'd i' th' market place, did sit alone,
Whistling to th' air, which but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,

And made a gap in nature.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Sc. 3.

The following personification of the earth or soil is not less wild:

She shall be dignified with this high honor,
To bear mylady's train; lest the base earth
Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss;
And of so great a favor growing proud,

Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower,
And make rough winter everlastingly.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Sc. 7.

Shakspeare, far from approving such intemperance of imagination, puts this speech in the mouth of a ranting lover. Neither can Í relish what follows:

Omnia quæ, Phoebo quondam meditante, beatus
Audit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros,
Ille canit.

Virgil, Buc. vi. 82.

I

The cheerfulness singly of a pastoral song, will scarce support personification in the lowest degree. But admitting, that a river gently flowing may be imagined a sensible being listening to a song, cannot enter into the conceit of the river's ordering his laurels to learn the song: here all resemblance to any thing real is quite lost. This however is copied literally by one of our greatest poets; early indeed, before maturity of taste or judgment:

Thames heard the numbers as he flow'd along,
And bade his willow's learn the moving song.

Pope's Pastorals, Past. iv. l. 18.

This author, in riper years, is guilty of a much greater deviation from the rule. Dulness may be imagined a deity or idol, to be worshipped by bad writers; but then some sort of disguise is requisite, some bastard virtue must be bestowed, to make such worship in some degree excusable. Yet in the Dunciad, Dulness, without the least disguise, is made the object of worship. The mind rejects such a fiction as unnatural; for dulness is a defect, of which even the dullest mortal is ashamed:

Then he: Great tamer of all human art!

First in my care, and ever at my heart;
Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,
With whom my Muse began, with whom shall end,
E'er since Sir Fopling's periwig was praise.

To the last honors of the Bull and Bays!
O thou! of bus'ness the directing soul!
To this our head, like bias to the bowl,

Which as more pond'rous, made its aim more true,
Obliquely waddling to the mark in view:
O! ever gracious to perplex'd mankind,
Still spread a healing mist before the mind:
And, lest we err by Wit's wild dancing light,
Secure us kindly in our native night.
Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence,
Guard the sure barrier between that and sense;
Or quite unravel all the reasoning thread,
And hang some curious cobweb in its stead!
As, forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,
And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky;
As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe,
The wheels above urged by the load below:
Me Emptiness and Dulness could inspire,
And were my elasticity, and fire.

B. i. 163.

517. Fifthly, The enthusiasm of passion may have the effect to prolong passionate personification; but descriptive personification cannot be dispatched in too few words: a circumstantiate description dissolves the charm, and makes the attempt to personify appear ridiculous. Homer succeeds in animating his darts and arrows; but such personification spun out in a French translation, is mere burlesque :

Et la flèche en furie, avide de son sang,
Part, vole à lui, l'atteint, et lui perce le flanc.

Horace says happily,

Post equitem sedet atra Cura.

Observe how this thought degenerates by being divided, like the former, into a number of minute parts:

Un fou rempli d'erreurs, que le trouble accompagne
Et malade à la ville ainsi qu'à la campagne,

En vain monte à cheval pour tromper son ennui,
La Chagrin monte en croupe, et galope avec lui.

516. Preparation necessary.-Criticism on Thomson.-Limits to personification.--Faulty examples from Shakspeare and Pope.

A poet, in a short and lively expression, may animate his muse, his genius, and even his verse; but to animate his verse, and to address a whole epistle to it, as Boileau doth (Epistle x.), is insupportable. The following passage is not less faulty:

Her fate is whisper'd by the gentle breeze,
And told in sighs to all the trembling trees;
The trembling trees, in every plain and wood,
Her fate remurmur to the silver flood;
The silver flood, so lately calm, appears
Swell'd with new passion, and o'erflows with tears
The winds, and trees, and floods, her death deplore,
Daphne, our grief! our glory! now no more.

Pope's Pastorals, iv. 61.

Let grief or love have the power to animate the winds, the trees, the floods, provided the figure be dispatched in a single expression; even in that case, the figure seldom has a good effect; because grief or love of the pastoral kind, are causes rather too faint for so violent an effect as imagining the winds, trees, or floods, to be sensible beings. But when this figure is deliberately spread out, with great regularity and accuracy, through many lines, the reader, instead of relishing it, is struck with its ridiculous appearance.

SECTION II.
Apostrophe.

518. THIS figure and the former are derived from the same prin ciple. If, to humor a plaintive passion, we can bestow a momentary sensibility upon an inanimate object, it is not more difficult to bestow a momentary presence upon a sensible being who is absent:

Strike the harp in praise of Bragela, whom I left in the isle of mist, the spouse of my love. Dost thou raise thy fair face from the rock to find the sails of Cuchullin? The sea is rolling far distant, and its white foam shall deceive thee for my sails.-Retire, for it is night, my love, and the dark winds sigh in thy hair. Retire to the hall of my feasts, and think of the times that are past; for I will not return till the storm of war is gone. O Connal, speak of wars and arms, and send her from my mind; for lovely with her raven hair is the white-bosom'd daughter of Sorglan.-Fingal, b. i.

Speaking of Fingal absent :

Happy are thy people, O Fingal; thine arm shall fight their battles. Thou art the first in their dangers; the wisest in the days of their peace; thou speakest, and thy thousands obey; and armies tremble at the sound of thy steel, Happy are thy people, O Fingal.

This figure is sometimes joined with the former: things inanimate, to qualify them for listening to a passionate expostulation, are not only personified, but also conceived to be present:

517. Descriptive personification should be short. Examples.