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.

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 thee tales,
Of woful ages, long ago betid :

And ere thou bid good-night, to quit their grief,
Tell thou the lamentable fall of me,

And send the 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 V. 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!

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

DRYDEN.-ALL FOR LOVE, ACT V.

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. is even such easy personification always admitted; for, in plain narrative, the mind, serious and sedate, rejects personification altogether.

Nor

I do not 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 speci

men:

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 circumstance, 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 cannot 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. 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. 1435.

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, 1. 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 disclos'd,
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.

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

SUMMER, 1. 1.

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.

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 the event to th' teeth, are all in uproar,
And Danger serves among them.

HENRY VIII.-ACT I. Sc. 2.

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 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 perfum'd, 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 lovesick 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:

R

The city cast

Its people out upon her; and Antony
Enthron'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 my Lady'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.

Dullness 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, Dullness, without the least disguise, is made the object of worship. The mind rejects such a fiction as unnatural; for dullness 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;
Dullness! 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 reas'ning thread,
And hang some curious cobweb in its stead!