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 essé

Le fere loro e i duri sterpi, e i sassi

Di questi alpestri monti,

Ch'i' ho si spesse volte

Inteneriti al suon de' miei lamenti.

Pastor Fido, Act III. 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 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. 1.

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

Coward flesh

fury.

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 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, relisheth 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 burlesque.

Vix descenderat a prætoria navi Cæsar; cum fœda illico exorta in portu tempestas, classem impetu disjecit, prætoriam hausit; quasi non vecturam amplius Cæsarem, Cæsarisque fortunam. Dec. I. l. 1.

Neither do I approve, in Shakespeare, the speech of King John, gravely exhorting the citizens of Angiers to a surrender; though a tragic writer has much greater latitude than a 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. 1.

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 possessed with haste, That wounds th' unresisting postern with these strokes. Measure for Measure, Act IV. Sc. 2.

Or from the shore

The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the list'ning waste.

Thomson, Spring, 1.23.

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

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

Eneid. x. 395.

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, l. 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, l. 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 æther 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