finding it in poems of the darkest ages and remotest countries. No figure is more frequent in Ossian's works; for example,

The battle is over, said the king, and I behold the blood of my friends. Sad is the heath of Lena, and mournful the oaks of Cromla.

Again:

The sword of Gaul trembles at his side, and longs to glitter in his hand.

King Richard having got intelligence of Bolingbroke's invasion, says, upon landing in England from his Irish expedition, in a mixture of joy and resentment,

I weep for joy

To stand upon my kingdom once again.
Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,

Though rebels wound thee with their horses' hoofs.
As a long parted mother with her child

Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting;
So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favour with my royal hands.
Feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle earth,
Nor with thy sweets comfort his rav'nous sense:
But let thy spiders that suck up thy venom,
And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way,
Doing annoyance to the treach'rous feet
Which with usurping steps do trample thee.
Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies;
And, when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,
Guard it, I pr'ythee, with a lurking adder,
Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch

Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies.
Mock not my senseless conjuration, Lords:
This earth shall have a feeling; and these stones
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king

Shall faulter under foul rebellious arms.

Richard II. Act 111. Sc. 2.

After a long voyage, it was customary among the ancients to salute the natal soil. A long voyage being of old a greater enterprise than at present, the safe return to one's country after much fatigue and danger, was a delightful circumstance; and it was natural to give the natal soil a temporary life, in order to sympathize with the traveller. See an example, Agamemnon of Eschilus, Act 3. in the beginning. Regret for leaving a place one has been accustomed to, has the same effect.*

Terror produceth the same effect: it is communicated in thought to every thing around, even to things inanimate :

Speaking of Polyphemus,

Clamorem immensum tollit, quo pontus et omnes

Intremuere undæ, penitusque exterrita tellus

Italiæ.

Eneid. iii. 672.

As when old Ocean roars,

And heaves huge surges to the trembling shores.

Iliad, ii. 249.

Go, view the settling sea. The stormy wind is laid; but the billows still tremble on the deep, and seem to fear the blast.

* Philoctetes of Sophocles, at the close.

Fingal,

Racine, in the tragedy of Phedra, describing the sea-monster that destroyed Hippolytus, conceives the sea itself to be struck with terror as well as the spectators:

Le flot qui l'apporta recule epouvanté.

A man also naturally communicates his joy to all objects around, animate or inanimate :

As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, 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. 4.

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

24

It

Invested with bright rays; jocund to run

His longitude through heaven'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. 7. l. 370.*

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 morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 1.

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 emo

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

tions 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 conviction.

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 adapted 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, abstract 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,

* See Appendix, containing definitions and explanations of terms, § 28.

VOL. II.