And Shakspeare personifies death and its operations in a manner

singularly fanciful:

-Within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and humor'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle-walls, and farewell king.

Richard II. Act III. Sc. 2.

Not less successfully is life and action given even to sleep:

King Henry. How many thousands of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O gentle Sleep,

Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eye-lids down,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, Sleep, ly'st thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why ly'st thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch,
A watch-case to a common larum-bell?

Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deaf'ning clamors in the slippery shrouds,
That, with the hurly, Death itself awakes?
Can'st thou, O partial Sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and the stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a King? Then, happy low! lie down
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Second Part Henry IV. Act III. Sc. 1.

I shall add one example more, to show that descriptive personification may be used with propriety, even where the purpose of the discourse is instruction merely:

Oh! let the steps of youth be cautious,
How they advance into a dangerous world;
Our duty only can conduct us safe.
Our passions are seducers: but of all
The strongest Love. He first approaches us
In childish play, wantoning in our walks:
If heedlessly we wander after him,
As he will pick out all the dancing-way,
We're lost, and hardly to return again.
We should take warning: he is painted blind,
To show us, if we fondly follow him,
The precipices we may fall into.

Therefore let Virtue take him by the hand;
Directed so, he leads to certain joy.

Southern.

Hitherto success has attended our steps: but whether we shall complete our progress with equal success, seems doubtful; for when we look back to the expressions mentioned in the beginning, thirsty ground, furious dart, and such like, it seems no less difficult than at first, to say whether there is in them any sort of personification. Such expressions evidently raise not the slightest conviction of sensibility: nor do I think they amount to descriptive personification; because, in them, we do not even figure the ground or the dart to be animated. If so, they cannot at all come under the present subject. To show which, I shall endeavor to trace the effect that such expressions have in the mind. Does not the expression angry ocean, for example, tacitly compare the ocean in a storm to a man in wrath? By this tacit comparison, the ocean is elevated above its rank in nature; and yet personification is excluded, because, by the very nature of comparison, the things compared are kept distinct, and the native appearance of each is preserved. It will be shown afterward, that expressions of this kind belong to another figure, which I term a figure of speech, and which employs the seventh section of the present chapter.

Though thus in general we can distinguish descriptive personification from what is merely a figure of speech, it is, however, often difficult to say, with respect to some expressions, whether they are of the one kind or of the other. Take the following instances: The moon shines bright: in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise; in such a night, Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan wall, And sigh'd his soul towards the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night.

Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1.
-I have seen

Th' ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds.

Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 3.

With respect to these, and numberless other examples of the same kind, it must depend upon the reader, whether they are examples of personification, or of a figure of speech merely: a sprightly imagination will advance them to the former class; with a plain reader they will remain in the latter.

Having thus at large explained the present figure, its different kinds, and the principles upon which it is founded; what comes next in order, is, to show in what cases it may be introduced with propriety, when it is suitable, when unsuitable. I begin with observing, that passionate personification is not promoted by every passion indifferently. All dispiriting passions are averse to it; and remorse, in particular, is too serious and severe to be gratified with a phantom of the mind. I cannot therefore approve of the following speech of Enobarbus, who had deserted his master Antony:

Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon,

When men revolted shall upon record

Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did
Before thy face repent

Oh sovereign Mistress of true melancholy,
The poisonous damp of night dispunge upon me,
That life, a very rebel to my will,

May hang no longer on me.

Anthony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Sc. 9.

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 esse

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 sympathise
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 fury.
Coward flesh

Would'st thou conspire with Cæsar, to betray me,

As thou wert none of mine? Ill 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. 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 Shakspeare, 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:

Act II. Sc. 1.

The cannons have their bowels full of wrath; And ready mounted are they to spit forth Their iron-indignation 'gainst your walls. 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 does 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.

Shakspeare, 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.

* Scarcely had Cæsar descended from the Prætorian ship, when a boisterous tempest broke out in that harbor, scattered the fleet by its violence, and sunk the Prætorian, as if it was no more to carry Cæsar and Cæsar's fortunes.

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

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

Laris' hand

Eneid, X. 395.

Dismembered, sought its owner on the strand,
The trembling fingers yet the falchion strain,
And threaten still the extended stroke in vain.

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.

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.

Summer, 1. 1435.

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, introduces 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 Sprin

Averts her blushful face, and earth and skies

All smiling to his hot dominion leaves.

Summer, 1. 1.

See Winter comes, to rule the vary'd 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.

Sing, ye Muses, and record the repinings of youth-sing, for song has moved the rocks and stopped the course of the wandering rivers.