See Winter comes, to rule the vary'd year,
Sullen and sad with all his rising train,
Vapours, 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 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.

喇

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 dignifi'd with this high honour,
To bear my Lady's train; lest the base earth
Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss
And of so great a favour 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 I relish what follows:

Omnia quæ, Phœbo quondam meditante, beatus
Audit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros,

Ille canit.

Virgil, Buc. vi. 82.

The cheerfulnes 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, I 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 willows learn the moving song,

Pope's Pastorals, Past. iv. 1. 13.

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 honours of the Bull and Bays!
O thou! of business 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

As, forc'd 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 urg'd by the load below:
Me Emptiness and Dullness could inspire,
And were my elasticity, and fire.

B. i. 163.

The following instance is stretched beyond all resemblance it is bold to take a part or member of a living creature, and to bestow upon it life, volition, and action: after animating two such members, it is still bolder to make one envy the other; for this is wide of any resemblance to reality:

De nostri baci

Meritamenti sia giudice quella,
Che la bocca ha più bella.
Tutte concordemente

Elesser la belissima Amarilli ;

Ed' ella i suoi begli occhi

Dolcemente chinando,

Di modesto rossor tutta si tinse,

E mostro ben, che non men bella è dentro

Di quel che sia di fuosi;

O fosse, che'l bel volto

Avesse invidia all' onorata bocca,

E s'adornasse anch' egli

Della purpurea sua pomposa vesta,
Quasi volesse dir, son bello anch'io.

Pastor Fido, Act II. Sc. 1.

Fifthly, The enthusiasm of passion may have the effect to prolong passionate personification: but descriptive personification cannot be despatched 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 fleche en furie, avide de son sang,
Part, vole à lui, l'atteint, et lui perce le flano.

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.

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,* 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 ev'ry 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 despatched 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.

* Epistle x.