Tefuses 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 2. 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
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 2. sc. 3.

The following personification of the earth, or soil, is not less wild:

She shall be dignified 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 2. sc. 7.

Shakspeare, far from approving such intemperance of imagination, puts this speech in the mouth of a ranting lover. Neither can I reJish what follows:

Omnia quae, Phœbo quondam meditante, beatus
Audit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros,
Ille canit.

Virgil, Buc. vi, 82.

The cheerfulness singly of a pastoral song will scarce support per-
sonification in the lowest degree. But, admitting that a river gently
flowing may be imagined a sensible being listening to a song, I can.
not 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; ear-
ly 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. 4. l. 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 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 perplexed 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, forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,
And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky;
As clocks to weight their nimbie motion owe,
The wheels above urged by the load below;
Me Emptiness and Dulness could inspire,
And were my elasticity and fire.-Book 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 auch'io.-Pastor Fido, act 2. sc. 1.

Fifthly, the enthusiasm of passion may have the effect to prolong passionate personification; but descriptive personification cannot be dispatched 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 a lui, l'atteint, et lui perce le flano.

Horace says happily,

Post equitem sedit 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,
Le 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 dispatched 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 wind, trees, or floods, to be sensi. ble 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.

SECT. II.

APOSTROPHE.

THIS figure and the former are derived from the same principle. If, to humour a plaintive passion, we can bestow a momentary sensibility upon an inanimate object, it is not more difficult to bestow a momentary presence upon a sensible being who is absent :

Hine Drepani me portus et illætabilis ora
Accipit. Hic, pelagi tot tempestatibus actus,
Heu! genitorem, omnis curæ casusque levamen,
Amitto Anchisen: hic me pater optime, fessum
Deseris, heu! tantis nequicquam erepte periclis.
Nec vates Helenus, cum multa borrenda moneret,

Hos mihi praedixit luctus ; non dira Celaeno.-Æneid, iii. 707.

Strike the harp in praise of Bragela, whom I left in the isle of mist, the spouse of my love. Dost thou raise thy fair face from the rock to find the sails of Cuchullin? The sea is rolling far distant, and its white foam shall deceive thee for my sails. Retire, for it is night, my love; and the dark winds sigh in thy hair. Retire to the hall of my feasts, and think of the times that are past; for I will

* Epistle 10.

not return till the storm of war is gone. O Connal, speak of wars and arms. and send her from my mind; for lovely with her raven-hair is the white bosom'd daughter of Sorglan- Fingal, b. 1.

Speaking of Fingal absent :

Happy are thy people, O Fingal; thine arm shall fight their battles. Thou art the first in their dangers, the wisest in the days of their peace: thou speakest, and thy thousands obey; and armies tremble at the sound of thy steel. Happy are thy people, O Fingal.

This figure is sometimes joined with the former. Things inanimate, to qualify them for listening to a passionate expostulation, are not only personified, but also conceived to be present :

Et, si fata Deûm, si mens non læva fuisset,
Impulerat ferro Argolicas fœdare latebras:

Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres.-Æneid. ii, 54.

That chase thee from thy country, and expose

Those tender limbs of thine to the event

Of non-sparing war? And is it I

That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou

Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark

Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers;

That ride upon the violent speed of fire,

Fly with false aim; pierce the still moving air
That sings with piercing: do not touch my Lord.

All's well that Ends Well, act 3. sc. 4.

And let them lift ten thousand swords, said Nathos with a smile; the sons of car-borne Usnoth will never tremble in danger. Why dost thou roll with all thy foam, thou roaring sea of Ullin? why do ye rustle on your dark wings, ye whistling tempests of the sky? Do ye think, ye storms, that ye keep Nathos on the coast? No; his soul detains him, children of the night! Althos, bring my father's arms, &c.-Fingal.

Whither hast thou fled, O wind, said the King of Morven! Dost thou rustle in the chambers of the south, and pursue the shower in other lands? Why comest not thou to my sails, to the blue face of my seas? The foe is in the land of Morven, and the King is absent.-Ibid.

Has thou left thy blue course in heaven, golden-hair'd son of the sky! The west hath opened its gates; the bed of thy repose is there. The waves gather to behold thy beauty they lift their trembling heads; they see thee lovely in ̧ thy sleep; but they shrink away with fear. Rest in thy shadowy cave, O Sun! and let thy return be in joy.—Ibid.

Daughter of Heaven, fair art thou! the silence of thy face is pleasant. Thou comest forth in loveliness; the stars attend thy blue steps in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O Moon! and brighten their dark-brown sides. Who is like thee in heaven, daughter of the night? The stars are ashamed in thy presence, and turn aside their sparkling eyes. Whither dost thou retire from thy course, when the darkness of thy countenance grows? Hast thou thy hall like Ossian? Dwell'st thou in the shadow of grief? Have thy sisters fallen from heaven? and are they who rejoiced with thee at night no more?—Yes, they have fallen, fair light; and often dost thou retire to mourn.---But thou thyself shalt, one night, fail; and leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars will then lift their heads: they who in thy presence were ashamed, will rejoice.—Ibid.

This figure, like all others, requires an agitation of mind. In plain narrative, as for example, in giving the genealogy of a family, it has no good effect :

-Fauno Picus pater; isque parentem
Te, Saturne, refert; tu sanguinis ultimus auctor.-Æneid, vii. 43.

SECT. III.

HYPERBOLE.

In this figure, by which an object is magnified or diminished beyond truth, we have another effect of the foregoing principle. An object of an uncommon size, either very great of its kind, or very little, strikes us with surprise; and this emotion produces a momentary conviction, that the object is greater or less than it is in reality.* The same effect, precisely, attends figurative grandeur or littleness; and hence the hyperbole, which expresses that momentary conviction. A writer, taking advantage of this natural delusion, warms his description greatly by the hyperbole; and the reader, even in his coolest moments, relishes the figure, being sensible that it is the operation of nature upon a glowing fancy.

It cannot have escaped observation, that a writer is commonly more successful in magnifying by an hyperbole than in diminishing. The reason is, that a minute object contracts the mind, and fetters the power of imagination; but that the mind, dilated and inflamed with a grand object, moulds objects for its gratification with great facility. Longinus, with respect to a diminishing hyperbole, quotes the following ludicrous thought from a comic poet: "He was owner of a bit of ground no larger than a Lacedæmonian letter." But, for the reason now given, the hyperbole has by far the greater force in magnifying objects; of which take the following examples:

For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.-Genesis xiii. 15, 16.

Illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret

Gramina: nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas.-Æneid, vii. 808.

-Atque imo- barathri ter gurgite vastos

Sorbet in abruptum fluctus, rursusque sub auras

Erigit alternos, et sidera verberat undâ.-Æneid, iii. 421.

-Horificis juxta tonant Ætna ruinis,

Interdumque atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem,
Turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla:

Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit.-Eneid, iii. 571.

-When he speaks,

Eneid, iii. 619.

The air, a charter'd libertine, is still.-Henry V. act 1. sc. 1.

Now shield with shield, with helmet helmet clos'd,

To armour armour, lance to lance oppos'd.

Host against host with shadowy squadrons drew,

The sounding darts in iron tempests flew,

Victors and vanquish'd join promiscuous cries,

And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise;

With streaming blood the slipp'ry fields are dy'd,

And slaughter'd heroes swell the dreadful tide.-Iliad, iv. 508.

The following may also pass, though far stretched:

* See chap. 8.

+ Chap. 31. of his Treatise on the Sublime.