LECTURE XXIX.

Of PERSONIFICATION.

ANOTHER fource of pleasure in works of

genius and imagination, is the views which writers. take frequent opportunities of presenting to us of human fentiments, human paffions, and human actions. As the fentiments and actions of our fellow-creatures are more interefting to us than any thing belonging to inanimate nature, or the actions of brute animals, a much greater variety of fenfations and ideas must have been excited by them, and confequently adhere to them by the principle of affociation. Hence it is of prodigious advantage, in treating of inanimate things, or merely of brute animals, to introduce frequent allufions to human. actions and fentiments, where any resemblance will make it natural. This converts every thing we treat of into thinking and acting beings. We fee life, fenfe, and intelligence, every where. The effect of this figure is fo pleafing, that when there is no kind of deception in the cafe, if the refemblance be fufficiently ftrong, and other circum-. stances favour the figure, the impropriety of the perfonification gives not the leaft offence.

In fact, this figure is become fo general, that it is almost impoffible to difcourfe about any thing, in the calmest manner in the world, without borrowing fome some part of our language from the regions of life and fenfe. Even the most abftrufe mathematicians and metaphyficians cannot always fo far abftract themfelves from human life, as not to retain many terms borrowed from the actions and paffions of mankind. The metaphysical terms agent and patient, always carry along with them ideas which the definitions of them do not include. And, provided the foreign ideas do not affect the propofition formed out of them (as was perhaps the cafe in the old philofophy) they give fome degree of colour and life to those abstract ideas, without being attended with any inconvenience.

The ideas of male and female are, in the English language, so strictly confined to objects that have sex, and confequently life and fenfe, that I queftion whether any term implying fex, to whatever it be applied, do not excite a momentary idea of thofe qualities. Can the following paffage in Milton be read without a mental perfonification?

Firft in his Eaft the glorious lamp was feen,
Regent of day, and all th' horizon round
Invefted with bright rays, jocund to run

His longitude thro' heaven's high road: the grey
Dawn and pleiades before him danced,
Shedding fweet influence. Lefs bright the moon,
But oppofite, in levell'd Weft, was fet,

1

His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him, for other light she needed none.

PARADISE LOST, Book VII. 1. 370.

Perhaps it may not appear quite chimerical to fuppofe, that the extenfion of fex in most fouthern languages, to almost all inanimate things, may have taken its rife from a lively imagination, perfonifying almoft every thing.

The flightest personification is that which proceeds no further than a fimple metaphor, or metonymy, in which a new name is borrowed from the affections of fenfible and thinking beings, and transferred upon those that are infenfible; as in fuch phrases as the following, imperious ocean, thirfty ground, furious dart, &c. Such expreffions as thefe are used by perfons under no emotion of paffion, and with very little elevation of fancy. Yet, even in these cafes, the imagination must, for a moment, afcribe fenfibility to thofe infenfible objects, or we could never bear the epithets. while we were reading them. A perfonification is, at least, a metaphor derived from the idea of fenfible and thinking beings; and every metaphor is fomething more than a bare comparison. In comparisons (as we obferved before) the difference between any two objects is preferved, whereas in metaphors they are confounded, and one of the things is changed as it were, in idea, into the other. The firft hint of a perfonification, like that for a metaphor, may be a comparison; but,

by

by the power of imagination, it ends in fomething

more.

I fee no difficulty in the perfonification of paffions, qualities, and other things of an abstract nature, which have no real existence; as of pleasure and revenge, in the following paffage of Shakespeare:

For pleasure and revenge

Have ears more deaf than adders, to the voice
Of any true decifion.-

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, A& II. Scene

4.

Or of flander:

No, 'tis flander,
Whofe tongue

Out-venoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath
Rides on the pofting winds.-

CYMBELINE, A& III. Scene 4.

Our ideas, in this cafe, it is true, are not abstract; but the ideas of perfons with the characters of the paffion or quality defcribed, which are not difficult to form.

Ideas of the properties and affections of thinking beings are fo familiar to our minds, and the animate and inanimate parts of nature abound fo much in mutual analogies, ftronger or weaker, that no perfon, of the leaft imagination, can help being frequently ftruck with those refemblances. The very circumftance of our being obliged to have recourse to sensible ideas, and the terms which

exprefs

exprefs their relations, when we fpeak of intellectual things, cannot fail greatly to extend those analogies. As intellectual ideas are conftantly denoted by terms originally. borrowed from fenfible things, these terms will carry back with them their new affociations, and transfer them upon the objects to which they originally belonged; and as there are few terms which have not been thus applied, we can hardly felect a sentence but a lively imagination might find in it fome hint for perfonification.

From this flight and momentary personification, which doth no more than just give a hint for an epithet, and will not bear to be extended beyond it, we may perceive, in different examples of this figure, the images transferred from the regions of life and fenfe growing more and more lively, till at last inanimate things fhall be fo effectually perfonified, as to excite very strong emotions and paffions in the human mind; which could not be effected without our previously imagining them to be fo far endued with fenfe and defign, as to have become the proper authors of fome good or harm that hath befallen us. It is neceffary, likewise, that the inanimate object be viewed for fome fenfible space of time in this light, if the paffion it excites be expreffed in words or actions; for those effects are not momentary.

As the relish for this figure muft depend upon the liveliness of the imagination, which is extreme

ly