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 be derived from an actual conviction, momentary indeed, of life and intelligence. But it is evident from numberless instances, that personification is not always so complete. Personification is a common figure in descriptive poetry, understood to be the language of the writer, and not of any of his personages in a fit of passion. In this case, it seldom or never comes up to a 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
Invested with bright rays; jocund to run
His longitude through heav’n’s high road: the gray
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.[17]
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.
Romeo and Juliet, act 3. sc. 7.
But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
Hamlet, act 1. sc. 1.
It 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; nor that the sun, the moon, the day, the morn, are here understood to be sensible beings. What then is the nature of this personification? Upon considering the matter attentively, I discover that this species of personification 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 emotions in the mind[18]; 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. The elevation however in this case, is far from being so great as when the personification arises to an actual conviction; and therefore must be considered as of a lower or inferior sort. Thus personification is of two kinds. The first or nobler, may be termed passionate personification: the other, or more humble, descriptive personification; because seldom or never is personification in a description carried the length of 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 to the mind: 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 this personification never goes farther than the imagination.
Sed mihi vel Tellus optem prius ima dehiscat;
Vel pater omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam,
Ante pudor quam te violo, aut tua jura resolvo.
Æneid. 4. l. 24.
Thus, to explain the effects of slander, it is imagined to be a voluntary agent:
—— No, ’tis Slander;
Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue
Out venoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath
Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie
All corners of the world, kings, queens, and states,
Maids, matrons: nay, the secrets of the grave
This viperous Slander enters.
Shakespear, Cymbeline, act. 3. sc. 4.