6. PERSONIFICATION or PROSOPOPOEIA is that figure by which we attribute life and action to inanimate objects. When we say, "The ground thirsts for rain," or, "the earth smiles with plenty;" when we speak of "ambition's being restless," or, "a disease's being deceitful;" such expressions show the facility, with which the mind can accommodate the properties of living creatures to things that are inanimate.
The following are fine examples of this figure:
7. AN APOSTROPHE is an address to some person, either absent or dead, as if he were present and listening to us. The address is frequently made to a personified object; as, "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?"
"Weep on the rock of roaring winds, O maid of Inistore; bend thy fair head over the waves, thou fairer than the ghost of the hills, when it moves in a sun-beam at noon over the silence of Morveu."
8. ANTITHESIS. Comparison is founded on the resemblance, antithesis, on the contrast or opposition, of two objects.
Example. "If you wish to enrich a person, study not to increase his stores, but to diminish his desires."
9. HYPERBOLE or EXAGGERATION consists in magnifying an object beyond its natural bounds. "As swift as the wind; as white as the snow; as slow as a snail;" and the like, are extravagant hyperboles.
"I saw their chief, tall as a rock of ice; his spear, the blasted fir; his shield, the rising moon; he sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the bills."
10. VISION is produced, when, in relating something that is past, we use the present tense, and describe it as actually, passing before our eyes.
11. INTERROGATION. The literal use of an interrogation, is to ask a question; but when men are strongly moved, whatever they would affirm or deny with great earnestness, they naturally put in the form of a question.