[243] The ridicule was crystallized in Canning’s famous parody, “The Loves of the Triangles,” which appeared in “The Anti-Jacobin,” Nos. 23, 24 and 26, April to May, 1798. (Vide “The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin,” edited C. Edmonds, 1854, 3rd edition, 1890.)
[244] “The Botanic Garden” (4th edition, 1799), Interlude I, Vol. II, p. 64. Cp. also ibid., Interlude III, p. 182 foll.
[245] For details see Legouis, op. cit.
[246] Both the original and the final versions of the “Evening Walk” and the “Descriptive Sketches” are given by Hutchinson, op. cit., Appendix, pp. 592, 601.
[247] But the artistic possibilities of Personification were not unrecognized by writers and critics in the eighteenth century. Vide Blair’s lecture on “Personification” (“Lectures on Rhetoric”) 9th edition, 1803; Lec. XVI, p. 375.
[248] “The Stones of Venice” (1851), Vol. II, Chap. VIII, pp. 312 foll.—The Ducal Palace, “Personification is, in some sort, the reverse of symbolism, and is far less noble. Symbolism is the setting forth of a great truth by an imperfect and inferior sign ... and it is almost always employed by men in their most serious moods of faith, rarely in recreation.... But Personification is the bestowing of a human or living form upon an abstract idea; it is in most cases, a mere recreation of the fancy, and is apt to disturb the belief in the reality of the thing personified.”
[249] For an illuminating analysis, see Elton, “A Survey of English Literature,” 1780-1830 (1912), pp. 1-29.
[250] “Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise,” Vol. IV, pp. 175-178.
[251] Cf. Coleridge’s remarks in “Biographia Literaria,” ed. Shawcross, Chap. I (Oxford, 1907).
[252] Elton, “The Augustan Ages” (1895), p. 211.