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where killing a man is lawful in felf defence, uses the following expreffions; " Aliquando nobis gladius ad oc"cidendum hominem ab ipfis porrigitur legibus." Here the laws are beautifully personified, as reaching forth their hand, to give us a fword for putting a man to death.

In poetry personifications of this kind are extremely frequent, and are indeed the life and foul of it. In the descriptions of a poet, who has a lively fancy, every thing is animated. Homer, the father of poetry, is remarkable for the use of this figure. War, peace, darts, riv ers, every thing in fhort is alive in his writings. The fame is true of Milton and Shakespeare. No perfonification is more striking, or introduced on a more proper occafion, than the following of Milton upon Eve's eating the forbidden fruit ;

So faying, her rafh hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the fruit, fhe pluck'd, she ate ;
Earth felt the wound, and nature from her feat,
Sighing thro' all her works, gave signs of wo,
That all was loft.

The third and highest degree of this figure is yet to be mentioned; when inanimate objects are represented, not only as feeling and acting, but as fpeaking to us, or listening, while we addrefs them. This is the boldest of all rhetorical figures; it is the ftyle of ftrong paffion only; and therefore should never be attempted, except when the mind is confiderably heated and agitated..

Milton affords a very beautiful example of this figure: in that moving and tender addrefs, which Eve makes to Paradife immediately before fhe is compelled te leave it.

Oh, unexpected ftroke, worse than of death!
Muft I thus leave thee, Paradife? Thus leave
Thee, native foil; these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods; where I had hope to spend
Quiet, though fad, the respite of that day,
Which must be mortal to us both? O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early vifitation, and my last

At even; which I bred up with tender hand
From your first opening buds, and gave you names;
Who now shall rear you to the fun, or rank

Your tribes, and water from the ambrofial fount?

This is the real language of nature and of female paffion..

In the management of this fort of perfonification tworules are to be obferved. Firft, never attempt it, un-lefs prompted by ftrong paffion, and never continue it, when the paffion begins to fubfide. The fecond rule is, never personify an object, which has not fome digni- ty in itself, and which is incapable of making a proper figure in the elevation, to which we raise it. To address the body of a deceased friend is natural; but to addrefs the clothes, which he wore, introduces low and degrading ideas. So likewife addreffing the feveral

parts of the body, as if they were animated, is not agreeable to the dignity of paffion. For this reafon the following paffage in Pope's Eloifa to Abelard is liable to cenfure.

Dear fatal name, rest ever unreveal'd,

Nor pass these lips, in holy filence feal'd.
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where, mix'd with Gods, his lov'd idea lies;
O, write it not, my hand;—his name appears
Already written-blot it out, my tears.

Here the name of Abelard is first perfonified; which, as the name of a person often stands for the perfon himfelf, is expofed to no objection. Next Eloifa perfonifies her own heart; and, as the heart is a dignified part of the human frame, and is often put for the mind, this alfo may pafs without cenfure. But, when fhe addref write his name, this is

fes her hand, and tells it not to forced and unnatural. Yet the figure becomes ftill worfe, when fhe exhorts her tears to blot out, what her hand had written. The two laft lines are indeed altogether unfuitable to the tenderness, which breathes through the rest of that inimitable poem.

APOSTROPHE is an addrefs to a real perfon; but one, who is either abfent or dead, as if he were present, and listening to us. This figure is in boldnefs a degree lower, than perfonification; fince it requires lefs effort of imagination to fuppofe perfons prefent, who

are dead or absent, than to animate infenfible beings, and direct our difcourfe to them. The poems of Offian abound in beautiful inftances of this figure. "Weep on

the rocks of roaring winds, O Maid of Iniftore. "Bend thy fair head over the waves, thou fairer, than "the ghost of the hills, when it moves in a funbeam at "noon over the filence of Morven. He is fallen. Thy "youth is low; pale beneath the fword of Cuchullin.”

COMPARISON, ANTITHESIS, INTERROGA: TION, EXCLAMATION, AND OTHER FIGURES OF SPEECH.

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Comparison or fimile is, when the resemblance between two objects is expreffed in form, and usually pursued more fully, than the nature of a metaphor admits. As when we fay, "The actions of princes are "like thofe great rivers, the course of which every one "beholds, but their springs have been feen by few." This fhort inftance will show that a happy comparison is a fort of sparkling ornament, which adds luftre and beauty to discourse.

All comparisons may be reduced under two heads; explaining and embellishing comparisons. For, when a writer compares an object with any other thing, it always is, or ought to be, with a view to make us under

ftand that object more clearly, or to render it more pleafing. Even abftract reasoning admits explaining comparifons. For instance, the distinction between the powers of fenfe and imagination is in Mr. Harris's Hermes illuftrated by a fimile; "As wax," fays he, "would

not be adequate to the purpofe of fignature, if "it had not the power to retain as well, as to receive "the impreffion; the fame holds of the foul with refpect to fenfe and imagination. Senfe is its receptive

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power, and imagination its retentive. Had it fenfe without imagination, it would not be as wax, but as water; where, though all impreffions be inftantly made, yet as foon, as they are made, they are loft." In comparisons of this kind perfpicuity and usefulness are chiefly to be ftudied.

But embellishing comparifons are thofe, which moft frequently occur. Refemblance, it has been obferved, is the foundation of this figure. Yet refemblance muft not be taken in too strict a sense for actual fimilitude. Two object may raise a train of concordant ideas in the mind, though they resemble each other, ftrictly speaking, in nothing. For example, to describe the nature of foft and melancholy mufic, Offian fays, " The mufic "of Carryl was, like the memory of joys, that are past,

pleafant and mournful to the foul." This is happy and delicate; yet no kind of mufic bears any refemblance to the memory of past joys.

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