harangues. They have likewise adopted those livery figures, and that daring freedom of language, which the learned have afterwards found so well fitted to express the rapid transitions of the imagination, and the ardours of a passionate mind."*

Dr. Beattie has remarked that " savages, illiterate persons, and children, have comparatively but few words in proportion to the things they may have occasion to speak of; and must therefore recur to tropes and figures more frequently than persons of copious elocution. A seaman, or mechanic, even when he talks of that which does not belong to his art, borrows his language from that which does; and this makes his diction figurativé to a degree that is sometimes entertaining enough."+

What then is it that has drawn the attention of critics and rhetoricians so much to these forms of speech? They remarked that in them consists much of the beauty and force of language, and found them always to bear some character or distinguishing marks by the help of which they could reduce them under separate classes. To this, perhaps, they owe their name. As the figure or shape of one body distinguishes from another, so each of these forms of speech has a cast peculiar to itself, which both distinguishes from the rest, and from the simple form of expression. Simple expression just makes our idea known to others; but figurative language bestows a

Ferguson's History of Civil Society, part iii. sect. viii. Beattie's Essay on Poetry and Music, p. 236. particula

particular dress upon that idea; a dress which serves to distinguish and adorn it.

Figures in general may be described to be that language which is prompted either by the imagination,. or by the passions. Rhetoricians commonly divide them into two great classes, figures of words, and figures of thought. The former are denominated tropes they consist in the employment of a word to signify something that is different from its original and primitive meaning; so that if you alter the word, you destroy the figure. Thus in the instance lately adduced, the trope consists in "light and darkness" being not meant in a literary sense, but substituted for "comfort and adversity," on account of some resemblance, or analogy which they are supposed to bear to those conditions of life. The other class, térmed figures of thought, supposes the words to be used in their proper and literal meaning, and the figure to consist in the turn of the thought. This is the case with personifications, and apostrophes; where, though you vary the words which are used, or translate them from one language into another, you may still preserve the same figure. This distinction, however, is of small importance: nothing can be built upon it in practice; nor can it always be clearly observed. Provided we remember that figurative language imports some colouring of the imagination, or some emotion or passion, expressed in our style, it is a matter of very little moment, whether we give to some particular mode of expression the name of a trope or of a figure.

very

As

As it would be tedious to dwell on all the variety of figurative expressions which rhetoricians have enumerated, I shall only select such figures as most fre-. quently occur. The principles and rules laid down concerning them will sufficiently direct us to the use of the rest, either in prose or poetry.*

CHAP. XIII.

OF PERSONIFICATION.

THE boldest effort of the imagination seems to be that which bestows sensibility and voluntary motion upon things inanimate. At first view, one would be disposed to conclude that this figure borders on the extravagant and ridiculous. For what can seem more remote from the track of reasonable thought, than to speak of stones, trees, fields, and rivers, as if they were living creatures, and to attribute to them thought and sensation, action and affection? This would appear to be nothing more than childish conceit which no person of taste could relish. The case, however, is very different. No such ridiculous effect is produced by personification, when judiciously managed on the contrary, it is found to be natural and agreeable. Nor is any very uncommon degree of passion required to make us relish it. Into every species of poetry it easily

Many curious observations especting the nature of figurative language occur in the Marquis Beccaria's Rieherche intorno alla Natura dello Stile.

gains admission: it is by no means excluded from. prose; and even in common conversation it not unfrequently finds a place. Thus we do not hesitate to speak of a furious dart, a

deceitful disease, the thirsty ground, the angry ocean. The use of such expressions shews the facility with which the mind can accommodate the properties of living creatures to inanimate objects, or to its own abstract ideas.

That our actions are too much influenced by passion, is an acknowledged truth; but it is not less certain that passion also possesses considerable influence over our perceptions, opinions, and belief. When by any animating passion, whether pleasant or painful, an impulse is given to the imagination, we are in that condition disposed to use every sort of figurative expression. Now those figures are generally founded upon a momentary belief in some circumstance which calm and unclouded reason would represent in quite a different point of view. "A man agitated," says Dr. Beattie," with any interesting passion, especially of long continuance, is apt to fancy that all nature sympathises with him. If he has lost a beloved friend, he thinks the sun less bright than at other times; and in the sighing of the winds and groves, in the lowings of the herd, and in the murmurs of the stream, he seems to hear the voice of lamentation. But when joy or hope predominates, the whole world assumes a gay appearance. In the contemplation of every part o nature, of every condition of mankind, of every form of human society, the benevolent and pious man, the morose and the cheerful, the miser and the misanthrope, finds occasion to indulge his favourite passion, and F

sees.

sees, or thinks he sees, his own temper reflected back in the actions, sympathies, and tendencies of other things and persons. Our affections are, indeed, the medium through which we may be said to survey ourselves, and every thing else; and whatever be our inward frame, we are apt to perceive a wonderful congeniality in the world without us. And hence, the fancy, when roused by real emotions, or by the pathos of composition, is easily reconciled to those figures of speech that ascribe sympathy, perception, and other attributes of animal life, to things inanimate, or even to notions merely intellectual."*

In the following example of personification, Almeria calls upon the earth to protect her from the unkindness of her father.

O Earth, behold, I kneel upon thy bosom,
And bend my flowing eyes to stream upon
Thy face, imploring thee that thou wilt yield;
Open thy bowels of compassion, take

Into thy womb the last and most forlorn

Of all thy race. Hear me, thou common parent;
I have no parent else. Be thou a mother,
And step between me and the curse of him,
Who was who was, but is no more a father;
But brands my innocence with horrid crimes;
And, for the tender ́names of child and daughter,
Now calls me murderer and parricide, Congreve.

Plaintive passions are extremely solicitous for vent; and a soliloquy frequently answers this purpose. But when such a passion becomes excessive, it cannot be gratified except by sympathy from others; and if

• Beattie's Essay on Poetry and Music, p. 255.