such exaggeration as the following, in one of our dramatic poets:

-I found her on the floor

In all the storm of grief, yet beautiful;
Pouring forth tears at such a lavish rate,

That, were the world on fire, they might have drown'd
The wrath of Heav'n, and quench'd the mighty ruin.

This is mere bombast. The person herself who laboured under the distracting agitations of grief, might be permitted to express herself in strong hyperbole; but the spectator who describes her cannot be allowed equal liberty. The just boundary of this figure cannot be ascertained by any precise rule. Good sense and an accurate taste must ascertain the limit, beyond which, if it pass, it becomes extravagant.

QUESTIONS.

1. Of what does hyperbole consist? 2. How many kinds of hyperbole are there? 3. What are they? 4. Which is best?. 5. In what kind of description must hyperbole be used with great caution? 6. When may strong hyperboles be used without displeasure? 7. Can the just boundary of this figure be ascertained by any rule?

PERSONIFICATION AND APOSTROPHE.

WE proceed now to those figures which lie altogether in the thought, the words being taken in their common and literal sense. We shall begin with Personification, by which life and action are attributed to inanimate objects. All poetry, even in its most humble form, abounds in this figure. From prose it is far from being ex

cluded; nay, even in common conversation frequent approaches are made to it. When we

say, the earth thirsts for rain, or the fields smile with plenty; when ambition is said to be restless, or a disease to be deceitful; such expressions show the facility with which the mind can accommodate the properties of living creatures to things inanimate, or abstract conceptions.

There are three different degrees of this figure, which it is requisite to distinguish, in order to determine the propriety of its use. The first is when some of the properties of living creatures are ascribed to inanimate objects; the second, when these inanimate objects are described as acting like such as have life; and the third, when they are exhibited either as speaking to us, or as listening to what we say to them.

The first and lowest degree of this figure, which consists in ascribing to inanimate objects some of the qualities of living creatures, raises the style so little, that the humblest discourse admits it without any force. Thus "a raging storm, a deceitful disease, a cruel disaster,” are familiar expressions. This, indeed, is so ob. scure a degree of personification, that it might, perhaps, be properly classed with simple metaphers, which almost escape our observation.

The second degree of this figure is, when we represent inanimate objects acting like those that have life. Here we rise a step higher, and the personification becomes sensible. According to the nature of the action which we ascribe to those inanimate objects, and to the particularity with which we describe it, is the strength of

the figure. When pursued to a considerable length, it belongs only to studied harangues; when slightly touched, it may be admitted into less elevated compositions. Cicero, for example, speaking of the cases where killing a man is lawful in self-defence, uses the following expressions: "Aliquando nobis gladius ad occidendum hominem ab ipsis porrigitur legibus." Here the laws are beautifully personified, as reaching forth their hand to give us a sword for putting a man to death.

In poetry, personifications of this kind are extremely frequent, and are, indeed, the life and soul 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, rivers, every thing, in short, is alive in his writings. The same is true of Milton and Shakspeare. No personification is more striking, or introduced on a more proper occasion, than the following of Milton upon Eve's eating the forbidden fruit:

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she ate!
Earth felt the wound; and Nature from: her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.

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 speaking to us, or listening while we address them. This is the boldest of all rhetorical figures; it is the style of strong passion only, and therefore should never be attempted, except when the mind is considerably heated and agi

tated. Milton affords a very beautiful example of this figure, in that moving and tender address which Eve makes to Paradise, immediately before she is compelled to leave it.

Oh, unexpected stroke, worse than of death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? Thus leave
Thee, native soil; these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of gods! where I had hope to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
Which must be mortal to us both? O flowers!
That never will in other climate grow;
My early visitation, and my last

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

Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?

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

To

In the management of this sort of personification, two rules are to be observed. First, never attempt it unless prompted by strong passion, and never continue it when the passion begins to subside. The second rule is, never personify an object which has not some dignity in itself, and which is incapable of making a proper figure in the elevation to which we raise it. address the body of a deceased friend is natural; but to address the clothes which he wore, introduces low and degrading ideas. So, likewise, addressing the several parts of the body, as if they were animated, is not agreeable to the dig nity of passion. For this reason the following passage in Pope's Eloisa to Abelard is liable to

censure:

Dear, fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips, in holy silence seal'd.
Hide it my heart, within that close disguise,
Where mix'd with God's 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 personified; which, as the name of a person often stands for the person himself, is exposed to no objection. Next, Eloisa personifies her own heart; and, as the heart is a dignified part of the human frame, and is often put for the mind, this also may pass without censure. But when she addresses her hand, and tells it not to write his name, this is forced and unnatural. Yet the figure becomes still worse, when she exhorts her tears to blot out what her hand had written. The two last lines are indeed altogether unsuitable to the tenderness which breathes through the rest of that inimitable poem.

APOSTROPHE is an address to a real person, but one who is either absent or dead, as if he were

present and listening to us. This figure is in boldness a degree lower than personification; since it requires less effort of imagination to suppose persons present who are dead or absent, than to animate insensible beings, and direct our discourse to them. The poems of Ossian abound in beautiful instances of this figure." Weep on the rocks 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 sunbeam at noon over the silence of Morven. He is fallen! Thy youth is low; pale beneath the sword of Cuchullin."

QUESTIONS.

1. What is personification? 2. What kind of composition abounds in this figure? 3. What are instances of personification? 4. How many different degrets of