or PERSONALIZING, the giving an inanimate being the figure, sentiments, and language of a person.

Dr Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric, gives this account of personification. "It is a figure, the use of which is very extensive, and its foundation laid deep in human nature. At first view, and when considered abstractly, it would appear to be a figure of the utmost boldness, and to border on the extravagant and ridiculous. For what can seem more remote from the track of reasonable thought, than to speak of stones and trees, and fields and rivers, as if they were living creatures, and to attribute to them thought and sensation, affections and actions? One might imagine this to be no more than childish conceit, which no person of taste could relish. In fact, however, the case is very different. No such ridiculous effect is produced by personification when properly employed; on the contrary, it is found to be natural and agreeable, nor is any very uncommon degree of passion required in order to make us relish it. All poetry, even in its most gentle and humble forms, abounds with it. From prose it is far from being excluded; nay, in common conversation, very frequent approaches are made to it. 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 being deceitful; such expressions show the facility with which the mind can accommodate the properties of living creatures to things that are inanimate, or to abstract conceptions of its own forming.

"Indeed, it is very remarkable, that there is a wonderful propensity in human nature to animate all objects. Whether this arises from a sort of assimilating principle, from a propensity to spread a resemblance of ourselves over all other things, or from whatever other cause it arises, so it is, that almost every emotion which in the least agitates the mind betrays upon its object a momentary idea of life. Let a man, by an unwary step, sprain his ankle, or hurt his foot upon a stone, and in the ruffled discomposed moment he will sometimes feel himself disposed to break the stone in pieces, or to utter passionate expressions against it, as if it had done him an injury. If one has been long accustomed to a certain set of objects, which have made a strong impression on his imagination; as to a house, where he has passed many agreeable years; or to fields, and trees, and mountains, among which he has often walked with the greatest delight; when he is obliged to part with them, especially if he has no prospect of ever seeing them again, he can scarce avoid having somewhat of the same feeling as when he is leaving old friends. They seem endowed with life. They become objects of his affection; and, in the moment of his parting, it scarce seems absurd to him to give vent to his feeling in words, and to take a formal adieu.

"So strong is that impression of life which is made upon us, by the more magnificent and striking objects of nature especially, that I doubt not in the least of this having been one cause of the multiplication of divinities in the heathen world. The belief of dryads and naiads, of the genius of the wood and the god of the river, among men of lively imaginations, in the early ages of the world, easily arose from this turn of mind. When their favourite rural objects had often been animated in their fancy, it was an easy transition to attribute to them some real divinity, some unseen power or genius which inhabited them, or in some peculiar manner belonged to them. Imagination was highly gratified, by thus gaining somewhat to rest upon with more stability; and when belief coincided so much with imagination, very slight causes would be sufficient to establish it.

"From this deduction may be easily seen how it comes to pass that personification makes so great a figure in all compositions where imagination or passion have any concern. On innumerable occasions it is the very language of imagination and passion; and therefore deserves to be attended to, and examined with peculiar care. There are three different degrees of this figure, which it is necessary to remark and distinguish, in order to determine the propriety of its use. The first is, when some of the properties or qualities of living creatures are ascribed to inanimate objects; the second, when those inanimate objects are introduced as acting like such as have life; and the third, when they are represented either as speaking to us, or as listening to what we say to them."

The ingenious professor goes on to investigate the nature of personification at considerable length. We shall shall give his caution for the use of it in prose compositions, in which he informs us this figure requires to be used with great moderation and delicacy. "The same liberty is not allowed to the imagination there as in poetry. The same affinities cannot be obtained for raising passion to its proper height by the force of numbers and the glow of style. However, addresses to inanimate objects are not excluded from prose; but have their place only in the higher species of oratory. A public speaker may on some occasions very properly address religion or virtue; or his native country, or some city or province, which has suffered perhaps great calamities, or been the scene of some memorable action. But we must remember, that as such addresses are among the highest efforts of eloquence, they should never be attempted unless by persons of more than ordinary genius: for if the orator fails in his design of moving our passions by them, he is sure of being laughed at. Of all frigid things, the most frigid are the awkward and unseasonable attempts sometimes made towards such kinds of personification, especially if they be long continued. We see the writer or speaker toiling and labouring to express the language of some passion which he neither feels himself nor can make us feel. We remain not only cold, but frozen; and are at full leisure to criticize on the ridiculous figure which the personified object makes, when we ought to have been transported with a glow of enthusiasm. Some of the French writers, particularly Bossuet and Flechier, in their sermons and funeral orations, have attempted and executed this figure not without warmth and dignity. Their works are exceedingly worthy of being consulted for instances of this and of several other ornaments of style. Indeed the vivacity and ardour of the French genius is more suited to this bold species of oratory, than the more correct but less animated genius of the British, who in their prose works very rarely attempt any of the higher figures of eloquence."