5. Fourth. Much is gained by Succession to a Climax.

The influence of great qualities is enhanced by their being presented as the highest term of a succession, proceeding by gradual increase. The effect of a mountain height depends upon the number of intermediate heights that lead up to it.

The following, from Shelley, shows the climactic arrangement:

Yet I endure.

I ask the earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?

6. In order to put these conditions further to the test, we have to distinguish between the two modes or degrees of Personification.

I. The ascription of feelings and will, together with distinction of gender.

This is seen at its highest pitch in Hebrew poetry. For example: 'The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands'. 'The whole earth is at rest and is quiet; they break forth before thee into singing. Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come against us.' The opening chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah abounds in personification of the boldest kind: 'How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks,' &c.

This is to substitute a people collectively for an individual, and is not a great departure from literality, while the intensity of the emotion justifies the boldness of the figure.

The highest pitch is reached in such passages as the first of these, representing the hills singing and the trees clapping their hands. To take such a licence supposes an extreme and exuberant outburst of joy.

HIGHEST FORM OF THE EFFECT.

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Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind,' 'The Sensitive Plant' and 'The Cloud' are examples of bold personification sustained throughout. The Cloud' is the most coherent; but it passes from pure personification to ingenious tracing of cause and effect, expressed in highly poetic phrase :

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast.

The literal and the metaphorical are here mixed up together, and the proper personality is not developed. We sympathize with the effects so described, and regard them as indications of some internal power, but what we feel is a surprise of causation, rather than an inspiration of personal might.

There is a greater approach to the personifying effect in such lines as :

And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

As I sleep in the arms of the blast.

This is poetical, or nothing; it is different from the mere garnishing of a physical sequence.

Tennyson's Talking Oak' is equally devoid of the quality of personification. It is simply a device for bringing out the lover's feelings in dramatic form; a pillar, or other commanding object, would have equally suited the purpose. The oak is personified poetically, when its parts of resemblance to humanity (remote though they be) are so expressed as to recall human qualities-erectness, branching arms, resistance to the elements, endurance, gnarled robustness.

It will be seen that personification does not consist in making insentient objects perform all the minute actions of men or animals, but in the seizing of such features as have a real likeness to the human form, energies and expressionthe moan of the sea, the sigh of the wind, the dash of the cataract. It flourishes better on passing allusion than on detailed description: although the modern nature poets, as contrasted with the ancients, have worked the interest to a great degree of minuteness.

7. Besides natural objects, personification is largely extended to Abstractions.

The abstract notions-Life, Death, Love, Anger, Friendship, Religion, Knowledge, Virtue, Liberty, Wisdom, Genius,

Hope, Pleasure, Evil-lend themselves to personification, in consequence of their being attributes of human beings. They derive a slight touch of vivacity by being regarded as persons. The occasion must admit of an elated strain of feeling; not more, however, than is habitual to poetry. Can Wisdom lend with all her boasted power?

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil.

Begone dull Care.

When leagued Oppression poured to northern wars.

We have already seen the double effect of brevity and concentration on what is essential, arising from the employment of abstract terms for the corresponding concrete (See FIGURES OF SIMILARITY, p. 184.) The same advantages accrue by the still higher flight of personification.

The same effect may be produced with abstractions taken from attributes of the lower animals. For example :

Amid the roses, fierce repentance rears

Her snaky crest.

In Collins's 'Ode to the Passions,' the selection of attributes are very much at random; but the detailed effects of each are more tersely given by the abstract form, and the delineation falls easily under the personal treatment.

Time, Eternity, Force, Night, Space, Immensity,—are farther removed from persons than the foregoing; yet, under circumstances that justify the bolder figures, they can be personified with effect. The vastness of the conceptions that they include causes them to take rank with the loftiest agencies of the world, and they enter largely into the vocabulary of the Sublime,

Milton's Hail, Holy Light," is not strictly an abstraction. It personifies the most elevated of the powers of Nature. Heat and Magnetism might be equally personified, if they inspired the same intensity of emotion. In the aspect of fire, Heat is associated with devastating and destructive power, and in that capacity rises to personification. Fire-worship is a form of religion.

The effective use of personification to give vividness to abstract ideas, may be studied in 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso'. Melancholy, Darkness, Care, Laughter, Liberty, Night, Morn, Sleep,-are some of the ideas thus personified. On the other hand, the practice of personifying abstractions

.

INFERIOR DEGREE OF THE EFFECT.

29

takes a different turn in Johnson and other eighteenth century writers. For example :

From bard to bard the frigid caution crept,
Till declamation roared, whilst passion slept;
Yet still did virtue deign the stage to tread;
Philosophy remained, though nature fled.
But forced at length her ancient reign to quit,
She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of wit:
Exulting folly hailed the joyful day,

And Pantomime and song confirmed her sway.

If there be any value in this, it is a species of vituperation, where the personifying words are used to give brevity and compactness.

The English language possesses an advantage in personification, by confining the masculine and feminine genders to persons. The effect is, besides, aided by the possessive case, which also is strictly applied only to persons. In the following instance the personification is weakened by the use of its' and 'it' instead of 'her' and 'she'. The neuter pronoun is used to avoid ambiguity, but produces a sense of discord :

8. II. Attributing to things inanimate some quality of living beings.

The silent night, the thirsty ground, the angry sea, a dying lamp, a speaking likeness, the sluggish Ouse,-exemplify a familiar operation of rendering objects more vivid by epithets derived from persons. They are really a special form of the Metaphor, and must be judged according to the laws of Similitudes. Like other figures of resemblance, they may be appropriate and effective, or they may be wholly useless. The same strength of emotion as in the higher form is not here necessary.

The subtle tracing of human aspects in the immense variety of the vegetable world—as indicating both strength and pathos-has been a progressing study of the poets. It is an important region of the far-reaching Nature interest, which is largely created, but not exhausted, by the personifying tendency. (See SUBJECTS.)

HARMONY.

1. Of all the conditions of a work of Fine Art, the most imperative is HARMONY.

A plurality of things affecting the senses or the deeper feelings of the mind, at the same time, may be emotionally indifferent to each other. On the other hand, they may be either harmonious or discordant, according as the feelings they suggest are in agreement or opposition.

The discovery was early made that harmony is a source of pleasure, discord a source of pain. In a harmonious succession of effects, the particular emotion aroused is intensified by the agreement; while in discordant effects, the separate emotional impressions are weakened by their opposition. But, besides this, there is a distinct pleasure in the feeling of emotional unison, and a corresponding pain when it is conspicuously wanting. In their extreme manifestations, the pleasure or the pain may be very acute. Artists have endeavoured in their productions to superadd the pleasure of harmony to the gratification of the simple feelings. Music is sweet sounds made sweeter by harmony. Poetry possesses far wider scope; being, so to speak, made up of— high and passionate thoughts

To their own music chanted.

The pleasure of harmony, like the pleasure of beauty as a whole, increases at a rapid rate by delicacy of adjustment; and contrariwise with the pain of discords.

The subject has already come up, under FIGURES OF SIMILARITY. It will appear again, with reference to the sound of language, under the head of MELODY.

Harmony has to be considered on the great scale, in the adjustment of the parts of a lengthened composition, as an Epic, a Drama or a Novel. The Plot and Incidents must all work towards one result; Characters have to be made self-consistent; the Scenery and Surroundings adapted to the tenor of the events; the Language generally fitted to the Emotions to be roused. On the small scale, every distinct utterance--every stanza, sentence or line-has to be harmoniously constructed, if the highest effects of poetry are to be realized. It is in the study of these minute harmonies that rhetorical art can be best exhibited.