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24. II. Another and inferior degree of personification consists in merely attributing some quality of living beings to things inanimate.

As, the thirsty ground, a dying lamp, the angry sea, a cruel disaster, the smiling year. Thomson, describing the influence of the sunbeams upon the snow in the valley, says,

"Perhaps the vale

Relents awhile to the neglected ray."

"Upon a rock whose haughty brow."

The two forms of personification shade into each other. The second is also included among Metaphors, constituting one species of that figure.

25. The English language, by reserving the distinction of gender for living beings that have sex, gives especial scope for personification.

In many languages, as Greek, Latin, French, German, &C., gender is attributed to inanimate objects, in a manner that deprives it of all its meaning. In English, the masculine and feminine pronouns are regularly applied only to persons and to the more distinguished animals. Hence they are closely associated in our minds with personality; and their occasional application to things without life has at once a personifying effect.

26. The special value of personification arises from the interest awakened in us by the actions, feelings, and deportment of beings like ourselves.

Some of the strongest feelings of our nature have reference to persons; such are love, admiration, vanity, the thirst for power, revenge, derision. It is one effect of advancing civilization to enlarge the interest that we take in our fellow-creatures. The compositions that touch the deepest chords of the mind deal principally with persons, as Poetry, Romance, and History. From the earliest times, this interest has been extended, by ascribing human feelings to the objects of the outer world on some pretext of remote resemblance. Thus the powers of nature, as the winds and running streams, have been assimilated

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to living beings, and fancifully endowed with will, purpose, and feeling, so as to be recommended to our human sympathies. The highest merits of style are expressed by the words animation, vivacity, liveliness, as if the conferring of life were the means of awakening our strongest interest. (See Strength, Poetry.)

The highest form of personification should be used seldom, and only when justified by the presence of strong feeling.

ALLEGOEY—FABLE-PARABLE.

27. When, with a view to some moral or instruction, subjects remote from one another are brought into a comparison sustained throughout the details, the result is an Allegory.

The Pilgrim's Progress is a well-known example. In it the spiritual life or progress of the Christian is represented at length by the story of a pilgrim in search of a distant country, which he reaches after many struggles and difficulties.

Comparisons of such length as Extract I. (appendix) are allegories.

Examples occur in the Spectator—the Vision of Mirza, 159; Luxury and Avarice, 55; The Paradise of Fools, 460. In the Appendix, Extract Ill., is an allegorical contrast of Probability and Plausibility, from Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric.

Chaucer's House of Fame is an allegory, imitated by Pope in his Temple of Fame.

Spenser's Faery Queen is allegorical throughout; the vir tues and vices being personified, and made to act out their nature in a series of supposed adventures.

Thomson's Castle of Indolence is one of the many imitations of Spenser.

Swift's Tale of a Tub is an allegory, wherein the divisions of Christianity (Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinistic) are represented as three brothers, whose adventures are related. So, in the Travels of Gulliver, the vices of politicians are ridiculed by being exemplified in communities made up of imaginary beings

(Liliputians or dwarfs, Brobdingnagians or giants, Houyhnhnms, Yahoos). Arbuthnot's John Bull is another celebrated allegory of the same age.

In the Allegory, for the most part, a complete story is told, so that there is a double meaning, the obvious and the implied, or allegorical. There must often be a great deal of straining to sustain the parallelism throughout a long composition. The most powerful effects realized in this style have been comic.

28. A Fable is a short allegory.

According to Lessing, the Fable embodies a moral in a special case; this is invested with reality and narrated as a story, which suggests the moral at once. Thus the narrative of "the Man and the Bundle of Sticks" embodies an important truth—the power of union—in a particular case, represented as real, and calculated to suggest and bring home the moral.

Many fables are made to turn on the actions and characters of certain animals, regarded as representatives of the qualities by which they are most distinguished. The fox figures as the embodiment of cunning, the lamb of meekness, the lion of strength.

29. Moral tales, and other compositions that combine the interest of a story with the conveying of instruction or the teaching of some practical lesson, are sometimes called Fictitious Examples.

The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer were constantly appealed to by the ancients in the way of enforcing important moral maxims.

The moral apologue called the "Choice of Hercules (given in the Memorabilia of Socrates) is a fictitious example.

In this case there is nothing that can be called figurative, except the double intention.

30. The Parables of the Bible are, for the most part, fictitious examples.

In the parable which Nathan relates to David, to make him realize the wickedness of his conduct, a supposed case is pre

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sented, setting forth David's offence as committed by another, with a change of circumstances—the object unlawfully taken. being a ewe lamb instead of a wife.

REMAINING FIGURES OF SIMILARITY.

31. The term "Synecdoche" is applied to different kinds of Figures. The following forms of synecdoche are figures of similarity :—

(1.) Putting the Species for the Genus: as, bread for the necessaries of life generally; cut-throat for murderer or assassin; sums for arithmetic.

The force of this figure depends on the superior effect—as regards both the understanding and the feelings—of the Special and the Concrete over the General and the Abstract. Food is general; bread is particular, and more readily calls up a distinct object to the mind. The principle is one that will frequently re-appear.

(2.) The Antonomasia puts an Individual for the Species. "Every man is not a Solomon;" "he is a Crasus" (in wealth); a Jezebel.

This merely carries the same effect a step farther. Speciality or Concreteness reaches the utmost point in the Individual. See the stanza in Gray's Elegy—"Some village Hampden," &c.

(3.) Putting the Genus for the Species; as, a vessel for a ship, a creature for a man.

To substitute the more general for the less is a rare and exceptional form. It can impart force only when by chance the generic name has a peculiar expressiveness. Thus, in designating a dance as a measure, the effect lies in stating one of the characteristic attributes, the measured or rhythmical step.

This is a common form of the figure called "Euphemism," or the indicating of something that delicacy forbids being specifically named. Thus, to avoid naming death, we have such

phrases as deceased, departed, removed, falling asleep, gone to rest. Campbell suggests that the translators of the Bible might have used this figure in Martha's expression respecting Lazarus, "Lord, by this time he smelleth," for "he stinketh."

(4.) Putting the Concrete for the Abstract.

As in Dryden:

Again :—

"Nor durst begin

To speak, but wisely kept the fool within."

"A tyrant's power in rigor is exprest,

The father yearns in the true prince's breast."

Fool is put for folly, and father, the concrete, is used for fatherly affection.

The opposite case of putting the abstract for the concrete is, like the general for the particular, an exception. Youth, beauty, may sometimes stand for the young, the beautiful; the figurative effect lies in isolating, as it were, the main quality, and thus giving it greater prominence.

A minor figure of similarity is the application of numbers to things that can not be estimated with numerical precision; as when, in describing a public man's patriotism, we say, "He gave one to his country and two to himself." "Nine-tenths of every man's happiness," says Paley, "depends on the reception he meets with in the world." The advantage gained is obvious.

EXERCISE.

Point out and name the figures in the following passages :—

A second Daniel come to judgment.

The stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabric of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.

The soul of man is like the rolling world,

One half in day, the other dipt in night.

Galileo was the Columbus of the heavens.

Benevolence descends into the cellars, where Poverty lies on the damp floor, while Pestilence stands at the door, like the cherubim at the entrance of Eden, forbidding Selfishness to enter.

Teachers are the parents of the mind.

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