some of the properties of living creatures are ascribed to inanimate objects; as, a raging storm, a deceitful disease: The second, when those inanimate objects are introduced as acting like such as have life :* The third, when they are represented as speaking to us, or as listening to what we say to them.†

Q. In the management of this last, (which is the highest sort of personification,) what rules are to be observed?

A. Never attempt nor continue it, unless prompted by strong passion; and never

*No personification, in any author, is more striking, or introduced on a more proper occasion, than the following of Milton's, on 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 wo, That all was lost.".

+ "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 hop'd 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 ev'n, which I bred up with tender hand,
From your first op'ning buds, and gave you names!
Who now shall rear you to the sun, or rank

Your tribes, and water from th' ambrosial fount ?""

personify any object, in this way, but such as has some dignity in itself.*

Q. What is the Apostrophe?

A. An address to a real person who is either absent or dead, as if he were present, or listening to us.

Q Where does this figure most abound? A. In the poems of Ossian, and in the writings of the Prophets.t

* Addressing the several parts of one's body as if they were animated, is not congruous to the dignity of passion. For this reason, the following passage, in a very beautiful poem of Mr. Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, must be condemned.

"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;
Oh! write it not, my hand!-his name appears
Already written :-Blot it out, my tears!”

"Weep on the rocks of roaring winds, O maid of Inistore! Bend thy fair head over the waves thou fairer than the ghosts 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 Cuthullin !" OSSIAN.

"O thou sword of the Lord! how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put thyself up into the scabbard, rest and be still! How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge against Ashkelon, and against the sea-shore? There he hath appointed it."-Jer. xlvii. 6,7.

COMPARISON, AND OTHER FIGURES OF SPEECH.

Q. What is a Comparison?

A. A resemblance between two objects expressed in form, and pursued more fully than the nature of a metaphor admits.*

Q. Does this figure afford much pleasure? A. Yes. A happy Comparison is a sparkling ornament, adding lustre and beauty to discourse.

Q. To what two classes may all Comparisons be reduced?

A. To explaining and embellishing.

Q. What is the fundamental requisite of a Comparison?

A. That it serves to illustrate the object for the sake of which it is introduced; and to give us a stronger conception of it.

Q. What demands attention in Compari sons ?

A. The propriety of their introduction, and the nature of the objects whence they are taken.†

As "the actions of princes are like those great rivers, the course of which every one beholds, but their springs have been seen by few."

+ The following is a studied and affected comparison of Portius, when Lucius had bid him farewell, in Addison's Cato:

"Thus o'er the dying lamp, th' unsteady flame, Hangs quiv'ring on a point, leaps off by fits,

Q. What is the first rule relating to the objects whence comparisons should be drawn?

A. They must not be drawn from things which have too near and obvious a resemblance to the object with which we compare them.*

Q. What is the second?

A. They should not be founded on likenesses too faint and remote.

Q. What is the third ?

A. The object from which a comparison is drawn should never be an unknown object, or one of which few people can form clear ideas. Q. What is the fourth?

A. In compositions of a serious or elevated kind, similes should never be taken from low or mean objects.

Q. What is an Antithesis?

A. An opposition of Words and Thoughts; as, in want, what distress? in affluence, what satiety.

Q. What effect has the frequent use of Antithesis upon style?

A. It renders it disagreeable.

Q. Of what nature are Comparisons and Antitheses?

And falls again, as loth to quit its hold,

Thou must not go; my soul still hovers o'er thee, And can't get loose."

*Milton's comparison of Satan's appearance after his fall, to that of the Sun, suffering an eclipse, is admirable; but of Eve, to a Woodnymph, is poor and feeble.

A. They are of a cool nature; the productions of imagination, not of passion.

Q. What is the nature of Interrogations and Exclamations?

A. They are passionate Figures; spoken to produce some powerful effect.

Q. How should exclamations be used? A. Very sparingly. We are disgusted when called to enter into transports which there is nothing to inspire.

Q. By what means do all passionate figures of speech operate upon us?

A. By means of Sympathy.

Q. What is Sympathy?

A. A powerful principle in our nature, disposing us to enter into every feeling and passion expressed by others.

Q. To reach this, what should a writer attend to in the use of passionate figures?

A. To the manner in which nature dictates the expression of any emotion or passion; he should give his language that turn, and no other; and he should never affect the style of a passion he does not feel.

Q. What are we to think of Typographical Figures; or the arts of writers to increase the importance of words by separating them by a dash, and putting them in italics?

A. That they are useless, and should be wholly laid aside.

Q. What is Vision ?

A. It is using the present tense, when de