individual, is mistaken for a personification. As Lam. iv. 21, 22:

"Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee; thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked. The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion: he will no more carry thee away into captivity; he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom, he will discover thy sins."

This is not a personification, as persons cannot be personified, but is a substitution of an individual for a people; and is, like the other, a metaphor, with an ellipsis of the affirmation, by which, had it received the regular form of the figure, the people would have been declared to be a woman.

In many instances, abstract things, such as ignorance and knowledge; characteristics, such as truth, wisdom, virtue, patience, faith; seasons, as evening, morning, day, spring, winter, and others of the kind, are personified by the ascription to them of acts that are peculiar to persons. Thus Wisdom is personified by Solomon:

"Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars; she hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table; she

hath sent forth her maidens; she crieth upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither; as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine I have mingled. Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding" (chap. ix. 1-6).

Wisdom is as clearly personified by the ascription to her of these acts, which are peculiar to human beings, as she would have been had she been directly addressed and solicited to build her house, prepare her feast, and invite her guests. They are not ascribed to her by a metaphor, inasmuch as she is not an agent, and never exercises acts of any kind, nor produces effects that resemble the actions here affirmed of her. The acts, instead of metaphorical, are proper to her considered as a person, and are, in fact, used, by a hypocatastasis, for the analogous acts of providing the gifts of knowledge for men, and alluring them freely to accept them. Knowledge is, in like manner, personified by Gray in the following lines:

"But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll."

To unroll a volume, rich with the spoils of time, to the eyes of men, is an act appropriate only to an

intelligent being. In representing it as an act which it is the business of knowledge to exert, knowledge is exhibited as a person.

Ambition is personified in the following passage:

"O dire Ambition! what infernal power

Unchained thee from thy native depth of hell,
To stalk the earth with thy destructive train:
Murder and lust! to waste domestic peace
And every heartfelt joy ?"

BROWN.

Being unchained, stalking the earth with a train, and wasting domestic peace and joy, are appropriate only to human beings.

Young's harangue to Death is a lofty example of

the figure:

"Death! great proprietor of all! 't is thine

To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.

Amid such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?
Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain ;
And thrice, e'er thrice yon moon had filled her horn!"

The personification is thus an ascription of affections or acts to impersonal things, material and

mental, of which they neither are capable nor exhibit any likeness, in their natural conditions or operations; in order to indicate, in an emphatic and lofty form, the manner in which the events it is employed to illustrate, arrest the attention of men, and impress them with awe, grief, or terror, or raise them to exhilaration and joy. The metaphor, on the other hand, ascribes to agents and objects natures, acts, or conditions, that, though not really proper to them, yet resemble those of which they are the agents or subjects; while the apostrophe ascribes to agents or objects acts, conditions, or affections that are proper to them.

There are instances in which the personification may be mistaken for the apostrophe; as in each the objects of the figure are directly addressed. There are instances of the apostrophe also which may be mistaken for personification, from the use of the personal pronouns, as in Young's address to Night, and Milton's to Light. In these forms of the figure, however, the description of the objects addressed is in accordance with their nature, as night, light, music, happiness, memory; not as intelligent agents: while in the personification, the attributes and acts ascribed to the objects addressed, are such as are peculiar to persons.

In the following passage, however, there is

a mixture of the personification and the apostrophe:

"Contentment! rosy-dimpled maid!
Thou brightest daughter of the sky!
Why dost thou to the hut repair,
And from the gilded palace fly?

I've traced thee on the peasant's cheek;
I've marked thee in the milkmaid's smile;
I've heard thee loudly laugh and speak,
Amid the sons of want and toil;
Yet, in the circles of the great,

Where fortune's gifts are all combined,
I've sought thee early, sought thee late,
And ne'er thy lovely form could find.
Since then from wealth and pomp you flee,
I ask but competence and thee."

LADY MANNERS.

In the first four, the seventh, the twelfth, and the thirteenth lines, Contentment is treated as a person; in the fifth and sixth, as a mental state or feeling revealing itself through the countenance.

What is personification?

How does it differ from the metaphor? Is it a figure of words, or things? What rank, in force and dignity, does it hold among the figures? What figure is sometimes