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

erroneously treated as a personification? What is the difference of the figure from the apostrophe!

In the quotation on Contentment, there are two hypocatastases, and three nouns and one adjective are used metaphorically. Which are they!

LESSONS.

Let the scholar cite an example of the figure from the Scripwaware fire at

CHAPTER X.

THE ALLEGORY.

THE Allegory is the use of intelligences acting in one sphere or relation, to exemplify and illustrate their own or the agencies of others in another; or the use of unintelligent agents or objects in a natural or supposititious relation, to exemplify the conduct of men. They are sometimes employed together.

There is a beautiful example of the figure in Isaiah (chap. v. 1-7):

"Let me sing now a song of my beloved;

A song of my beloved, concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard,

On a high and fruitful hill;

And he fenced it round, and he cleared it from the stones,

And he planted it with the vine of Sorek;

And he built a tower in the midst of it,

And he hewed also a wine-vat therein;