gained ascendancy in our schools at the revival of literature. From that period half our learning has consisted in knowing how to admire, and how to imitate the writers of Greece and Rome; and high-wrought praise, mingling with, and humouring, our early prejudices and studies, easily swells into superstition; so that the schoolboy's question, mentioned by the editor of Comenius, was not very unnatural, "Is Jupiter or God Almighty the greatest?"

Would I disparage then the writers of Greece and Rome? Certainly, certainly not. I mean to say nothing to the prejudice either of their poetry or their mythology. I mean only to say, that some part of that phraseology, which was natural and even beautiful to an ancient Greek and Roman, ceases to be so with us moderns, till men either paganize their divinity, or spiritualize their philosophy.

Mr. Thomas Taylor, who, as being a zealous Platonist, believes there is one soul of the universe, that Gods in succession fill the whole world, and who maintains with Sallust*, that the Fables of Greece are divine, has consistently enough with his own opinions, not only translated the Mystic Initiations of Orpheus, but written hymns in his own person, addressed to some of the Pagan Deities. This mythology is used by Mr. Taylor with propriety: but with others, who maintain different opinions, the proper substitute for this servile and unlawful use of mythology (for such I must call it) is, in my

* Not Sallust the historian, but Sallust a Greek Platonist (of whom before), who wrote a philosophical treatise, Περι Θεων, και Κοσμο, Concerning the Gods, and the World.

i

opinion, personification, a modest use of which gives grace and dignity to poetry, though a wanton or meretricious display of it introduces, as Longinus has well shown, obscurity or bombast.

Personification is a figure of speech, which sometimes by a vigorous exertion, and sometimes by a mere play of the imagination, gives sense and motion, sympathy and passion, to things without life; a conceit, as it might at first sight appear, ridiculous, extravagant, contradic. tory; but which indeed has a most sublime, no less than easy, and most natural effect: for it reaches not only the very summit of poetry, but moves in the humbler walks of prose, and mingles in the most ordinary intercourse of private conversation. Personification, then, seems a most natural substitute for the improper use of ancient mythology; for, according to some, the ancient Greek mythology is nothing but a superior and more splendid species of personification and the virtues, and even the vices, made a part of the mythological system of Greece and

Rome.

And may we not naturally here avail ourselves of-Horace's remark?

for it indeed is a most excellent rule for poetry. Now painting, when presenting to the eye the virtues, the vices, or the passions, is, and often must be, indebted to personification.; that is, must borrow countenance and form from real life: and, in like manner, it applies to its own purposes, draperies adapted to particular forms, manners declaratory of particular actions, and symbols expressive of sentiment, character, and profession. Poetry does the same ; and if, forgetting ancient mythology, we search out some of the most beautiful passages in Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Gray, and Collins, we shall see that they were formed on the most accurate observation of the analogies of nature, and that some of the sublimest efforts of their imagination were displayed in an appropriate use of personification.

It is most evident that when these sublimest of our English poets describe the Air, the Earth, and Sea; the passions of Fear, and Hope, and Love; the virtues of Honour, Faithfulness, Temperance, and the opposite vices;when they delineate human manners, unfold the powers of music over the soul, range through the regions of Faeryland, and wanton in the garden of Paradise; when on these, and on similar topics, they follow the order of their own observations, or the energies of their own imaginations, it is evident, I say, they do not want the surreptitious embellishments of ancient mythologies: their own fragrant descriptions, assisted by their powerful personifications, are more original and more impressive, than could possibly have been the whole machinery of ancient Gods and Goddesses, and threadbare expedients of classic imitations.

Collins, it is to be observed, lays the scene of his admired Ode on the Passions in Greece; for it is a species of dramatic ode;

When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft to hear her shell
Throng'd around her magic cell:

and he might accordingly with justice have made mythological personages, Apollo, with Clio, and Melpomene, and the other Muses, sustain each a proper character; and might thus have constituted his ode on classical principles: but no; he preferred being an inventor to being an imitator; and, relying on his own genius, wrote one of the finest lyrical performances in the English language.

A single word, under this figure, often supplies the place of a whole page of circumstances, and renders unnecessary all the apparatus of machinery. It is a species of sublime short-hand. Thus, how concise, yet how comprehensive is that description of a Jewish prophet! "Before him (Jehovah) went the PESTILENCE." Hab. iii. 5. A thousand terrible circumstances might have entered into the description-But how does one word fill the soul with all that is dreadful!

Yet can personification, naturally, like the hero of a dramatic poem, admit into its train numerous attendants, and naturally, too, provided they have their proper employments, and are strictly characteristic:

Oh! thou, to whom the world unknown
With all its shadowy shapes is shown,
Who see'st appall'd the real scene,
While Fancy lifts the veil between.....
For, lo! what monsters in thy train appear!

Collins's Ode to Fear.

This power, which we possess by the assistance of the imagination, of conversing with forms unseen, and of peopling every place, is not only wonderfully pleasing, but, on considering the nature of man, and his feelings in his most uncivilized state, will be found quite na

tural :

Thou Sun, said I, fair Light,

And thou enlightened Earth, so fresh and gay,
Ye Hills and Dales, ye Rivers, Woods and Plains,
And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell,
Tell, if you saw, how came I thus, how here? Milton.

And accordingly nothing seems to characterize the poet more than this power:

The poet's eye, in a fine phrensy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes.

Midsummer Night's Dream.

I have noticed, in the course of this essay, after Horace, the resemblance of poetry to painting: and I cannot help grounding on it an observation, which I think may be of service to poetry; which is, that as painters are often indebted to the fables and imagery of the poets, so may poetry derive much excellent matter for description, many beautiful and sublime pictures, from painting; for though a poet's eye is more roving, a painter's is more correct. The personifications of Raphael, Titian, and Corregio; the scenery of Salvator Rosa, and the landscapes of Claude, are replete with images admirably adapted to poetry: not to insist, with respect to ancient art, its principal personages, and its most expressive symbols, that poets and painters often worked from the same models.

The illustrations of Shakspeare, the workmanship of some of our greatest painters, planned and published by