In the Preface of 1798, when Wordsworth formulated his theories with regard to poetical language, the first “mechanical device of style” against which he directed his preliminary attack was the use of “personifications of abstract ideas.”[195] Such personifications, he urged, do not make any natural or regular part of “the very language of men,” and as he wished “to keep the reader in the company of flesh and blood,” he had endeavoured “utterly to reject them.” He was ready to admit that they were occasionally “prompted by passion,” but his predecessors had come to regard them as a sort of family language, upon which they had every right to draw. In short, in Wordsworth’s opinion, abstractions and personifications had become a conventional method of ornamenting verse, akin to the “vicious diction,” from the tyranny of which he wished to emancipate poetry. The specific point on which he thus challenged the practice of his predecessors could hardly be gainsaid, for he had indicted a literary device, or artifice, which was not only worked to death by the mere poetasters of the period, but which disfigures not a little the work of even the great poets of the century.

The literary use of abstraction and personification was not, it is needless to say, the invention of the eighteenth century. It is as old as literature itself, which has always reflected a tendency to interpret or explain natural phenomena or man’s relations with the invisible powers that direct or influence human conduct, by means of allegory, English poetry in the Middle Ages, especially that of Chaucer, Langland, and their immediate successors, fitly illustrates the great world of abstraction which had slowly come into being, a world peopled by personified states or qualities—the Seven Deadly Sins, the Virtues, Love, etc.—typifying or symbolizing the forces which help man, or beset and ensnare him as he makes his pilgrim’s progress through this world.

Already the original motive power of allegory was considerably diminished, even if it had not altogether disappeared, and, by the time of the “Faerie Queene,” the literary form which it had moulded for itself had become merely imitative and conventional, so that even the music and melody of Spenser’s verse could not altogether vitalize the shadowy abstractions of his didactic allegory. With “Paradise Lost” we come to the last great work in which personified abstractions reflect to any real extent the original allegorical motive in which they had their origin. Milton achieves his supreme effects in personification in that his figures are merely suggestive, strongly imagined impressions rather than clean-cut figures. For nothing can be more dangerous, from the poetic point of view, than the precise figures which attempt to depict every possible point of similarity between the abstract notion and the material representation imagined.[196]

It is sometimes considered that the mania for abstraction was due largely to the influence of the two poets who are claimed, or regarded, as the founders or leaders of the new classical school—Dryden and Pope. As a matter of fact, neither makes any great use of personification. Dryden has a few abstractions in his original works, such as,

but his examples are mainly to be found in his modernizations or translations, where of necessity he takes them from his originals.[197]

Pope makes a greater use of the figure, but even here there is no excess. There is not a single personification in the four pastorals of “The Seasons,” a subject peculiarly adapted to such treatment. In “Eloisa to Abelard” there are two instances where some attempt at characterization is made.[198] More instances, though none very striking, are to be found in “Windsor Forest,” but the poem ends with a massed group, forming a veritable catalogue of the personified vices which had done so much service in poetry since the days of the Seven Deadly Sins.

In other poems Pope uses the device for humorous or satiric effect, as in the “Pain,” “Megrim,” and “Ill nature like an ancient maid” (l. 24) of “The Rape of the Lock;” or the “Science,” “Will,” “Logic,” etc., of “The Dunciad,” where all are invested with capital letters, but with little attempt to work up a definite picture, except, as was perhaps to be expected, in the case of “Dullness,” which is provided with a bodyguard (Bk. I, 45-52).

Though, as we have already said, there is no great use of such figures in the works of Pope, they are present in such numbers in his satiric and didactic works as to indicate one great reason for their prevalence in his contemporaries and successors. After the Restoration, when English literature entered on a new era, the changed and changing conditions of English life and thought soon impressed themselves on poetry. The keynote to the understanding of much that is characteristic of this new “classical” literature has been well summed up in the formula that “the saving process of human thought was forced for generations to beggar the sense of beauty.”[199] The result was an invasion of poetry by ideas, arguments, and abstractions which were regarded both as expressing admirably the new spirit of rationalism, as well as constituting in themselves dignified subjects and ornaments of poetry.

This is well illustrated in the case of several of Pope’s contemporaries. In the works of Thomas Parnell (1679-1718) abstractions of the conventional type are plentiful, usually accompanied by a qualifying epithet: “Fortune fair-array’d” (“An Imitation”), “Impetuous Discord,” “Blind Mischief,” (“On Queen Anne’s Peace”), “the soft Pathetic” (“On the Different Styles of Poetry”). These are only a few of the examples of the types favoured by Parnell, where only here and there are human traits added by means of qualifying epithets or phrases. In one or two instances, however, there are more detailed personifications. Thus, in the “Epistle to Dr. Swift,” which abounds in shadowy abstractions, Eloquence is fully described for us:

Moreover, already in Parnell it is evident that the influence of Milton is responsible for some of his personifications. In the same poem we get the invocation:

figures which derive obviously from “L’Allegro.”

In the case of Richard Savage (1696-1743) there is still greater freedom in the use of personified abstractions, which, as here the creative instinct is everywhere subjected to the didactic purpose, become very wearisome. The “Wanderer” contains long catalogues of them, in some instances pursued for over fifty lines.[200]

The device continued to be very popular throughout the eighteenth century, especially by those who continue or represent the “Ethical” school of Pope. First amongst these may be mentioned Edward Young (1681-1765), whose “Night Thoughts” was first published between 1742-1744. Young, like his contemporaries, has recourse to personifications, both for didactic purposes and apparently to add dignity to his style. It is probable, too, that in this respect he owes something to “Paradise Lost”; from Milton no doubt he borrowed his figure of Death, which, though poetically not very impressive, seems to have captured the imagination of Blake and other artists who have tried to depict it. The figure is at first only casually referred to in the Fourth Book (l. 96), where there is a brief and commonplace reference to “Death, that mighty hunter”; but it is not until the fifth book that the figure is developed. Yet, though the characterization is carried to great length, there is no very striking personification: we are given, instead, a long-drawn-out series of abstractions, with an attempt now and then to portray a definite human figure. Thus

And then the poet describes Death as being present always and everywhere, and especially

But Young has not, like Milton, been able to conjure up a definite and convincing vision, and thus he never achieves anything approaching the overwhelming effect produced by the phantom of Death in “Paradise Lost,” called before us in a single verse:

For the rest, Young’s personifications, considering the nature of his subject, are fewer than might be expected. Where they occur they often seem to owe their presence to a desire to vary the monotony of his moral reflections; as a result we get a number of abstractions, which may be called personifications only because they are sometimes accompanied by human attributes.

Young has also certain other evocations which can scarcely be called abstractions, but which are really indistinct, shadowy beings, like the figures of a dream, as when he describes the phantom of the past:

or the grief of the poet as he ever meets the shades of joys gone for ever:

Here the poet has come near to achieving that effect which in the hands of the greatest poets justifies the use of personification as a poetic figure. The more delicate process just illustrated is distinct both from the lifeless abstraction and the detailed personification, for in these cases there is a tinge of personal emotion which invests these shadowy figures with something of a true lyrical effect.

The tendency, illustrated in the “Night Thoughts,” to make a purely didactic use of personification and abstraction is found to a much greater extent in Akenside’s “Pleasures of the Imagination,” first published in 1744, to be considerably enlarged in 1767. The nature of Akenside’s subject freely admitted of the use of these devices, and he has not been slow to avail himself of them.

Large portions of the “Pleasures of the Imagination” resolve themselves into one long procession of abstract figures. Very often Akenside contents himself with the usual type of abstraction, accompanied by a conventional epithet: “Wisdom’s form celestial” (I, 69), “sullen Pomp” (III, 216), etc., though sometimes by means of human attributes or characteristics we are given partial personifications such as:

And occasionally there are traces of a little more imagination:

But on the whole it is clear that with Akenside abstraction and personification are used simply and solely for moral and didactic purposes, and not because of any perception of their potential artistic value. Incidentally, an interesting side-light on this point is revealed by one of the changes introduced by the poet into his revision of his chief work. In the original edition of 1740 there is an invocation to Harmony (Bk. I, ll. 20 foll.), with her companion,

Before the publication of the revised edition, Akenside, who at one time had espoused the cause of liberty with such ardour as to lead to his being suspected of republicanism, received a Court appointment. In the revised edition the concluding lines of the invocation became

The same lavish use of abstractions is seen, not only in the philosophic poetry proper, but also in other works, which might perhaps have been expected to escape the contagion. Charles Churchill (1731-1764), if we set aside Johnson and Canning, may be regarded as representing eighteenth century satire in its decline, after the great figures of Pope and Swift have disappeared from the scene, and among the causes which prevent his verse from having but little of the fiery force and sting of the great masters of satire is that, instead of the strongly depicted, individual types of Pope, for example, we are given a heterogeneous collection of human virtues, vices, and characteristics, most often in the form of mere abstractions, sometimes personified into stiff, mechanical figures.[202] Only once has Churchill attempted anything novel in the way of personification, and this in humorous vein, when he describes the social virtues:

Churchill had no doubt a genuine passion for poetry and independence, but the saeva indignatio of the professed censor of public morals and manners cannot be conveyed to the reader through the medium of mechanical abstractions which, compared with the flesh-and-blood creations of Dryden and Pope, show clearly that for the time being the great line of English satire has all but come to an end.

Eighteenth century ethical poetry was represented at this stage by Johnson and Goldsmith, at whose work it will now be convenient to glance. The universal truths which Johnson as a stern, unbending moralist wished to illustrate in “London” (1738) and “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (1749), might easily have resulted in a swarm of the abstractions and personifications fashionable at the time.[203] From this danger Johnson was saved by the depth of feeling with which he unfolds the individual examples chosen to enforce his moral lessons. Not that he escapes entirely; “London” has a few faint abstractions (“Malice,” “Rapine,” “Oppression”); but though occasionally they are accompanied by epithets suggesting human attributes (“surly Virtue,” “persecuting Fate,” etc.), as a rule there is no attempt at definite personification, a remark which also applies to the “Vanity of Human Wishes.” In his odes to the different seasons he has not given, however, any elaborate personifications, but has contented himself with slight human touches, such as

Of Johnson’s poetical style, regarded from our present point of view, it may be said to be well represented in the famous line from “London”:

where there is probably no intention or desire to personify at all, but which is a result of that tendency towards Latin condensation which the great Doctor and his contemporaries had introduced into English prose.

Goldsmith’s poetry has much in common with that of Johnson, in that both deal to some extent with what would now be called social problems. But it is significant of Goldsmith’s historical position in eighteenth century poetry as representing a sort of “half-way attitude,” in the matter of poetical style, between the classical conventional language and the free and unfettered diction advocated by Wordsworth, that there are few examples of personified abstractions in his works, and these confined mainly to one passage in “The Traveller”:

At this point it is necessary to hark back for the purpose of considering other works which had been appearing alongside of the works just discussed. It has already been remarked that in this matter of the use of abstraction and personification the influence of Milton early asserted itself, and there can be no doubt that a good deal of it may be traced to the influence more especially of the early poems. Indeed, the blank verse poems, which attempted to imitate or parody the “grand style” of the great epics, furnish few examples of the personified abstraction. The first of these, the “Splendid Shilling” and “Cyder” of John Philips (1705-1706) contains but few instances. In Somerville’s “Chase” there is occasionally a commonplace example, such as “brazen-fisted Time,” though in his ode “To Marlborough” he falls into the conventional style quickly enough. In the rest of the blank verse poems Mallet’s “Excursion” (1738), and his “Amyntor and Theodora” (1744), comparatively little use is made of the device, a remark also applicable to Dyer’s “Ruins of Rome” (1740), and to Grainger’s “Sugar Cane” (1764).

The fashion for all these blank verse poems had been started largely by the success of “The Seasons,” which appeared in its original form from 1726 to 1730, to undergo more than one revision and augmentation until the final edition of 1744. Though Thomson’s work shows very many traces of the influence of Milton, there is no direct external evidence that his adoption of blank verse was a result of that influence. Perhaps, as has been suggested,[204] he was weary of the monotony of the couplet, or at least considered its correct and polished form incapable of any further development. At the same time it is clear that having adopted “rhyme-unfettered verse,” he chose to regard Milton as a model of diction and style, though he was by no means a slavish imitator.

With regard to the special problems with which we are here concerned, it must be noted that when Thomson was first writing “The Seasons,” the device of personified abstraction had not become quite so conventional and forced in its use as at a later date. Nevertheless examples of the typical abstraction are not infrequent; thus, in an enumeration of the passions which, since the end of the “first fresh dawn,” have invaded the hearts and minds of men, we are given “Base Envy,” withering at another’s joy; “Convulsive Anger,” storming at large; and “Desponding Fear,” full of feeble fancies, etc. (“Spring,” 280-306). Other examples are somewhat redeemed by the use of a felicitous compound epithet, “Art imagination-flushed” (“Autumn,” 140), “the lonesome Muse, low-whispering” (ibid., 955), etc. In “Summer” (ll. 1605 foll.) the poet presents one of the usual lists of abstract qualities (“White Peace, Social Love,” etc.), but there are imaginative touches present that help to vitalize some at least of the company into living beings:

and the passage is thus a curious mixture of mechanical abstractions with more vivid and inspired conceptions.

Occasionally Thomson employs the figure with ironical or humorous intention, and sometimes not ineffectively, as in the couplet,

He is also fond of the apostrophic personification, often feebly, as when, acting upon a suggestion from Mallet,[205] he writes:

As for the seasons themselves, we do not find any very successful attempts at personification. Thomson gives descriptive impressions rather than abstractions: “gentle Spring, ethereal mildness” (“Spring,” 1), “various-blossomed Spring” (“Autumn,” 5); or borrowing, as often, an epithet from Milton, “refulgent Summer” (“Summer,” 2); or “surly Winter” (“Spring,” 11).

But in these, and similar passages, the seasons can hardly be said to be distinctly pictured or personified. In “Winter,” however, there is perhaps a more successful attempt at vague but suggestive personification:[206]

But on the whole Thomson’s personifications of the seasons are not, poetically, very impressive. There is little or no approach to the triumphant evocation with which Keats conjures up Autumn for us, with all its varied sights and sounds, and its human activities vividly personified in the gleaner and the winnower

or the couplet in which Coleridge brings before us a subtle suggestion of the spring beauty, to which the storms and snows are but a prelude:

Yet Thomson, as might be expected in a forerunner of the Romantic school, is not altogether without a gift for these embryonic personifications, as they have been called, when by means of a felicitous term or epithet the whole conception which the poet has in mind is suddenly galvanized into life and endowed with human feelings and emotions. Such evocations are of the very stuff of which poetry is made, and at their highest they possess the supreme power of stirring or awakening in the mind of the reader other pictures or visions than those suggested by the mere personification.[207]

Though some of Thomson’s instances are conventional or commonplace, as in the description of

and others merely imitative, as,

yet there are many which call up by a single word a vivid and picturesque expression, such as the “hollow-whispering breeze” (“Summer,” 919) or the poet’s description of the dismal solitude of a winter landscape

or the beautiful description of a spring dawn:

Adverting to the question of Milton’s influence on the prevalent mania for personification, it is undoubted that the early poems may be held largely responsible. Their influence first began noticeably to make itself felt in the fifth decade of the century, when their inspiration is to be traced in a great deal of the poetic output of the period, including that of Joseph and Thomas Warton, as well as of Collins and Gray. Neglecting for the moment the greater poets who drew inspiration from this source, it will be as well briefly to consider first the influence of Milton’s minor poems on the obscure versifiers, for it is very often the case that the minor poetry of an age reflects most distinctly the peculiarities of a passing literary fashion. As early as 1739 William Hamilton of Bangour[208] imitated Milton in his octosyllabic poem “Contemplation,” and by his predilection for abstraction foreshadowed one of the main characteristics of the Miltonic revival among the lesser lights. A single passage shows this clearly enough:

and so on.

Five or six years later Mason’s Miltonic imitations appeared—“Il Bellicoso” and “Il Pacifico”—which follow even more slavishly the style of “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” so that there is no need for Mason’s footnote to “Il Bellicoso” describing the poem with its companion piece as this “very, very juvenile imitation.”[209] “Il Bellicoso” begins with the usual dismissal:

and subsequently we are introduced to Pleasure, Courage, Victory, Fancy, etc. There is a similar exorcism in “Il Pacifico,” followed by a faint personification of the subject of the ode, attended by a “social smiling train” of lifeless abstractions.

The pages of Dodsley[210] furnish abundant testimony to the prevalence of this kind of thing. Thus “Penshurst”[211] by F. Coventry is another close imitation of Milton’s companion poems, with the usual crowd of abstractions. The same thing is met with in the anonymous “Vacation,”[212] and in the “Valetudinarian,” said to be written by Dr. Marriott.[213]

It is unnecessary to illustrate further the Milton vogue, which thus produced so large a crop of imitations,[214] except to say that there is significant testimony to the widespread prevalence of the fashion in the fact that a parody written “in the Allegoric, Descriptive, Alliterative, Epithetical, Fantastic, Hyperbolical, and Diabolical Style of our modern Ode writers and monody-mongers”[215] soon appeared. This was the anonymous “Ode to Horror,” a humorous burlesque, especially of the “Pleasures of Melancholy.” The Wartons stand high above the versifiers at whose productions we have just looked, but nevertheless there was some justification for the good-humoured parody called forth by their works.

In 1746 there appeared a small volume entitled “Odes on Various Subjects,” a collection of fourteen odes by Joseph Warton.[216] The influence of Milton is especially seen in the odes “To Fancy,” “To Health,” and to “The Nightingale,” but all betray definitely the source of their inspiration. Thus in the first named:

All the odes of Warton betray an abundant use of abstractions, in the midst of which he rarely displays anything suggestive of spontaneous inspiration. His few personifications of natural powers are clearly imitative. “Evening” is “the meek-eyed Maiden clad in sober gray” and Spring comes

We feel all the time that the poet drags in his stock of personified abstractions only because he is writing odes, and considers that such devices add dignity to his subject.

At the same time it is worth noting that almost the same lavish use of these lay figures occurs in his blank verse poem, “The Enthusiast,” or “The Lover of Nature” (1740), likewise written in imitation of Milton, and yet in its prophetic insight so important a poem in the history of the Romantic revival.[217] Lines such as

are frequent, while there is a regular procession of qualities, more or less sharply defined, but not poetically suggestive enough to be effective.

The younger of the two brothers, Thomas Warton, who by his critical appreciation of Spenser did much in that manner to help forward the Romantic movement, was perhaps still more influenced by Milton. His ode on “The Approach of Summer” shows to what extent he had taken possession of the verse, language, and imagery of Milton:

But nearly all his poems provide numerous instances of personified abstraction, especially the lines “Written at Vale Abbey,” which seems to exhaust, and present as thin abstractions, the whole gamut of human virtues and vices, emotions and desires.[218]

There is a certain irony in the fact that the two men who, crudely, perhaps, but nevertheless unmistakably, adumbrated the Romantic doctrine, should have been among the foremost to indulge in an excess against which later the avowed champion of Romanticism was to inveigh with all his power. This defect was perhaps the inevitable result of the fact that the Wartons had apparently been content in this respect to follow a contemporary fashion as revealed in the swarm of merely mechanical imitations of Milton’s early poems. But their subjects were on the whole distinctly romantic, and this fact, added to their critical utterances, gives them real historical importance. Above all, it is to be remembered that they have for contemporaries the two great poets in whom the Romantic movement was for the first time adequately exemplified—William Collins and Thomas Gray.

The first published collection of Collins’s work, “Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects” (1746), was, as we have seen, if not neglected or ignored by the public, at least received with marked indifference, owing largely no doubt to the abstract nature of his subjects, and the chiselled severity of his treatment.[219] In other words, Collins was pure classical and not neo-classical; he had gone direct back to the “gods of Hellas” for his inspiration, and his verse had a Hellenic austerity and beauty which could make little or no appeal to his own age. At the same time it was permeated through and through with new and striking qualities of feeling and emotion that at once aroused the suspicions of the neo-classicists, with Johnson as their mentor and spokesman. The “Odes” were then, we may say, classical in form and romantic in essence, and it is scarcely a matter for surprise that a lukewarm reception should have been their lot.[220]

Collins has received merited praise for the charm and precision of his diction generally, and the fondness for inverting the common order of his words—Johnson’s chief criticism of his poetical style[221]—is to the modern mind a venial offence compared with his use of personified abstractions. On this point Johnson has nothing to say, an omission which may be regarded as significant of the extent to which personification had invaded poetry, for the critic, if we may judge from his silence, seems to have considered it natural and legitimate for Collins also to have made abundant use of this stock and conventional device.

It is probable, however, that the extensive use which Collins makes of the figure is the result in a large measure of his predilection for the ode—a form of verse very fashionable towards the middle of the century. As has already been noted, odes were being turned out in large numbers by the poetasters of the time, in which virtues and vices, emotions and passions were invoked, apostrophized, and dismissed with appropriate gestures, and it is probable that the majority of these turgid and ineffective compositions owed their appearance to the prevalent mania for personification. Young remarked with truth[222] that an ode is, or ought to be, “more spontaneous and more remote from prose” than any other kind of poetry; and doubtless it was some vague recognition of this fact, and in the hope of “elevating” their style, that led the mere versifiers to adopt the trick. But as they worked the mechanical personification to death, they quickly robbed it of any impressiveness it may ever have had.

This might quite fairly be described as the state of affairs with regard to the use of personified abstraction when Collins was writing his “odes,” but while it is true that he indulges freely in personification, it is scarcely necessary to add that he does so with a difference; his Hellenic training and temperament naturally saved him from the inanities and otiosities of so much contemporary verse. To begin with, there are but few examples of the lifeless abstraction, and even in such cases there is usually present a happy epithet, or brief description that sets them on a higher level than those that swarm even in the odes of the Wartons. Thus in the “Ode on the Poetical Character,” “the shadowy tribes of mind,” which had been sadly overworked by Collins’s predecessors and contemporaries, are brought before us with a new and fresh beauty that wins instant acceptance for them:

Instances of the mechanical type so much in favour are, however, not lacking, as in this stanza from the “Verses” written about bride-cake:

The majority of Collins’s personified abstractions are, however, vague in outline, that is to say, they suggest, but do not define, and are therefore the more effective in that the resulting images are almost evanescent in their delicacy. Thus in the “Ode to Pity” the subject is presented to us in magic words:

whilst still another imaginative conception is that of “Mercy”:

The “Ode to the Passions” is in itself almost an epitome of the various ways in which Collins makes use of personification. It is first to be noted that he rarely attempts to clothe his personifications in long and elaborate descriptions; most often they are given life and reality by being depicted, so to speak, moving and acting: