This has violently the air of writing mechanically without taste. It is not natural, that the imagination of a writer should be so much heated at the very commencement; and, at any rate, he cannot expect such ductility in his readers: but if this practice can be justified by authority, Thomson has one of no mean note: Vida begins his first eclogue in the following words.
Dicite, vos Musæ, et juvenum memorate querelas; Dicite; nam motas ipsas ad carmina cautes Et requiesse suos perhibent vaga flumina cursus.
Even Shakespear is not always careful to prepare the mind for this bold figure. Take the following instance:
---------------- Upon these taxations, The clothiers all, not able to maintain The many to them ’longing, have put off The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers; who, Unfit for other life, compell’d by hunger And lack of other means, in desp’rate manner Daring th’ event to th’ teeth, are all in uproar, And _Danger_ serves among them. _Henry VIII. act 1. sc. 4._
Fourthly, Descriptive personification ought never to be carried farther than barely to animate the subject: and yet poets are not easily restrained from making this phantom of their own creating behave and act in every respect as if it were really a sensible being. By such licence we lose sight of the subject; and the description is rendered obscure or unintelligible, instead of being more lively and striking. In this view, the following passage, describing Cleopatra on shipboard, appears to me exceptionable.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne, Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold, Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that The winds were love sick with ’em. _Antony and Cleopatra, act 2. sc. 3._
Let the winds be personified; I make no objection. But to make them love-sick, is too far stretched; having no resemblance to any natural action of wind. In another passage, where Cleopatra is also the subject, the personification of the air is carried beyond all bounds:
---------------------------- The city cast Its people out upon her; and Antony Inthron’d i’ th’ market-place, did sit alone, Whistling to th’ air, which but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too, And made a gap in nature. _Antony and Cleopatra, act 2. sc. 3._