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ON [,] or PROSOPOPOEIA, is that figure by which we attribute life and action to inanimate objects."--_Octavo Gram._, p. 346; Duodecimo, p. 211. Now this is all wrong, doubly wrong,--wrong in relation to what personification is, and wrong too in its specification of the objects which may be personified. For "_life and action_" not being peculiar to persons, there must be something else than these ascribed, to form the figure; and, surely, the objects which Fancy thinks it right to personify, are not always "inanimate." I have elsewhere defined the thing as follows: "Personification is a figure by which, in imagination, we ascribe intelligence and personality to unintelligent beings or abstract qualities."--_Inst._, p. 234.
OBS. 14.--On Rule 11th, concerning Derivatives, I would observe, that not only the proper adjectives, to which this rule more particularly refers, but also nouns, and even verbs, derived from such adjectives, are frequently, if not generally, written with an initial capital. Thus, from Greece, we have _Greek, Greeks, Greekish, Greekling, Grecise, Grecism, Grecian, Grecians, Grecianize_. So Murray, copying Blair, speaks of "_Latinised English_;" and, again, of style strictly "English, without Scotticisms or Gallicisms."--_Mur. Gram._, 8vo, p. 295; _Blair's Lect._, pp. 93 and 94. But it is questionable, how far this principle respecting capitals ought to be carried. The examples in Dr. Johnson's quarto Dictionary exhibit the words, _gallicisms, anglicisms, hebrician, latinize, latinized, judaized_, and christianized, without capitals; and the words _Latinisms, Grecisms, Hebraisms_, and Frenchified, under like circumstances, with them. Dr. Webster also defines Romanize, "To _Latinize_; to conform to Romish opinions." In the examples of Johnson, there is a manifest inconsistency. Now, with respect to adjectives from proper names, and also to