The personification of details

Fundamental Device V.—PERSONIFICATION OF DETAILS.

In description, details are sometimes mentioned by personifying them ; that is, speaking of them as if they had life.

A. MODEL.

On entering the dining-room, by the orders of the• individual in gaiters, Rebecca found that apartment not more cheerful than such rooms usually are, when genteel families are out of town. The faithful cham¬bers seem, as it were, to mourn the absence of their masters. The Turkey carpet has rolled itself up, and retired sulkily under the sideboard ; the pictures have hidden their faces behind old sheets of brown paper ; the ceiling lamp is muffled up in a dismal sack of brown Holland ; the window curtains have disappeared under all sorts of shabby envelopes ; the marble bust of Sir Walpole Crawley is looking from its black corner at the bare boards and the oiled fire-irons, and the empty card-racks over the mantelpiece ; the cel¬laret has lurked away behind the carpet ; the chairs are turned up heads and tails along the wall. —WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Vanity Fair. In the device of a series of images, the whole is conceived first under one image and then under another, but the use of the personification of details certain parts only of the picture are personified, not the whole.

B. EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS.

There was never a leaf on bush or tree, The bare boughs rattled shudderingly. The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver winter its shroud had spun. A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea.

—JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, The Vision of Sir Launfal.