cautions, than that he has always
conscientiously forborne to use the personal genitive _whose_ in
speaking of inanimate things? For example, that he did not say, and
could not have been tempted or tortured into saying, 'The bridge _whose_
piers could not much longer resist the flood.' Well, as they say in
Scotland, some people are thankful for small mercies. We--that is, you,
the reader, and ourselves--are _persons_; the bridge, you see, is but a
_thing_. We pity it, poor thing, and, as far as it is possible to
entertain such a sentiment for a bridge, we feel respect for it. Few
bridges are thoroughly contemptible; and we make a point, in obedience
to an old-world proverb, always to speak well of the bridge that has
carried us over in safety, which the worst of bridges never yet has
refused to do. But still there _are_ such things as social distinctions;
and we conceive that a man and a 'contributor' (an _ancient_ contributor
to _Blackwood_), must in the herald's college be allowed a permanent
precedency before all bridges whatsoever, without regard to number of
arches, width of span, or any other frivolous pretences. We acknowledge
therefore with gratitude Coleridge's loyalty to his own species in not
listening to any compromise with mere things, that never were nor will
be raised to the peerage of personality, and sternly refusing them the
verbal honours which are sacred to us humans. But what is the principle
of taste upon which Coleridge justifies this rigorous practice? It
is--and we think it a very just principle--that this mechanic mode of
giving life to things inanimate ranks 'amongst those worst mimicries of
poetic diction by which imbecile writers fancy they elevate their
prose.' True; but the same spurious artifices for giving a fantastic
elevation to prose reappear in a thousand other forms, from some of
which neither Coleridge nor his accomplished daughter is absolutely
free. For instance, one of the commonest abuses of pure English amongst
our Scottish brethren, unless where they have been educated out of
Scotland, is to use _aught_ for _anything_, _ere_ for _before_,
_well-nigh_ for _almost_, and scores besides. No home-bred, _i.e._
Cockney Scotchman, is aware that these are poetic forms, and are as
ludicrously stilted in any ear trained by the daily habits of good
society to the appreciation of pure English--as if, in Spenserian
phrase, he should say, '_What time_ I came home to breakfast,' instead
of '_