ecessarily imply a personification; for
there may be sex without personality, as we see in brute animals. Hence the
gender of a brute animal personified in a fable, may be taken literally as
before; and the gender which is figuratively ascribed to the _sun_, the
_moon_, or a _ship_, is merely metaphorical. In the following sentence,
_nature_ is animated and made feminine by a metaphor, while a lifeless
object bearing the name of _Venus_, is spoken of as neuter: "Like that
conceit of old, which declared that the _Venus of Gnidos_ was not the work
of Praxiteles, since _nature herself_ had concreted the boundary surface of
_its_ beauty."--_Rush, on the Voice_, p. xxv.

OBS. 17.--"In personifications regard must be had to propriety in
determining the gender. Of most of the passions and moral qualities of man
the ancients formed deities, as they did of various other things: and, when
these are personified, they are usually made male or female, according as
they were gods or goddesses in the pagan mythology. The same rule applies
in other cases: and thus the planet Jupiter will be masculine; Venus,
feminine: the ocean, _Oce=anus_, masculine: rivers, months, and winds, the
same: the names of places, countries, and islands, feminine."--_Churchill's
Gram._, p. 71.

OBS. 18.--These suggestions are worthy of consideration, but, for the
gender which ought to be adopted in personifications, there seems to be no
absolute general rule, or none which English writers have observed with
much uniformity. It is well, however, to consider what is most common in
each particular case, and abide by it. In the following examples, the sex
ascribed is not that under which these several objects are commonly
figured; for which reason, the sentences are perhaps erroneous:--

"_Knowledge_ is proud that _he_ has learn'd so much;
_Wisdom_ is humble that _he_ knows no more."--_Cowper_.

"But hoary _Winter_, unadorned and bare,
Dwells in the dire retreat, and freezes there;
There _she_ assembles all her blackest storms,
And the rude hail in rattling tempests forms."--_Addison_.

"_Her_ pow'r extends o'er all things that have breath,
A cruel tyrant, and _her_ name is _Death_."--_Sheffield_.

CASES.

Cases, in grammar, are modifications that distinguish the relations of
nouns or pronouns to other words.

There are three cases; the _nominative_, the _possessive_, and the
_objective_.

The _nominative case_ is that