When Autumn sere and sunburnt doth appear With his gold hand gilding the falling leaf Bringing up Winter to fulfil the year Bearing upon his back the ripened sheaf, conveys a fresh and distinct picture that belongs to the new poetry, and has in it a faint forecast of Keats. It remains to look at the work of the later eighteenth century poets, who announce that if the Romantic outburst is not yet, it is close at hand. The first and greatest of these is William Blake. His use of personification in the narrower sense which is our topic, is, of course, formally connected with the large and vital question of his symbolism, to treat of which here in any detail is not part of our scheme. In its widest sense, however, Blake’s mysticism may be connected with the great mediaeval world of allegory: it is “an eddy of that flood-tide of symbolism which attained its tide-mark in the magic of the Middle Ages.”[231] But the poet himself unconsciously indicates the vital distinction between the new symbolism, which he inaugurates, and the old, of which the personified abstractions of his eighteenth century predecessors may be regarded as faint and faded relics. “Allegory addressed to the intellectual powers,” he wrote to Thomas Butts,[232] “while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal understanding, is my definition of the most surprising poetry.” On its formal side, and reduced to its simplest expression, we may narrow down for our present purpose the whole system to the further distinction drawn by Blake between Allegory and Vision. Allegory is “formed by the daughters of Memory” or the deliberate reason; Vision “is surrounded by the daughters of Inspiration.” Here we have a key to the classification of personified abstractions in the eighteenth century, and, for that matter, at any and every period. Abstractions formed by the deliberate reason are usually more or less rhetorical embellishments of poetry, and to this category belong the great majority of the personifications of eighteenth century verse. They are “things that relate to moral virtues” or vices, but they cannot truly be called allegorical, for allegory is a living thing only so long as the ideas it embodies are real forces that control our conduct. The inspired personification, which embodies or brings with it a real vision, is the truly poetical figure. In Blake’s own practice we find only a few instances of the typical eighteenth century abstraction. In the early “Imitation of Spenser” there are one or two examples: Such is sweet Eloquence that does dispel Envy and Hate that thirst for human gore, whilst others are clearly Elizabethan reminiscences, like Mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave, or Memory, hither come And tune your merry notes.