Though the eighteenth century Spenserians make a plentiful use of personified abstraction, on the whole their employment of this device differs widely from its mechanical use by most of their contemporaries: in the best of the imitations there are few examples of the lifeless abstraction. Faint traces at least of the music and melody of the “Faerie Queene” have been caught and utilized to give a poetic charm even to the personified virtues and vices that naturally appear in the work of Spenser’s imitators. Thus in William Thompson’s “Epithalamium” (1736), while many of the old figures appear before us, they have something of the new charm with which Collins was soon to invest them. Thus, Liberty, the fairest nymph on ground The flowing plenty of her growing hair Diffusing lavishly ambrosia round Earth smil’d, and Gladness danc’d along the sky. The epithets which accompany the abstractions are no longer conventional (“Chastity meek-ey’d,” “Modesty sweet-blushing”) and help to give touches of animation to otherwise inanimate figures. In the “Nativity” (1757) there is a freer use of the mere abstraction that calls up no distinct picture, but even here there are happy touches that give relief: Faith led the van, her mantle dipt in blue, Steady her ken, and gaining on the skies. In the “Hymn to May” (1787) Thompson personified the month whose charms he is singing, the result being a radiant figure, having much in common with the classical personifications of the orders or powers of nature: A silken camus, em’rald green Gracefully loose, adown her shoulder flow. In Shenstone’s “Schoolmistress” (1737-1742) instances of personification are rare, and, where they do occur, are merely faint abstractions like “Learning near her little dome.” It is noteworthy that one of the most successful of the Spenserian imitations should have dispensed with the cumbrous machinery of abstract beings that, on the model of the “Faerie Queene,” might naturally have been drawn upon. The homely atmosphere of the “Schoolmistress,” with its idyllic pictures and its gentle pathos, would, indeed, have been fatally marred by their introduction. The same sparing use of personification is evident in the greatest of the imitations, James Thomson’s “Castle of Indolence” (1748). A theme of this nature afforded plenty of opportunity to indulge in the device, and Thomson, judging from its use of the figure in some of his blank verse poems, might have been expected to take full advantage. But there are less than a score of examples in the whole of the poem. Only vague references are made to the eponymous hero: he is simply “Indolence” or “tender Indolence” or “the demon Indolence.” For the rest Thomson’s few abstractions are of the stock type, though occasionally more realistic touches result, we may suppose, from the poet’s sense of humour as The sleepless Gout here counts the crowing cock.