Thus, AEsop’s viper and file are both personified, where it is recorded, “‘What ails thee, fool?’ says the file to the viper;” but the fable gives to these names no capitals, except in the title of the story.  It may here be added, that, according to their definitions of personification, our grammarians and the teachers of rhetoric have hitherto formed no very accurate idea of what constitutes the figure.  Lindley Murray says, “PERSONIFICATION [,] or PROSOPOPOEIA, is that figure by which we attribute life and action to inanimate objects.”—­Octavo Gram., p. 346; Duodecimo, p. 211.  Now this is all wrong, doubly wrong,—­wrong in relation to what personification is, and wrong too in its specification of the objects which may be personified.  For “life and action” not being peculiar to persons, there must be something else than these ascribed, to form the figure; and, surely, the objects which Fancy thinks it right to personify, are not always “inanimate.”  I have elsewhere defined the thing as follows:  “Personification is a figure by which, in imagination, we ascribe intelligence and personality to unintelligent beings or abstract qualities.”—­Inst., p. 234.

OBS. 14.—­On Rule 11th, concerning Derivatives, I would observe, that not only the proper adjectives, to which this rule more particularly refers, but also nouns, and even verbs, derived from such adjectives, are frequently, if not generally, written with an initial capital.  Thus, from Greece, we have Greek, Greeks, Greekish, Greekling, Grecise, Grecism, Grecian, Grecians, Grecianize.  So Murray, copying Blair, speaks of “Latinised English;” and, again, of style strictly “English, without Scotticisms or Gallicisms.”—­Mur.  Gram., 8vo, p. 295; Blair’s Lect., pp. 93 and 94.  But it is questionable, how far this principle respecting capitals ought to be carried.  The examples in Dr. Johnson’s quarto Dictionary exhibit the words, gallicisms, anglicisms, hebrician, latinize, latinized, judaized, and christianized, without capitals; and the words Latinisms, Grecisms, Hebraisms, and Frenchified, under like circumstances, with them.  Dr. Webster also defines Romanize, “To Latinize; to conform to Romish opinions.”  In the examples of Johnson, there is a manifest inconsistency.  Now, with respect to adjectives from proper names, and also to the nouns formed immediately from such adjectives, it is clear that they ought to have capitals:  no one will contend that the words American and Americans should be written with a small a.  With respect to Americanism, Gallicism, and other similar words, there may be some room to doubt.  But I prefer a capital for these.  And, that we may have a uniform rule to go by, I would not stop here, but would write Americanize and Americanized with a capital also; for it