OBS. 16.—­If what is called personification, does not always imply a change of gender and an ascription of sex, neither does a mere ascription of sex to what is literally of no sex, necessarily 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 form or state of a noun or pronoun, which usually denotes the subject of a finite verb:  as, The boy runs; I run.