OBS. 9.—­When a pronoun represents the name of an inanimate object personified, it agrees with its antecedent in the figurative, and not in the literal sense; as, “There were others whose crime it was rather to neglect Reason than to disobey her.”—­Dr. Johnson. “Penance dreams her life away.”—­Rogers.  “Grim Darkness furls his leaden shroud.”—­Id. Here if the pronoun were made neuter, the personification would be destroyed; as, “By the progress which England had already made in navigation and commerce, it was now prepared for advancing farther.”—­Robertson’s America, Vol. ii, p. 341.  If the pronoun it was here intended to represent England, the feminine she would have been much better; and, if such was not the author’s meaning, the sentence has some worse fault than the agreement of a pronoun with its noun in a wrong sense.

OBS. 10.—­When the antecedent is applied metaphorically, the pronoun usually agrees with it in its literal, and not in its figurative sense; as, “Pitt was the pillar which upheld the state.”—­“The monarch of mountains rears his snowy head.”—­“The stone which the builders rejected.”—­Matt., xxi, 42.  According to this rule, which would be better than whom, in the following text:  “I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them an other little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots.”—­Daniel, vii, 8.  In Rom., ix, 33, there is something similar:  “Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and rock of offence:  and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.”  Here the stone or rock is a metaphor for Christ, and the pronoun him may be referred to the sixth exception above; but the construction is not agreeable, because it is not regular:  it would be more grammatical, to change on him to thereon.  In the following example, the noun “wolves,” which literally requires which, and not who, is used metaphorically for selfish priests; and, in the relative, the figurative or personal sense is allowed to prevail: 

   “Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves,
    Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven
    To their own vile advantages shall turn.”
        —­Milton, P. L., B. xii, l. 508.

This seems to me somewhat forced and catachrestical.  So too, and worse, the following; which makes a star rise and speak: 

   “So spake our Morning Star then in his rise,
    And looking round on every side beheld
    A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades.”
        —­Id., P. R., B. i, l. 294.