d 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