Note 11 — WORDS.
Reading edition
The Neuter Pronoun of the Third Person had formerly no variation of Cases. Instead of the Possessive its they used his, which is now appropriated to the Masculine. “Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning, and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.” Bacon, Essay 58. In this example his is evidently used as the Possessive Case of it: but what shall we say to the following, where her is applied in the same manner, and seems to make a strange confusion of Gender? “He that pricketh the heart maketh it to shew her knowledge.” Ecclus. xxii. 19.
“Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost, Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless, Being all descended to the lab’ring heart, Who, in the conflict that it holds with death, Attracts the same for aidance ’gainst the enemy.” Shakespear.
If the Poet had said he instead of it, he would have avoided a confusion of Genders, and happily compleated the spirited and elegant Prosopopœia, begun by the Personal Relative who. The Neuter Relative which would have made the sentence more strictly grammatical, but at the same time more prosaic.