LATINISM IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY POETRY
There is now to be noticed another type of eighteenth century poetic
diction which was in its way as prevalent, and, it may be added, as
vicious, as the stock diction which has been discussed in the previous
chapter. This was the use of a latinized vocabulary, from the early years
of the century down to the days when the work of Goldsmith, Cowper, and
Crabbe seemed to indicate a sort of interregnum between the old order and
the new.
This fashion, or craze, for “latinity” was not of course a sudden and
special development which came in with the eighteenth century: it was
rather the culmination of a tendency which was not altogether unconnected
with the historic development of the language itself. As a factor in
literary composition, it had first begun to be discussed when the
Elizabethan critics and men of letters were busying themselves with the
special problem of diction. Latinism was one of the excesses to which
poets and critics alike directed their attention, and their strictures
and warnings were such as were inevitable and salutary in the then
transitional confusion of the language.[90] In the early years of the
seventeenth century this device for strengthening and ornamenting the
language was adopted more or less deliberately by such poets as Phineas
and Giles Fletcher, especially the latter, who makes free use of such
coinages as _elamping_, _appetence_, _elonging_, etc.[91]
The example of the Fletchers in thus adding to their means of literary
expression was soon to be followed by a greater poet. When Milton came to
write his epics, it is evident, as has been said, that he felt the need
for a diction in keeping with the exalted theme he had chosen, and his
own taste and temperament, as well as the general tendencies of his age,
naturally led him to make use of numerous words of direct or indirect
“classical” origin. But his direct coinages from Latin and Greek are much
less than has often been supposed.[92] What he seems to have done in many
cases was to take words the majority of which had been recently formed,
usually for scientific or philosophic purposes, and incorporate them
in his poetical vocabulary. Thus _Atheous_, _attrite_, _conflagrant_,
_jaculation_, _myrrhine_, _paranymph_, _plenipotent_, etc., are instances
of classical formations which in most cases seem, according to “The New
English Dictionary,” to have made their first literary appearance shortly
before the Restoration. In other instances Milton’s latinisms are much
older.[93] What is important is the fact that Milton was able to infuse
these and many similar words with a real poetic power, and we may be sure
that the use of such words as _ethereal_, _adamantine_, _refulgent_,
_regal_, whose very essence, as has been remarked, is suggestiveness,
rather than close definition, was altogether deliberate.[94] In addition
to this use of a latinized vocabulary, there is a continuous latinism
of construction, which is to be found in the early poems, but which,
as might be expected, is most prominent in the great epics, where
idioms like _after his charge received_ (P.L., V 248), _since first her
salutation heard_ (P.R., II, 107) are frequent.[95]
Milton, we may say, of purpose prepense made or culled for himself a
special poetical vocabulary which was bound to suffer severely at the
hands of incompetent and uninspired imitators. But though the widespread
use of latinized diction is no doubt largely to be traced to the
influence of Milton at a time when “English verse went Milton mad,” it
may perhaps also be regarded as a practice that reflected to a certain
extent the general literary tendencies of the Augustan age.
When Milton was writing his great epics Dryden was just beginning his
literary career, but though there are numerous examples of latinisms
in the works of the latter, they are not such as would suggest that he
had been influenced to any extent by the Miltonic manner of creating a
poetical vocabulary. There is little or no coinage of the “magnificent”
words which Milton used so freely, though latinized forms like
_geniture_, _irremeable_, _praescious_, _tralineate_, are frequent.
Dryden, however, as might be expected, often uses words in their original
etymological sense. Thus besides the common use of _prevent_, _secure_,
etc., we find in the translation of the “Metamorphoses”:
He had either _led_
Thy mother then,
where _led_ is used in the sense of Latin _ducere_ (marry) and “_refers_
the limbs,” where “refers” means “restores.”[96] Examples are few in
Dryden’s original works, but “Annus Mirabilis” furnishes instances like
the _ponderous ball expires_, where “expires” means “is blown forth,”
and “each wonted room _require_” (“seek again”), whilst there is an
occasional reminiscence of such Latin phrases as “manifest of crimes” for
_manifestus sceleris_ (“Ab. and Achit.”).
What has been said of the latinisms of Dryden applies also to those of
Pope. Words like _prevent_, _erring_, _succeed_, _devious_, _horrid_,
_missive_, _vagrant_, are used with their original signification, and
there are passages like
For this he bids the _nervous_ artists vie.
Imitations of Latin constructions are occasionally found:
Some god has told them, or themselves survey
_The bark escaped_.
Phrases like “_fulgid_ weapons,” “roseate _unguents_,” “_circumfusile_
gold,” “_frustrate_ triumphs,” etc., are probably coinages imposed by
the necessities of translation. Other similar phrases, such as (tears)
“_conglobing_ on the dust,” “with _unctuous_ fir _foment_ the flame,”
seem to anticipate something of the absurdity into which this kind of
diction was later to fall.[97]
On the whole, the latinisms found in the works of Dryden and Pope are not
usually deliberate creations for the purpose of poetic ornament. They
are such as would probably seem perfectly natural in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth century, when the traditions of classical study
still persisted strongly, and when the language of prose itself was still
receiving additions from that source. Moreover, the large amount of
translation done by both poets from the classics was bound to result in
the use of numerous classical terms and constructions.
In 1705 there appeared the “Splendid Shilling” of John Philips, followed
by his “Cyder” and other poems a year later. These poems are among the
first of the Miltonic parodies or imitations, and, being written in
blank verse, they may be regarded as heralding the struggle against the
tyranny of the heroic couplet. Indeed, blank verse came to be distinctly
associated with the Romantic movement, probably because it was considered
that its structure was more encouraging to the unfettered imagination
than the closed couplets of the classicists. It is thus interesting
to note that the reaction in form, which marks one distinct aspect of
Romanticism, was really responsible for some of the excesses against
which the manifestoes afterwards protested; for it is in these blank
verse poems especially that there was developed a latinism both of
diction and construction that frequently borders on the ludicrous, even
when the poet’s object was not deliberately humorous.
In “Blenheim” terms and phrases such as _globous iron_, _by chains
connexed_, etc., are frequent, and the attempts at Miltonic effects is
seen in numerous passages like
Upborne
By frothy billows thousands float the stream
In cumbrous mail, with love of farther shore;
Confiding in their hands, that sed’lous strive
To cut th’ outrageous fluent.
In “Cyder” latinisms are still more abundant: _the nocent brood_ (of
snails), _treacle’s viscuous juice_, _with grain incentive stored_, _the
defecated liquour_, _irriguous sleep_, as well as passages like
Nor from the sable ground expect success
Nor from cretacious, stubborn or jejune,
or
Bards with volant touch
Traverse loquacious strings.
This kind of thing became extremely common and persisted throughout the
eighteenth century.
Incidentally, it may here be remarked that the publication of Philips’s
poems probably gave to Lady Winchilsea a hint for her poem “Fanscombe
Barn.”[98] Philips, as has been noted, was one of the very first to
attempt to use Milton’s lofty diction, and his latinized sentence
structure for commonplace and even trivial themes, and no doubt his
experiment, having attracted Lady Winchilsea’s attention, inspired her
own efforts at Miltonic parody, though it is probably “Cyder” and “The
Splendid Shilling,” rather then “Paradise Lost,” that she takes as her
model. Thus the carousings of the tramps forgathered in Fanscombe Barn
are described:
the swarthy bowl appears,
Replete with liquor, globulous to fight,
And threat’ning inundation o’er the brim;
and the whole poem shows traces of its second-hand inspiration.
Even those who are now remembered chiefly as Spenserian imitators indulge
freely in a latinized style when they take to blank verse. Thus William
Thompson, who in his poem “Sickness” has many phrases like “the arm
_ignipotent_,” “_inundant_ blaze” (Bk. I), “terrestrial stores medicinal”
(Bk. III), with numerous passages, of which the following is typical:
the poet’s mind
(Effluence essential of heat and light)
Now mounts a loftier wing when Fancy leads
The glittering track, and points him to the sky
Excursive.
(Bk. IV)
William Shenstone, the author of one of the most successful of the
Spenserian imitations, is more sparing in this respect, but even in his
case passages such as
Of words indeed profuse,
Of gold tenacious, their torpescent soul
Clenches their coin, and what electric fire
Shall solve the frosty grip, and bid it flow?
(“Economy,” Part I)
are not infrequent.
But it is not only the mere versifiers who have succumbed to this
temptation. By far the most important of the early blank verse poems
was Thomson’s “Seasons,” which, first appearing from 1726-1730, was
subsequently greatly revised and altered up to the edition of 1746,
the last to be issued in the author’s lifetime.[99] The importance and
success of “The Seasons” as one of the earliest indications of the
“Return to Nature” has received adequate recognition, but Thomson was
an innovator in the style, as well as in the matter, of his poem. As
Dr. Johnson remarked, he saw things always with the eyes of a poet,
and the quickened and revived interest in external nature which he
reflects inevitably impelled him to search for a new diction to give it
expression. We can see him, as it were, at work trying to replace the
current coinage with a new mintage of his own, or rather with a mixed
currency, derived partly from Milton, and partly from his own resources.
His diction is thus in some degrees as artificial as the stock diction
of his period, especially when his attempts to emulate or imitate the
magnificence of Milton betray him into pomposity or even absurdity; but
his poetical language as a whole is leavened with so much that is new and
his very own as to make it clear that the Romantic revival in the style,
as well as in the contents, of poetry has really begun. The resulting
peculiarities of style did not escape notice in his own time. He was
recognized as the creator of a new poetical language, and was severely
criticized even by some of his friends. Thus Somerville urged with
unusual frankness a close revision of the style of “The Seasons”:
Read Philips much, consider Milton more
But from their dross extract the purer ore:
To coin new words or to restore the old
In southern lands is dangerous and bold;
But rarely, very rarely, will succeed
When minted on the other side of Tweed.[100]
Thomson’s comment on this criticism was emphatic: “Should I alter my
ways I should write poorly. I must choose what appears to be the most
significant epithet or I cannot proceed.”[101] Hence, though lines and
whole passages of “The Seasons” were revised, and large additions made,
the characteristics of the style were on the whole preserved. And one
of the chief characteristics, due partly to the influence of Milton,
and partly to the obvious fact that for Thomson with new thoughts and
impressions to convey to his readers, the current and conventional
vocabulary of poetry needed reinforcement, is an excessive use of
latinisms.[102]
Thus in “Spring” we find, e.g., “_prelusive_ drops,” “the _amusive_ arch”
(the rainbow), “the torpid sap _detruded_ to the root,” etc., as well as
numerous passages such as
Joined to these
Innumerous songsters in the freshening shade
Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix
Mellifluous.
(“Spring,” 607 foll.)
In “Summer” the epithet _gelid_ appears with almost wearisome iteration,
with other examples like _flexile_ wave, _the fond sequacious bird_,
etc., while the cloud that presages a storm is called “the small
prognostic” and trees are “the noble sons of potent heat and floods.”
Continuous passages betray similar characteristics:
From thee the sapphire, solid ether, takes
Its hue cerulean and of evening tinct.
(“Summer,” 149 foll.)
_Autumn_ furnishes even more surprising instances: the stag “_adhesive_
to the track,” the sands “strowed _bibulous_ above,” “forests huge
_incult_,” etc., as well as numerous passages of sustained latinism.[103]
In “Winter,” which grew from an original 405 lines in 1726 to 1,069 lines
in 1746, latinism of vocabulary is not prominent to the same extent as in
the three previous books, but the following is a typical sample:
Meantime in sable cincture shadows vast
Deep-tinged, and damp and congregated clouds
And all the vapoury turbulence of heaven
Involves the face of things.
(ll. 54 foll.)[104]
The revisions after 1730 do not show any great pruning, or less
indulgence in these characteristics; rather the contrary, for many of
them are additions which did not appear until 1744. Now and then Thomson
has changed his terms and epithets. Thus in the lines
the potent sun
_Melts into_ limpid air the high-raised clouds
(“Summer,” 199)
the expression “melts into” has replaced the earlier “attenuates
to.”[105] One of the best of the emendations, at least as regards the
disappearance of a latinism, is seen in “Summer” (48-9), where the second
verse of the couplet,
The meek-eyed morn appears, mother of dews,
At first _faint-gleaming_ in the dappled east
has replaced the
_Mildly elucent_ in the streaky east
of the earlier version. Often Thomson’s latinisms produce no other effect
on the reader than that of mere pedantry. Thus in passages such as
See, where the winding vale its lavish stores
_Irriguous_ spreads. See, how the lily drinks
The _latent_ rill.
(“Spring,” 494)
or
the canvas smooth
With glowing life _protuberant_.
(“Autumn,” 136)
or
The fallow ground laid open to the sun
_Concoctive_.
(_Ibid._, 407)
or the description of the tempest
Struggling through the _dissipated_ grove
(“Winter,” 185)[106]
(where there is Latin _order_ as well as diction), it is certain that
the terms in question have little or no poetic value, and that simpler
words in nearly every case would have produced greater effects. Now and
then, as later in the case of Cowper, the pedantry is, we may suppose,
deliberately playful, as when he speaks of the cattle that
ruminate in the contiguous shade
(“Winter,” 86)
or indicates a partial thaw by the statement
Perhaps the vale
relents awhile to the reflected ray.
(_Ibid._, 784)
The words illustrated above are rarely, of course, Thomson’s own coinage.
Many of them (e.g. _detruded_, _hyperborean_, _luculent_, _relucent_,
_turgent_) date from the sixteenth century or earlier, though from the
earliest references to them given in the “New English Dictionary” it
may be assumed that Thomson was not always acquainted with the sources
where they are first found, and that to him their “poetic” use is first
due. In some cases Milton was doubtless the immediate source from which
Thomson took such words, to use them with a characteristic looseness of
meaning.[107]
It would be too much to say that Thomson’s use of such terms arises
merely out of a desire to emulate the “grand style”; it reflects rather
his general predilection for florid and luxurious diction. Moreover, it
has been noted that an analysis of his latinisms seems to point to a
definite scheme of formation. Thus there is a distinct preference for
certain groups of formations, such as adjectives in “-ive” (_affective_,
_amusive_, _excursive_, etc.), or in “-ous” (_irriguous_, _sequacious_),
or Latin participle forms, such as _clamant_, _turgent_, _incult_, etc.
In additions Latin words are frequently used in their original sense,
common instances being _sordid_, _generous_, _error_, _secure_, _horrid_,
_dome_, while his blank verse line was also characterized by the free use
of latinized constructions.[108] Thomson’s frequent use of the sandwiched
noun, “flowing rapture bright” (“Spring,” 1088), “gelid caverns
woodbine-wrought,” (“Summer,” 461), “joyless rains obscure” (“Winter,”
712), often with the second adjective used predicatively or adverbially,
High seen the Seasons lead, _in sprightly dance_
_Harmonious knit_, the rosy-fingered hours
(“Summer,” 1212)
is also worthy of note.
Yet it can hardly be denied that the language of “The Seasons” is in
many respects highly artificial, and that Thomson was to all intents
and purposes the creator of a special poetic diction, perhaps even more
so than Gray, who had to bear the brunt of Wordsworth’s fulminations.
But on the whole his balance is on the right side; at a time when the
majority of his contemporaries were either content to draw drafts on
the conventional and consecrated words, phrases, and similes, or were
sedulously striving to ape the polished plainness of Pope, he was able to
show that new powers of expression could well be won from the language.
His nature vocabulary alone is sufficient proof of the value of his
contributions to the poetic wealth of the language, not a few of his
new-formed compounds especially being expressive and beautiful.[109] His
latinisms are less successful because they can hardly be said to belong
to any diction, and for the most part they must be classed among the
“false ornaments” derided by Wordsworth;[110] not only do they possess
none of that mysterious power of suggestion which comes to words in
virtue of their employment through generations of prose and song, but
also not infrequently their meaning is far from clear. They are never the
spontaneous reflection of the poet’s thought, but, on the contrary, they
appear only too often to have been dragged in merely for effect.
This last remark applies still more forcibly to Somerville’s “Chase,”
which appeared in 1735. Its author was evidently following in the wake of
Thomson’s blank verse, and with this aim freely allows himself the use of
an artificial and inflated diction, as in many passages like
Cull each salubrious plant, with bitter juice
Concoctive stored, and potent to allay
Each vicious ferment.
About the same time Edward Young was probably writing his “Night
Thoughts,” though the poem was not published until 1742. Here again
the influence of Thomson is to be seen in the diction, though no
doubt in this case there is also not a little that derives direct
from Milton. Young has Latin formations like _terraqueous_, _to
defecate_, _feculence_, _manumit_, as well as terms such as _avocation_,
_eliminate_, and _unparadize_, used in their original sense. In the
second instalment of the “Night Thoughts” there is a striking increase in
the number of Latin terms, either borrowed directly, or at least formed
on classical roots, some of which must have been unintelligible to many
readers. Thus _indagators_ for “seekers,” _fucus_ for “false brilliance,”
_concertion_ for “intimate agreement,” and _cutaneous_ for “external,”
“skin deep”:
All the distinctions of this little life
Are quite cutaneous.[111]
It is difficult to understand the use of such terms when simple native
words were ready at hand, and the explanation must be that they were
thought to add to the dignity of the poem, and to give it a flavour of
scholarship; for the same blemishes appear in most of the works published
at this time. Thus in Akenside’s “Pleasures of the Imagination” (1744)
there is a similar use of latinized terms: _pensile planets_, _passion’s
fierce illapse_, _magnific praise_, though the tendency is best
illustrated in such passages as
that trickling shower
Piercing through every crystalline convex
Of clustering dewdrops to their flight opposed,
Recoil at length where, concave all behind
The internal surface of each glassy orb
Repels their forward passage into air.
In “The Poet” there is a striking example of what can only be the
pedantic, even if playful, use of a cumbrous epithet:
On shelves _pulverulent_, majestic stands
His library.
Similar examples are to be found in “The Art of Preserving Health” by
John Armstrong, published in the same year as Akenside’s “Pleasures.”
The unpoetical nature of this subject may perhaps be Armstrong’s excuse
for such passages as
Mournful eclipse or planets ill-combined
Portend disastrous to the vital world;
but this latinizing tendency was perhaps never responsible for a more
absurd periphrasis than one to be found in the second part of the poem,
which treats of “Diet”:
Nor does his gorge the luscious bacon rue,
Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste
Of solid milk.[112]
The high Miltonic manner was likewise attempted by John Dyer in “The
Fleece,” which appeared in 1757, and by James Grainger in “The Sugar
Cane” (1764), to mention only the most important. Dyer, deservedly
praised for his new and fresh descriptive diction, has not escaped this
contagion of latinism: _the globe terraqueous_, _the cerule stream_,
_rich sapinaceous loam_, _detersive bay salt_, etc., while elsewhere
there are obvious efforts to recapture the Miltonic cadence. In “The
Sugar Cane” the tendency is increased by the necessity thrust upon the
poet to introduce numerous technical terms. Thus
though all thy mills
Crackling, o’erflow with a redundant juice
Poor tastes the liquor; coction long demands
And highest temper, ere it saccharize.
Meanwhile Joseph Warton had written his one blank verse poem “The
Enthusiast” (1740), when he was only eighteen years old. But though both
he and his brother Thomas are among the most important of the poets
who show the influence of Milton most clearly, that influence reveals
itself rather in the matter of thought than of form, and there is in
“The Enthusiast” little of the diction that marred so many of the blank
verse poems. Only here and there may traces be seen, as in the following
passage:
fairer she
In innocence and homespun vestments dress’d
Than if cerulean sapphires at her ears
Shone pendent.
There is still less in the poems of Thomas Warton, who was even a more
direct follower of Milton than his elder brother. There is scarcely one
example of a Latinism in “The Pleasures of Melancholy,” which is really
a companion piece to “The Enthusiast.” The truth is that it was Milton’s
early work—and especially “Il Penseroso”—that affected most deeply these
early Romanticists, and even their blank verse is charged with the
sentiments and phrases of Milton’s octosyllabics. Thus the two poets, who
were among the first to catch something of the true spirit of Milton,
have little or nothing of the cumbersome and pedantic diction found so
frequently in the so-called “Miltonics” of the eighteenth century, and
this in itself is one indication of their importance in the earlier
stages of the Romantic revival.
This is also true in the case of Collins and Gray, who are the real
eighteenth century disciples of Milton. Collins’s fondness for
personified abstractions may perhaps be attributed to Milton’s influence,
but there are few, if any, traces of latinism in his pure and simple
diction. Gray was probably influenced more than he himself thought by
Milton, and like Milton he made for himself a special poetical language,
which owes not a little to the works of his great exemplar. But Gray’s
keen sense of the poetical value of words, and his laborious precision
and exactness in their use, kept him from any indulgence in coinages.
Only one or two latinisms are to be found in the whole of his work, and
when these do occur they are such as would come naturally to a scholar,
or as were still current in the language of his time. Thus in “The
Progress of Poesy” he has
this _pencil_ take,
where “pencil” stands for “brush” (Latin, _pensillum_); whilst in a
translation from Statius he gives to _prevent_ its latinized meaning
the champions, trembling at the sight
_Prevent_ disgrace.
There is also a solitary example in the “Elegy” in the line
Can Honour’s voice _provoke_ the silent dust.
The contemporary fondness for blank verse had called forth the strictures
of Goldsmith in his “Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning,”
and his own smooth and flowing couplets have certainly none of the
pompous epithets which he there condemns. His diction, if we except an
occasional use of the stock descriptive epithets, is admirable alike in
its simplicity and directness, and the two following lines from “The
Traveller” are, with one exception,[113] the only examples of latinisms
to be found in his poems:
While sea-born gales their _gelid_ wings expand,
and
Fall blunted from each _indurated_ heart.
Dr. Johnson, who represented the extreme classicist position with regard
to blank verse and other tendencies of the Romantic reaction, had a
good deal to say in the aggregate about the poetical language of his
predecessors and contemporaries. But the latinism of the time, which
was widespread enough to have attracted his attention, does not seem to
have provoked from him any critical comment. His own poetical works,
even when we remember the “Vanity of Human Wishes,” where plenty of
instances of Latin idiom are to be found, are practically free from this
kind of diction, though this does not warrant the inference that he
disapproved of it. We know that his prose was latinized to a remarkable
extent, so that his “sesquipedalian terminology” has been regarded as
the fountain-head of that variety of English which delights in “big,”
high-sounding words. But his ideal, we may assume, was the polished and
elegant diction of Pope, and his own verse is as free from pedantic
formations as is “The Lives of the Poets,” which perhaps represents his
best prose.
It is in the works of a poet who, though he continues certain aspects of
neo-classicism, yet announces unmistakably the coming of the new age,
that we find a marked use of a deliberately latinized diction. Cowper has
always received just praise for the purity of his language; he is, on the
whole, singularly free from the artificialities and inversions which had
marked the accepted poetic diction, but, on the other hand, his language
is latinized to an extent that has perhaps not always been fully realized.
This is, however, confined to “The Task” and to the translation of
the “Iliad.” In the former case there is first a use of words freely
formed on Latin roots, for most of which Cowper had no doubt abundant
precedents,[114] but which, in some cases, must have been coined by
him, perhaps playfully in some instances; _twisted form vermicular_,
_the agglomerated pile_, _the voluble and restless earth_, etc. Other
characteristics of this latinized style are perhaps best seen in
continuous passages such as
he spares me yet
These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines;
And, though himself so polished, still reprieves
The obsolete prolixity of shade
(Bk. I, ll. 262 foll.)
or in such a mock-heroic fling as
The stable yields a stercoraceous heap
Impregnated with quick fermenting salts
And potent to resist the freezing blast.
(Bk. III, 463)[115]
On these and many similar occasions Cowper has turned his predilection to
playful account, as also when he diagnoses the symptoms of gout as
pangs arthritic that infest the toe
Of libertine excess,
or speaks of monarchs and Kings as
The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp.
There is still freer use of latinisms in the “Homer”:[116] _her eyes
caerulean_, _the point innocuous_, _piercing accents stridulous_, _the
triturated barley_, _candent lightnings_, _the inherent barb_, _his
stream vortiginous_, besides such passages as
nor did the Muses spare to add
Responsive melody of vocal sweets.
The instances given above fully illustrate on the whole the use of
a latinized diction in eighteenth century poetry.[117] It must not,
however, be supposed that the fashion was altogether confined to the
blank verse poems. Thus Matthew Prior in “Alma,” or “The Progress of the
Mind,” has passages like
the word obscene
Or harsh which once elanced must ever fly
Irrevocable,
whilst Richard Savage in his “Wanderer” indulges in such flights as
his breath
A nitrous damp that strikes petrific death.
One short stanza by William Shenstone, from his poem “Written in Spring,
1743,” contains an obvious example in three out of its four lines:
Again the labouring hind inverts the soil,
Again the merchant ploughs the tumid wave,
Another spring renews the soldier’s toil,
And finds me vacant in the rural cave.
But it is in the blank verse poems that the fashion is most prevalent,
and it is there that it only too often becomes ludicrous. The blind
Milton, dying, lonely and neglected, a stranger in a strange land, is
hardly likely to have looked upon himself as the founder of a “school,”
or to have suspected to what base uses his lofty diction and style were
to be put, within a few decades of his death, by a swarm of poetasters
who fondly regarded themselves as his disciples.[118] The early writers
of blank verse, such as John Philips, frankly avowed themselves imitators
of Milton, and there can be little doubt that in their efforts to
catch something of the dignity and majesty of their model the crowd of
versifiers who then appeared on the scene had recourse to high-sounding
words and phrases, as well as to latinized constructions by which they
hoped to elevate their style. The grand style of “Paradise Lost” was
bound to suffer severely at the hands of imitators, and there can be
little doubt but that much of the preposterous latinizing of the time
is to be traced to this cause. At the same time the influence of the
general literary tendencies of the Augustan ages is not to be ignored in
this connexion. When a diction freely sprinkled with latinized terms is
found used by writers like Thomson in the first quarter, and Cowper at
the end of the century, it may perhaps also be regarded as a mannerism
of style due in some degree to influences which were still powerful
enough to affect literary workmanship. For it must be remembered that in
the eighteenth century the traditional supremacy of Latin had not yet
altogether died out: pulpit and forensic eloquence, as well as the great
prose works of the period, still bore abundant traces of the persistency
of this influence.[119] Hence it need not be at all surprising to find
that it has invaded poetry. The use of latinized words and phrases gave,
or was supposed to give, an air of culture to verse, and contemporary
readers did not always, we may suppose, regard such language as a mere
display of pedantry.
In this, as in other respects of the poetic output of the period, we may
see a further reflex of the general literary atmosphere of the first half
or so of the eighteenth century. There was no poetry of the highest
rank, and not a great deal of _poetical_ poetry; the bulk of the output
is “poetry without an atmosphere.” The very qualities most admired in
prose—lucidity, correctness, absence of “enthusiasm”—were such as were
approved for poetry; even the Romantic forerunners, with perhaps the
single exception of Blake, felt the pressure of the prosaic atmosphere of
their times. No doubt had a poet of the highest order appeared he would
have swept away much of the accumulated rubbish and fashioned for himself
a new poetic language, as Thomson tried, and Wordsworth later thought to
do. But he did not appear, and the vast majority of the practitioners
were content to ring the changes on the material they found at hand, and
were not likely to dream of anything different.
It is thus not sufficient to say that the “rapid and almost simultaneous
diffusion of this purely cutaneous eruption,” to borrow an appropriate
description from Lowell, was due solely to the potent influence of
Milton. It reflects also the average conception of poetry held throughout
a good part of the eighteenth century, a conception which led writers
to seek in mere words qualities which are to be found in them only when
they are the reflex of profound thought or powerful emotion. In short,
latinism in eighteenth century poetry may be regarded as a literary
fashion, akin in nature to the stock epithets and phrases of the
“descriptive” poetry, which were later to be unsparingly condemned as the
typical eighteenth century poetical diction.
Of the poetic value of these latinized words little need be said. Whether
or no they reflect a conscious effort to extend, enrich, or renew the
vocabulary of English poetry, they cannot be said to have added much
to the expressive resources of the language. This is not, of course,
merely because they are of direct Latin origin. We know that around
the central Teutonic core of English there have slowly been built up
two mighty strata of Latin and Romance formations, which, in virtue of
their long employment by writers in prose and verse, as well as on the
lips of the people, have slowly acquired that force and picturesqueness
which the poet needs for his purpose. But the latinized words of the
eighteenth century are on a different footing. To us, nowadays, there
is something pretentious and pedantic about them: they are artificial
formations or adoptions, and not living words. English poets from time
to time have been able to give a poetical colouring to such words,[120]
and the eighteenth century is not without happy instances of this power.
James Thomson here and there wins real poetic effects from his latinized
vocabulary, as in such a passage as
Here lofty trees to ancient song unknown
The noble sons of potent heat and floods
Prone-rushing from the clouds, rear high to heaven
Their thorny stems, and broad around them throw
Meridian gloom.
(“Summer,” 653 foll.)[121]
The “return to Nature,” of which Thomson was perhaps the most noteworthy
pioneer, brought back all the sights and sounds of outdoor life as
subjects fit and meet for the poet’s song, and it is therefore of some
interest, in the present connexion, to note that Wordsworth himself, who
also knew how to make excellent use of high-sounding Latin formations,
has perhaps nowhere illustrated this faculty better than in the famous
passage on the Yew Trees of Borrowdale:
Those fraternal Four of Borrowdale
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove:
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Upcoiling, and inveterately convolved;
Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane.
But the bulk of eighteenth century latinisms fall within a different
category; rarely do they convey, either in themselves or in virtue
of their context, any of that mysterious power of association which
constitutes the poetic value of words and enables the writer, whether in
prose or verse, to convey to his reader delicate shades of meaning and
suggestion which are immediately recognized and appreciated.