ARCHAISM IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY POETRY
One of the earliest and most significant of those literary manifestations
which were to culminate in the triumph of Romanticism was a new enkindled
interest in the older English writers. The attitude of the great body
of the so-called “Classicists” towards the earlier English poetry was
not altogether one of absolute contempt: it was rather marked by that
indifference which is the outcome of ignorance. Readers and authors, with
certain illustrious exceptions, were totally unacquainted with Chaucer,
and though Spenser fared better, even those who did know him did not at
first consider him worthy of serious study.[122] Yet the Romantic rebels,
by their attempts to imitate Spenser, and to reveal his poetic genius to
a generation of unbelievers, did work of immediate and lasting value.
It is perhaps too much to claim that some dim perception of the poetic
value of old words contributed in any marked degree to this Spenserian
revival in the eighteenth century. Yet it can hardly be doubted that
Spenser’s language, imperfectly understood and at first considered
“barbarous,” or “Gothic,” or at best merely “quaint,” came ultimately to
be regarded as supplying something of that atmosphere of “old romance”
which was beginning to captivate the hearts and minds of men. This
is not to say that there was any conscious or deliberate intention of
freshening or revivifying poetic language by an infusion of old or
“revived” words. But the Spenserian and similar imitations naturally
involved the use of such words, and they thus made an important
contribution to the Romantic movement on its purely formal side; they
played their part in destroying the pseudo-classical heresy that the
best, indeed the only, medium for poetic expression was the polished
idiom of Pope and his school.
The poets and critics of Western Europe, who, as we have seen, in the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had busied themselves with the
question of refining and embellishing their mother tongue, had advocated
among other means the revival of archaic and obsolete words. Spenser
himself, we know, had definitely adopted this means in the “Shepherds
Kalendar,” though the method of increasing his poetical vocabulary
had not been approved by all of his contemporaries and successors.
Milton, when forming the special poetical language he needed for his
immense task, confined himself largely to “classical” coinages, and
his archaisms, such as _swinkt_, _rathe_, _nathless_, _frore_, are
comparatively few in number.[123]
Dryden’s attitude towards old words was stated with his customary
good sense, and though his modernization of Chaucer gave him endless
opportunities of experimenting with them, he never abused the advantage,
and indeed in all his work there is but little trace of the deliberate
revival of obsolete or archaic words. In the “Fables” may be found a few
words such as _sounded_[124] (swounded) which had been used by Malory
and Spenser, _laund_ for (lawn), _rushed_ (cut-off), etc., and he has
also Milton’s _rathe_. Dryden, however, is found using a large number of
terms which were evidently obsolete in the literary language, but which,
it may be supposed, still lingered in the spoken language, and especially
in the provincial dialects. He is fond of the word _ken_ (to know), and
amongst other examples are _stead_ (place), _to lease_ (glean), _shent_
(rebuked), _hattered_ (worn out), _dorp_ (a village), _buries_ (burrows),
etc. Dryden is also apparently responsible for the poetic use of the term
“_doddered_,” a word of somewhat uncertain meaning, which, after his time
and following his practice, came into common use as an epithet for old
oaks, and, rarely, for other trees.[125]
As might be expected, there are few traces of the use of obsolete or
archaic words in the works of Pope. The “correct” style did not favour
innovations in language, whether they consisted in the formation of
new words or in the revival of old forms. Pope stated in a letter to
Hughes, who edited Spenser’s works (1715), that “Spenser has been ever a
favourite poet to me,”[126] but among the imitations “done by the Author
in his Youth,” there is “The Alley,” a very coarse parody of Spenser,
which does not point to any real appreciation or understanding on the
part of Pope. In the first book of the “Dunciad” as we have seen, he
indulged in a fling at the antiquaries, especially Hearne and those who
took pleasure in our older literature, by means of a satiric stanza
written in a pseudo-archaic language.[127] But his language is much
freer than that of Dryden from archaisms or provincialisms. He has forms
like _gotten_, _whelm_ (overwhelm), _rampires_ (ramparts), _swarths_,
_catched_ (caught), _thrice-ear’d_ (ploughed), etc. Neither Dryden nor
Pope, it may be said, would ever have dreamed of reviving an archaic
word simply because it was an old word, and therefore to be regarded as
“poetical.” To imagine this is to attribute to the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries a state of feeling which is essentially modern,
and which lends a glamour to old and almost forgotten words. Dryden
would accept any word which he considered suitable for his purpose, but
he always insisted that old words had to prove their utility, and that
they had otherwise no claim to admission to the current vocabulary.
Pope, however, we may suspect, would not admit any words not immediately
intelligible to his readers, or requiring a footnote to explain them.
Meanwhile, in the year 1715, there had appeared the first attempt to
give a critical text of Spenser, when John Hughes published his edition
of the poet’s works in six volumes, together with a biography, a
glossary, and some critical remarks.[128] The obsolete terms which Hughes
felt himself obliged to explain[129] include many, such as _aghast_,
_baleful_, _behest_, _bootless_, _carol_, _craven_, _dreary_, _forlorn_,
_foray_, _guerdon_, _plight_, _welkin_, _yore_, which are now for the
most part familiar words, though forty years later Thomas Warton in his
“Observations on The Faerie Queene” (1754) is found annotating many
similar terms. The well-known “Muses’ Library,” published thirteen years
previously, had described itself as “A General Collection of almost all
the old and valuable poetry extant, now so industriously inquir’d after”;
it begins with Langland and reflects the renewed interest that was
arising in the older poets. But there is as yet little evidence of any
general and genuine appreciation of either the spirit or the form of the
best of the earlier English poetry. The Spenserian imitators undoubtedly
felt that their diction must look so obsolete and archaic as to call for
a glossary of explanation, and these glossaries were often more than
necessary, not only to explain the genuine old words, but also because
of the fact that in many cases the supposedly “Spenserian” terms were
spurious coinages devoid of any real meaning at all.
Before considering these Spenserian imitations it must not be forgotten
that there were, prior to these attempts and alongside of them, kindred
efforts to catch the manner and style of Chaucer. This practice received
its first great impulse from Dryden’s famous essay in praise of Chaucer,
and the various periodicals and miscellanies of the first half of the
eighteenth century bear witness to the fact that many eminent poets, not
to mention a crowd of poetasters, thought it their duty to publish a
poetical tribute couched in the supposed language and manner of Chaucer.
These attempts were nearly all avowedly humorous,[130] and seemed based
on a belief that the very language of Chaucer was in some respects
suitable comic material for a would-be humorous writer. Such an attitude
was obviously the outcome of a not unnatural ignorance of the historical
development of the language. Chaucer’s language had long been regarded
as almost a dead language, and this attitude had persisted even to
the eighteenth century, so that it was felt that a mastery of the
language of the “Canterbury Tales” required prolonged study. Even Thomas
Warton, speaking of Chaucer, was of the opinion that “his uncouth and
unfamiliar language disgusts and deters many readers.”[131] Hence it
is not surprising that there was a complete failure to catch, not only
anything of the real spirit of Chaucer, but also anything that could
be described as even a distant approach to his language. The imitators
seemed to think that fourteenth century English could be imitated by the
use of common words written in an uncommon way, or of strange terms with
equally strange meanings. The result was an artificial language that
could never have been spoken by anybody, often including words to which
it is impossible to give any definite sense. It would seem that only two
genuine Chaucerian terms had really been properly grasped, and this pair,
ne and eke, is in consequence worked to death. Ignorance of the earlier
language naturally led to spurious grammatical forms, of which the most
favoured was a singular verb form ending in -_en_. Gay, for instance,
has, in a poem of seventeen lines, such phrases as “It maken doleful
song,” “There _spreaden_ a rumour,”[132] whilst Fenton writes,
If in mine quest thou _falsen_ me.[133]
The general style and manner of these imitations, with their “humorous”
tinge, their halting verse, bad grammar, and impossible inflections
are well illustrated in William Thompson’s “Garden Inscription—Written
in Chaucer’s Bowre,” though more serious efforts were not any more
successful.
The death of Pope, strangely enough, called forth more than one attempt,
among them being Thomas Warton’s imitation of the characterization of the
birds from the “Parliament of Fowles.”[134] Better known at the time
was the monody “Musæus,” written by William Mason, “To the memory of Mr.
Pope.” Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton are represented as coming to mourn
the inevitable loss of him who was about to die, and Mason endeavoured to
reproduce their respective styles, “Tityrus” (Chaucer) holding forth in
this strain:
Mickle of wele betide thy houres last
For mich gode wirke to me don and past.
For syn the days whereas my lyre ben strongen,
And deftly many a mery laie I songen,
Old Time which alle things don maliciously,
Gnawen with rusty tooth continually,
Grattrid my lines, that they all cancrid ben
Till at the last thou smoothen hem hast again.
It is astonishing to think that this mechanical imitation, with its
harsh and forced rhythm, and its almost doggerel language, was regarded
at the time as a successful reproduction of Chaucer’s manner and style.
But probably before 1775, when Tyrwhitt announced his rediscovery of the
secret of Chaucer’s rhythm, few eighteenth century readers suspected its
presence at all.
But the Chaucerian imitations were merely a literary fashion predoomed
to failure. It was not in any way the result of a genuine influence
of the early English poetry on contemporary taste, and thus it was
not even vitalized, as was the Spenserian revival, by a certain vague
and undefined desire to catch something at least of the spirit of the
“Faerie Queene.” The Spenserian imitations had a firmer foundation, and
because the best of them did not confine their ambition altogether to
the mechanical imitation of Spenser’s style in the narrower sense they
achieved a greater measure of success.
It is significant to note that among the first attempts at a Spenserian
imitation was that made by one of the foremost of the Augustans. This
was Matthew Prior, who in 1706 published his “Ode, Humbly Inscribed to
the Queen on the Glorious success of Her Majesty’s Arms, Written in
Imitation of Spenser’s Style.”[135] We are surprised, however, to find
when we have read his Preface, that Prior’s aim was in reality to write
a poem on the model of Horace and of Spenser. The attitude in which he
approached Spenser’s language is made quite clear by his explanation.
He has “avoided such of his words as I found too obsolete. I have
however retained some few of them to make the colouring look more like
Spenser’s.” Follows then a list of such words, including “_behest_,
command; _band_, army; _prowess_, strength; _I weet_, I know; _I ween_, I
think; _whilom_, heretofore; and two or three more of that kind.” Though
later in his Preface Prior speaks of the _curiosa felicitas_ of Spenser’s
diction, it is evident that there is little or no real understanding or
appreciation.
Now began a continuous series of Spenserian imitations,[136] of which,
with a few exceptions, the only distinguishing characteristic was a small
vocabulary of obsolete words, upon which the poetasters could draw for
the “local colour” considered necessary. In the majority of cases the
result was a purely artificial language, probably picked haphazard from
the “Faerie Queene,” and often used without any definite idea of its
meaning or appropriateness.[137] Fortunately, one or two real poets were
attracted by the idea, and in due course produced their “imitations.”
William Shenstone (1714-1763) is perhaps worthy of being ranked amongst
these, in virtue at least of “The Schoolmistress,” which appeared in its
final shape in 1742. Shenstone himself confesses that the poem was not
at first intended to be a serious imitation, but his study of Spenser
led him gradually to something like a real appreciation of the earlier
poet.[138]
“The Schoolmistress” draws upon the usual common stock of old words:
_whilom_, _mickle_, _perdie_, _eke_, _thik_, etc., but often, as in the
case of Spenser himself, the obsolete terms have a playful and humorous
effect:
For they in gaping wonderment abound
And think, no doubt, she been the greatest wight on ground.
Nor is there lacking a quaint, wistful tenderness, as in the description
of the refractory schoolboy, who, after being flogged,
Behind some door, in melancholy thought,
Mindless of food, he, dreary caitiff, pines,
Ne for his fellows joyaunce careth aught,
But to the wind all merriment resigns.
Hence “The Schoolmistress” is no mere parody or imitation: there is
a real and tender humanity in the description of the village school
(adumbrating, it would seem, Goldsmith’s efforts with a similar theme),
whilst the judicious use of Spenser’s stanza and the sprinkling of his
old words help to invest the whole poem with an atmosphere of genuine and
unaffected humour.
The next Spenserian whose work merits attention is William Thompson, who,
it would seem, had delved not a little into the Earlier English poetry,
and who was one of the first to capture something of the real atmosphere
of the “Faerie Queene.” His “Epithalamium”[139] and “The Nativity,”[140]
which appeared in 1736, are certainly among the best of the imitations.
It is important to note that, while there is a free use of supposedly
archaic words, with the usual list of _certes_, _perdie_, _sikerly_,
_hight_, as well as others less common, such as _belgards_ (“beautiful
looks”), _bonnibel_ (“beautiful virgin”), there is no abuse of the
practice. Not a little of the genuine spirit of Spenser’s poetry, with
its love of nature and outdoor life, has been caught and rendered without
any lavish recourse to an artificial and mechanical diction, as a stanza
from “The Nativity,” despite its false rhymes, will perhaps show:
Eftsoons he spied a grove, the Season’s pride,
All in the centre of a pleasant glade,
Where Nature flourished like a virgin bride,
Mantled with green, with hyacinths inlaid,
And crystal-rills o’er beds of lilies stray’d:
The blue-ey’d violet and King-cup gay,
And new blown roses, smiling sweetly red,
Out-glow’d the blushing infancy of Day
While amorous west-winds kist their fragrant souls away.
This cannot altogether be said of the “Hymn to May” published over twenty
years later,[141] despite the fact that Thompson himself draws attention
to the fact that he does not consider that a genuine Spenserian imitation
may be produced by scattering a certain number of obsolete words through
the poem. Nevertheless, we find that he has sprinkled his “Hymn”
plentifully with “obsolete” terms, though they include a few, such as
_purfled_, _dispredden_, _goodlihead_, that were not the common property
of the poetasters. His explanations of the words so used show that not a
few of them were used with little knowledge of their original meaning, as
when he defines _glen_[142] as “a country hamlet,” or explains _perdie_
as “an old word for saying anything.” It is obvious also that many
obsolete terms are often simply stuck in the lines when their more modern
equivalents would have served equally well, as for instance,
Full suddenly the seeds of joy _recure_ (“recover”),
or
Myrtles to Venus _algates_ sacred been.
With these reservations the diction of Thompson’s poems is pure and
unaffected, and the occasional happy use of archaism is well illustrated
in more than one stanza of “The Nativity.”
It is generally agreed that the best of all the Spenserian imitations
is “The Castle of Indolence,” which James Thomson published two months
before his death in 1748.[143] Yet even in this case there is evident a
sort of quiet condescension, as if it were in Thompson’s mind that he
was about to draw the attention of his eighteenth century audience to
something quaint and old-fashioned, but which had yet a charm of its
own. “The obsolete words,” he writes in his “advertisement” to the poem,
“and a simplicity of diction in some of the lines, which borders on the
ludicrous, were necessary to make the imitation more perfect.” Hence
he makes use of a number of words intended to give an archaic air to
his poem, including the usual _certes_, _withouten_, _sheen_, _perdie,_
_weet_, _pleasaunce_, _ycleped_, etc. To the first edition was appended
a page of explanation of these and other “obsolete words used in this
poem”: altogether between seventy and eighty such words are thus glossed,
the large majority of which are familiar enough nowadays, either as part
of the ordinary vocabulary, or as belonging especially to the diction of
poetry.
Though the archaisms are sometimes scattered in a haphazard manner, they
are not used with such mechanical monotony as is obvious in the bulk
of the Spenserian imitations. In both cantos there are long stretches
without a single real or pseudo-archaism, and indeed, when Thomson is
indulging in one of the moral or the didactic surveys characteristic
of his age, as, for instance, when the bard, invoked by Sir Industry,
breaks into a long tirade on the Supreme Perfection (Canto II, 47-61)
his diction is the plain and unadorned idiom perfected by Pope.[144] Yet
Thompson occasionally yields to the fascination of the spurious form in
_-en_,[145] as
But these I _passen_ by with nameless numbers moe
(Canto I., 56)
or
And taunts he _casten_ forth most bitterly.
(Canto II, 78)
Sometimes it would seem that his archaisms owe their appearance to the
necessities of rhyme, as in
So worked the wizard wintry storms to swell
As heaven and earth they would together _mell_
(Canto I, 43)
and
Or the brown fruit with which the woodlands teem:
The same to him glad summer, or the winter _breme_.
(Canto II, 7)
There are lines too where we feel that the archaisms have been dragged
in; for example,
As _soot_ this man could sing as morning lark
(Canto I, 57)
(though there is here perhaps the added charm of a Chaucerian
reminiscence); or
_replevy_ cannot be
From the strong, iron grasp of vengeful destiny.
(Canto II, 32)
But, on the whole, he has been successful in his efforts, half-hearted
as they sometimes seem, to give an old-world atmosphere to his poem by
a sprinkling of archaisms, and it is then that we feel in _The Castle
of Indolence_ something at least of the beauty and charm of “the poet’s
poet,” as in the well-known stanza describing the valley of Idlesse with
its
waters sheen
That, as they bickered[146] through the sunny glade,
Though restless still, themselves a lulling murmur made.
(Canto I, 3)
Though the Spenserian imitations continued beyond the year which saw
the birth of Wordsworth,[147] it is not necessary to mention further
examples, except perhaps that of William Mickle, who, in 1767, published
“The Concubine,” a Spenserian imitation of two cantos, which afterwards
appeared in a later edition (1777) under the title “Sir Martyn.” Like
his predecessors, Mickle made free use of obsolete spellings and words,
while he added the usual glossary, which is significant as showing at
the end of the eighteenth century, about the time when Tyrwhitt was
completing his edition of Chaucer, not only the artificial character of
this “Spenserian diction,” but also the small acquaintance of the average
man of letters with our earlier language.[148]
It must not be assumed, of course, that all the “obsolete” words used by
the imitators were taken directly from Spenser. Words like _nathless_,
_rathe_, _hight_, _sicker_, _areeds_, _cleeped_, _hardiment_, _felly_,
etc., had continued in fairly common use until the seventeenth century,
though actually some of them were regarded even then as archaisms.
Thus _cleoped_, though never really obsolete, is marked by Blount in
1656 as “Saxon”; _sicker_, extensively employed in Middle English, is
rarely found used after 1500 except by Scotch writers, though it still
remains current in northern dialects. On the other hand, not a few words
were undoubtedly brought directly back into literature from the pages
of Spenser, among them being _meed_, _sheen_ (boasting an illustrious
descent from _Beowulf_ through Chaucer), _erst_, _elfin_, _paramour_.
Others, like _scrannel_, and apparently also _ledded_, were made familiar
by Milton’s use the former either being the poet’s own coinage or his
borrowing from some dialect or other. On the other hand, very many of the
“revived” words failed to take root at all, such as _faitours_, which
Spenser himself had apparently revived, and also his coinage _singult_,
though Scott is found using the latter form.
As has been said, the crowd of poetasters who attempted to reproduce
Spenser’s spirit and style thought to do so by merely mechanical
imitation of what they regarded as his “quaint” or “ludicrous” diction.
Between them and any possibility of grasping the perennial beauty
and charm of the “poet’s poet” there was a great gulf fixed, whilst,
altogether apart from this fatal limitation, then parodies were little
likely to have even ephemeral success, for parody presupposes in its
readers at least a little knowledge and appreciation of the thing
parodied. But there were amongst the imitators one or two at least who,
we may imagine, were able to find in the melody and romance of “The
Faerie Queene” an avenue of escape from the prosaic pressure of their
times. In the case of William Thompson, Shenstone, and the author of
the “Castle of Indolence,” the influence of Spenser revealed itself as
in integral and vital part of the Romantic reaction, for these, being
real poets, had been able to recapture something at least of the colour,
music, and fragrance of their original. And not only did these, helped
by others whose names have all but been forgotten restore a noble stanza
form to English verse. Even their mechanical imitation of Spenser’s
language was not without its influence, for it cannot be doubted that
these attempts to write in an archaic or pseudo-archaic style did not a
little to free poetry from the shackles of a conventional language.
This process was greatly helped by that other aspect of the eighteenth
century revival of the past which was exemplified in the publication of
numerous collections of old ballads and songs.[149] There is, of course,
as Macaulay long ago noted, a series of conventional epithets that is
one mark of the genuine ballad manner, but the true ballad language
was not a lifeless stereotyped diction. It consisted of “plain English
without any trimmings.” The ballads had certain popular mannerisms
(_the good greenwood_, _the wan water_, etc.), but they were free from
the conventional figures of speech, or such rhetorical artifices as
personification and periphrasis.
Hence it is not surprising that at first their fresh and spontaneous
language was regarded, when contrasted with the artificial and refined
diction of the time, as “barbarous” or “rude.” Thus Prior thought it
necessary to paraphrase the old ballad of the “Nut Brown Maid” into his
insipid “Henry and Emma” (1718), but a comparison of only a few lines of
the original with the banality of the modernized version is sufficient
testimony to the refreshing and vivifying influence of such collections
as the “Reliques.”
The tendency to present the old ballads in an eighteenth century dress
had soon revealed itself; at least, the editors of the early collections
often felt themselves obliged to apologize for the obsolete style of
their material.[150] But in 1760 the first attempt at a critical text
appeared when Edward Capell, the famous Shakespearian editor, published
his “Prolusions”; or “Select Pieces of Antient Poetry—compil’d with
great Care from their several Originals, and offer’d to the Publick as
specimens of the Integrity that should be found in the Editions of worthy
Authors.” Capell’s care was almost entirely directed to ensuring textual
accuracy, but the “Nut-Browne Maid,” the only ballad included, receives
sympathetic mention in his brief _Preface_.[151]
Five years later, the most famous of all the ballad collections appeared,
Thomas Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” (1765). The nucleus
of Percy’s collection was a certain manuscript in a handwriting of
Charles I’s time, containing 191 songs and ballads, but he had also had
access to various other manuscript collections, whilst he was quite ready
to acknowledge that he had filled gaps in his originals with stanzas and,
in some cases, with nearly entire poems of his own composition. Much
censure has been heaped upon Percy for his apparent lax ideas on the
functions of an editor, but in decking out his “parcel of old ballads”
in the false and affected style of his age, he was only doing his best
to meet the taste of his readers. He himself passes judgment on his own
labours, when, alongside of the genuine old ballads, with their freshness
and simplicity of diction, he places his own “pruned” or “refined”
versions, or additions, garbed in a sham and sickly idiom.
It was not until over a century later, when Percy’s folio manuscript was
copied and printed,[152] that the extent of his additions, alterations,
and omissions were fully realized, though at the same time it was
admitted that the pruning and refining was not unskilfully done.
Nevertheless the influence of the “Reliques,” as a vital part of the
Romantic revival, was considerable:[153] it was as if a breath of “the
wind on the heath” had swept across literature and its writers, bringing
with it an invigorating fragrance and freshness, whilst, on the purely
formal side, the genuine old ballads, which Percy had culled and printed
untouched, no doubt played their part in directing the attention of
Wordsworth to the whole question of the language of poetry. And when the
great Romantic manifestoes on the subject of “the language of metrical
composition” were at length launched, their author was not slow to bear
witness to the revivifying influence of the old ballads on poetic form.
“Our poetry,” he wrote, “has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not
think that there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would
not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the “Reliques.”[154]
The year before the appearance of the “Reliques,” Thomas Chatterton had
published his “Rowley Poems,” and this attempt of a poet of genius to
pass off his poems as the work of a mediaeval English writer is another
striking indication of the new Romantic spirit then asserting itself. As
for the pseudo-archaic language in which Chatterton with great labour
clothed his “revivals,” there is no need to say much. It was a thoroughly
artificial language, compiled, as Skeat has shown, from various sources,
such as John Kersey’s “Dictionarium Anglo-Brittanicum,” three editions
of which had appeared before 1721. In this work there are included a
considerable number of obsolete words, chiefly from Spenser and his
contemporaries, marked “O,” and in some cases erroneously explained. This
dictionary was the chief source of Chatterton’s vocabulary, many words of
which the young poet took apparently without any definite idea of their
meaning.[155]
Yet in the Rowley poems there are passages where the pseudo-archaic
language is quite in keeping with the poet’s theme and treatment, whilst
here and there we come across epithets and lines which, even in their
strange dress, are of a wild and artless sweetness, such as
Where thou mayst here the sweete night-lark chant,
Or with some mocking brooklet sweetly glide,
or the whole of the first stanza of the famous “An Excelente Balade
of Charitie,” where the old words help to transport us at once into
the fictitious world which Chatterton had made for himself. Perhaps,
as has been suggested, the “Rowley dialect” was not, as we nowadays,
with Skeat’s analysis in our minds, are a little too apt to believe, a
deliberate attempt to deceive, but rather reflected an attempt to escape
from the dead abstract diction of the period.[156]
Apart from this special aspect of the Romantic revival marked by a
tendency to look back lovingly to the earlier English poetry, there are
few traces of the use of archaic and obsolete words, at least of such
words used consciously, in eighteenth century poetry. The great poets of
the century make little or no use of them. Collins has no examples, but
Gray, who began by advocating the poet’s right to use obsolete words,
and later seemed to recant, now and then uses an old term, as when in his
translation from Dante he writes:
The anguish that unuttered _nathless_ wrings
My inmost heart.
Blake, however, it is interesting to note, often used archaic forms, or
at least archaic spellings,[157] as _Tyger_, _antient_ (“To the Muses”),
“the _desart_ wild” (“The Little Girl Lost”), as well as such lines as
In lucent words my darkling verses dight
(“Imitation of Spenser”)
or
So I piped with merry _chear_.
(Introduction to “Songs of Innocence”)
Perhaps by these means the poet wished to give a quaint or old-fashioned
look to his verses, though it is to be remembered that most of them occur
in the “Poetical Sketches,” which are avowedly Elizabethan.
The use of archaic and obsolete words in the eighteenth century was
then chiefly an outcome of that revival of the past which was one of
the characteristics of the new Romantic movement, and which was later
to find its culmination in the works of Scott. The old words used by
the eighteenth century imitators of Spenser were not often used, we may
imagine, because poets saw in them poetical beauty and value; most often
they were the result of a desire to catch, as it were, something of the
“local colour” of the “Faerie Queene,” just as modern writers nowadays,
poets and novelists alike, often draw upon local dialects for new means
of expression. The Spenserian imitations recovered not a few words,
such as _meed_, _sheen_, _dight_, _glen_,[158] which have since been
regarded as belonging especially to the diction of poetry, and when the
Romantic revival had burst into life the impulse, which had thus been
unconsciously given, was continued by some of its great leaders. Scott,
as is well known, was an enthusiastic lover of our older literature,
especially the ballads, from which he gleaned many words full of a beauty
and charm which won for them immediate admission into the language of
poetry; at the same time he was able to find many similar words in the
local dialects of the lowlands and the border. Perhaps in this work he
had been inspired by his famous countryman, Robert Burns, who by his
genius had raised his native language, with its stores of old and vivid
words and expressions, to classical rank.[159]
Nevertheless it is undoubted that the main factor in the new Romantic
attitude towards old words had been the eighteenth century imitations
and collections of our older English literature. Coleridge, it is to
be remembered, made free use of archaisms; in the “Ancient Mariner,”
there are many obsolete forms: _loon_, _eftsoons_, _uprist_, _gramercy_,
_gossameres_, _corse_, etc., besides those which appeared in the first
edition, and were altered or omitted when the poem reappeared in
1800. Wordsworth, it is true, made no use of archaic diction, whether
in the form of deliberate revivals, or by drafts on the dialects,
which, following the great example of Burns, and in virtue of his
own “theories,” he might have been expected to explore. Nevertheless
the “theories” concerning poetical language which he propounded and
maintained are not without their bearing on the present question.
Reduced to their simplest terms, the manifestoes, while passing judgment
on the conventional poetical diction, conceded to the poet the right of
a style in keeping with his subject and inspiration, and Wordsworth’s
successors for the most part, so far as style in the narrower sense of
_vocabulary_ is concerned, did not fail to reap the benefits of the
emancipation won for them. And among the varied sources upon which they
began to draw for fresh reserves of diction were the abundant stores of
old words, full of colour and energy, to be gleaned from the pages of
their great predecessors.