CHAPTER VIII

THE DICTION OF POETRY

After years of comparative neglect, and, it must be admitted, a good

deal of uncritical disparagement, the “age of prose and reason” would

seem at last to have come into its own. Or at any rate during recent

years there has become evident a disposition to look more kindly on a

period which has but seldom had justice done to it. The label which

Matthew Arnold’s dictum attached to a good portion, if not the whole,

of the eighteenth century seems to imply a period of arid and prosaic

rationalism in which “the shaping spirit of imagination” had no abiding

place, and this has no doubt been partly responsible for the persistency

of an unjust conception. But it is now more generally recognized that,

in prose and even in poetry, the seventy or eighty years, which begin

when Dryden died, and end when William Blake was probably writing down

the first drafts of his “Poetical Sketches,” had some definite and far

from despicable legacies to pass on to its successors, to the writers in

whom the Romantic revival was soon to be triumphantly manifested. The

standards in all branches of literature were to be different, but between

“classical” and “romantic” there was not to be, and indeed could not be,

any great gulf fixed. There was continuity and much was handed on. What

had to be transformed (and of course the process is to be seen at work in

the very height of the Augustan supremacy) were the aims and methods of

literature, both its matter in large measure, and its style.[249]

It is the poetry of the period with which we are specially concerned,

and it is in poetry that the distinction between the old order and the

new was to be sharpest; for the leaders of the revolt had been gradually

winning new fields, or re-discovering old ones, for poetry, and thus in

more than one sense the way had been prepared for both the theory and

practice of Wordsworth. Then came the great manifestoes, beginning with

the Preface of 1798, followed by an expansion in 1800 and again in 1802;

fifteen years later, Coleridge, with his penetrating analysis of the

theories advanced by his friend and fellow-worker, began a controversy,

which still to-day forms a fruitful theme of discussion.

Wordsworth, in launching his famous declaration of principle on the

language fit and proper for metrical composition, had no doubt especially

in mind the practice of his eighteenth century predecessors. But it has

to be remembered that the _Prefaces_ deal in reality with the whole

genesis of “what is usually called poetic diction,” and that the avowed

aim and object was to sweep away “a large portion of phrases and figures

of speech, which from father to son have long been regarded as the common

inheritance of poets.” The circumstances of the time, and perhaps the

examples chosen by Wordsworth to illustrate his thesis, have too often

led to his attack being considered as concerned almost entirely with the

poetical language of the eighteenth century. Hence, whenever the phrase

“poetic diction” is mentioned as a term of English literary history,

more often than not it is to the eighteenth century that the attention

is directed, and the phrase itself has taken on a derogatory tinge,

expressive of a stereotyped language, imitative, mechanical, lifeless.

For in the reaction against eighteenth century styles, and especially

against the polished heroic couplet, there arose a tendency to make the

diction of the period an object of undistinguishing depreciation, to

class it all in one category, as a collection of conventional words and

phrases of which all poets and versifiers felt themselves at liberty to

make use.

An actual analysis of eighteenth century poetry shows us that this

criticism is both deficient and misleading; it is misleading because it

neglects to take any account of that eighteenth century poetical language

which Pope, inheriting it from Dryden, brought to perfection, and which

was so admirable a vehicle for the satiric or didactic thought it had to

convey; it is deficient in that it concentrates attention mainly on one

type or variety of the language, used both by poets and poetasters, and

persists in labelling this type either as the “eighteenth century style

proper,” or, as if the phrases were synonymous, “the Pope style.”

One formula could no more suffice in itself for the poetic styles of the

eighteenth century than for those of the nineteenth century; we may say,

rather, that there are then to be distinguished at least four distinct

varieties or elements of poetical diction, in the narrow sense of the

term, though of course it is scarcely necessary to add that none of them

is found in complete isolation from the others. There is first the stock

descriptive language, the usual vehicle of expression for that large

amount of eighteenth century verse where, in the words of Taine, we can

usually find “the same diction, the same apostrophes, the same manner of

placing the epithet and rounding the period,” and “regarding which we

know beforehand with what poetic ornaments it will be adorned.”[250] In

reading this verse, with its lifeless, abstract diction, we seldom or

never feel that we have been brought into contact with the real thoughts

or feelings of living men. Its epithets are artificial, imitative,

conventional; though their glare and glitter may occasionally give

us a certain pleasure, they rarely or never make any appeal to our

sensibility. As someone has said, it is like wandering about in a land of

empty phrases. Only here and there, as, for instance, in Dyer’s “Grongar

Hill,” have the _gradus_ epithets taken on a real charm and beauty in

virtue of the spontaneity and sincerity with which the poet has been

inspired.

The received doctrine that it was due in the main to Pope’s “Homer”

is unjust; many of the characteristics of this conventional poetical

language were established long before Pope produced his translation.

They are found to an equal, if not greater, extent in Dryden, and if

it is necessary to establish a fountain-head, “Paradise Lost” will be

found to contain most of the words and phrases which the eighteenth

century versifiers worked to death. If Pope is guilty in any degree it

is only because in his work the heroic couplet was brought to a high

pitch of perfection; no doubt too the immense popularity of the “Homer”

translation led to servile imitation of many of its words, phrases, and

similes. Yet it is unjust to saddle Pope with the lack of original genius

of so many of his successors and imitators.

But the underlying cause of this conventional language must be sought

elsewhere than in the mere imitation of any poet or poets. A passage

from the “Prelude” supplies perhaps a clue to one of the fundamental

conditions that had enslaved poetry in the shackles of a stereotyped

language. It takes the form of a sort of literary confession by

Wordsworth as to the method of composing his first poems, which, we have

seen, are almost an epitome of the poetical vices against which his

manifestoes rebelled. He speaks of

the trade in classic niceties

The dangerous craft of culling term and phrase

From languages that want the living voice

To carry meaning to the natural heart.

(“Prelude,” Bk. VI, ll. 109-112)

In these lines we have summed up one of the main Romantic indictments

against the practice of the “classical” poets, who were too wont to

regard the language of poetry as a mere collection or accepted aggregate

of words, phrases, and similes, empty of all personal feeling and

emotion.[251]

Wordsworth, too, in this passage not unfairly describes the sort of

atmosphere in which diction of the stock eighteenth century type

flourished. The neo-classical interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine

of poetry as an imitation had by the time of Pope and his school resulted

in a real critical confusion, which saw the essence of poetry in a

slavish adherence to accepted models, and regarded its ideal language as

choice flowers and figures of speech consecrated to poetry by traditional

use, and used by the poet very much as the painter uses his colours, that

is, as pigments laid on from the outside. That this doctrine of imitation

and parallelism directly encourages the growth of a set poetic diction

is obvious; the poet’s language need not be the reflection of a genuine

emotion felt in the mind: he could always find his words, phrases, and

figures of speech in accepted and consecrated models.

The reaction against this artificial diction is fundamental in the

Romantic revolt from another cause than that of poetic form. The stock

poetic language, we have seen, occurs mainly in what may be called the

“nature” poetry of the period, and its set words and phrases are for

the most part descriptive terms of outdoor sights and sounds. Among the

many descriptions or explanations of the Romantic movement is that it

was in its essence a “return to Nature,” which is sometimes taken to

imply that “Nature,” as we in the twentieth century think of it, was a

sudden new vision, of which glimpses were first caught by James Thomson,

and which finally culminated in Wordsworth’s “confession of faith.” Yet

there was, of course, plenty of “nature poetry” in the neo-classical

period; but it was for the most part nature from the point of view of the

Town, or as seen from the study window with a poetical “Thesaurus” at

the writer’s side, or stored in his memory as a result of his reading.

It was not written with “the eye on the object.” More fatal still, if

the neo-classical poets did look, they could see little beauty in the

external world; they “had lost the best of the senses; they had ceased to

perceive with joy and interpret with insight the colour and outline of

things, the cadence of sound and motion, the life of creatures.”[252]

This sterility or atrophy of the senses had thus a real connexion with

the question of a conventional poetical language, for the descriptive

diction with its stock words for the sea, the rivers, the mountains, the

sky, the stars, the birds of the air and their music, for all the varied

sights and sounds of outdoor life—all this is simply a reflex of the lack

of genuine feeling towards external nature. Keats, with his ecstatic

delight in Nature, quickly and aptly pilloried this fatal weakness in

the eighteenth century versifiers:

The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll’d

Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue

Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew

Of summer nights collected still to make

The morning precious: beauty was awake!

Why were ye not awake! But ye were dead

To things ye knew not of—were closely wed

To musty laws lined out with wretched rule

And compass vile: so that ye taught a school

Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip and fit

Till, like the certain wands of Jacob’s wit,

Their verses tallied; Easy was the task

A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask

Of Poesy.[253]

It is obvious that two great changes or advances were necessary, if

poetry was to be freed from the bondage of this conventional diction. In

the first place, the poet must reject root and branch the traditional

stock of words and phrases that may once have been inspiring, but had

become lifeless and mechanical long before they fell into disuse; he

must write with his eye on the object, and translate his impressions

into fresh terms endowed with real, imaginative power. And this first

condition would naturally lead to a second, requiring every word and

phrase to be a spontaneous reflection of genuine feeling felt in the

presence of Nature and her vast powers.

The neo-classical poetry proper was not without verse which partly

satisfied these conditions; direct contact with nature was never entirely

lost. Wordsworth, as we know, gave honourable mention[254] to “The

Nocturnal Reverie” of Anne, Countess Winchilsea, written at the very

height of the neo-classical supremacy, in which external nature is

described with simplicity and fidelity, though there is little trace

of any emotion roused in the writer’s mind by the sights and sounds

of outdoor life. And every now and then, amid the arid and monotonous

stretches of so much eighteenth century verse, we are startled into

lively interest by stumbling across, often in the most obscure and

unexpected corners, a phrase or a verse to remind us that Nature, and

all that the term implies, was still making its powerful appeal to the

hearts and minds of men, that its beauty and mystery was still being

expressed in simple and heartfelt language. Thomas Dyer’s “Grongar Hill”

has already been mentioned; it was written in 1726, the year of the

publication of Thompson’s “Winter.” Dyer, for all we know, may have the

priority, but in any case we see him here leading back poetry to the

sights and sounds and scents of external nature, which he describes, not

merely as a painter with a good eye for landscape, but as a lover who

feels the thrill and call of the countryside, and can give exquisite

expression to his thoughts and emotions. We have only to recall such

passages as

Who, the purple evening lie,

On the mountain’s lonely van;

or even his tree catalogue,

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,

The yellow beech, the sable yew,

The slender fir, that taper grows,

The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs;

or

How close and small the hedges lie;

What streaks of meadow cross the eye!

or

A little rule, a little sway,

A sun-beam on a winter’s day,

Is all the proud and mighty have

Between the cradle and the grave—

to recognize that already the supremacy of Pope and his school of town

poets is seriously threatened.

Here too is a short passage which might not unfairly be assigned to

Wordsworth himself.

Would I again were with you, O ye dales

Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands, where,

Oft as the giant flood obliquely strides

And his banks open, and his lawns extend,

Stops short the pleased traveller to view,

Presiding o’er the scene, some rustic tower

Founded by Norman or by Saxon hands:

O ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook

The rocky pavement and the mossy falls

Of solitary Wensbeck’s limpid stream,

How gladly I recall your well-known seats

Beloved of old, and that delightful time

When all alone, for many a summer’s day,

I wandered through your calm recesses, led

In silence by some powerful hand unseen.

It is from Mark Akenside’s “Pleasures of the Imagination” (Bk IV, ll. 31

foll.). And so, too, is this:

the meadow’s fragrant hedge,

In spring time when the woodlands first are green

(Book II, 175-6)

which takes us far away from the formal conventional landscapes of the

Augustans.

These two are among the more famous of their time, but a close search

amongst the minor poetry of the mid-eighteenth century will bring to

light many a surprising instance of poetry written with an eye on the

object, as in John Cunningham’s (1729-1773) “Day,”[255] where the sights

and sounds of the countryside are simply and freshly brought before us:

Swiftly from the mountain’s brow,

Shadows, nurs’d by night, retire:

And the peeping sun-beam, now,

Paints with gold the village spire.

Philomel forsakes the thorn,

Plaintive where she prates at night;

And the Lark, to meet the morn,

Soars beyond the shepherd’s sight.

From the low-roof’d cottage ridge,

See the chatt’ring Swallow spring;

Darting through the one-arch’d bridge,

Quick she dips her dappled wing.

But the great bulk of neo-classical verse is unaffected by the regained

and quickened outlook on the external world. It is in the forerunners of

the Romantic revolt that this latter development is to be most plainly

noted: when, as the result of many and varied causes English poets

were inspired to use their eyes again, they were able, slowly and in a

somewhat shallow manner at first, afterwards quickly and profoundly,

to “sense” the beauty of the external world, its mysterious emanations

of power and beauty. This quickening and final triumph of the artistic

sense naturally revealed itself in expression; the conventional words

and epithets were really doomed from the time of “Grongar Hill” and

“The Seasons,” and a new language was gradually forged to express the

fresh, vivid perceptions peculiar to each poet, according as his senses

interpreted for him the face of the world.

A second variety of eighteenth century diction, or, more strictly

speaking, another conventional embellishment of the poetry of the period,

is found in that widespread use of personified abstraction which is

undoubtedly one of the greatest, perhaps _the_ greatest, of its faults.

Not only the mere versifiers, but also many of its greatest poets, make

abundant use of cut and dried personifications, whose sole claim to

vitality rests most often on the presence of a capital letter. It is a

favourite indulgence of the writers, not only of the old order, but

also of those who, like Collins and Gray, announce the advent of the

new, and not even the presence of genius could prevent its becoming a

poetical abuse of the worst kind. Whether it be regarded as a survival

of a symbolic system from which the life had long since departed, or

as a conventional device arising from the theory of poetical ornament

handed down by the neo-classicists, its main effect was to turn a large

proportion of eighteenth century poetry into mere rhetorical verse. It is

this variety of poetical language that might with justice be labelled as

the eighteenth century style in the derogatory sense of the term. In its

cumulative effect on the poetry of the period it is perhaps more vicious

than the stock diction which is the usual target of criticism.

Two other varieties of eighteenth century diction represent an endeavour

to replace, or rather reinforce the stereotyped words, phrases, and

similes by new forms. The first of these is the widespread use of

latinized words and constructions, chiefly in the blank verse poems

written in imitation of Milton, but not only there. The second is the use

of archaic and pseudo-archaic words by the writers whose ambition it was

to catch something of the music and melody of the Spenserian stanza. Both

these movements thus reflected the desire for a change, and though the

tendencies, which they reflect, are in a certain sense conventional and

imitative in that they simply seek to replace the accepted diction by new

forms derived respectively from Milton and Spenser, one of them at least

had in the sequel a real and revivifying influence on the language of

poetry.

The pedantic and cumbrous terms, which swarm in the majority of the

Miltonic imitations, were artificial creations, rarely imbued with any

trace of poetic power. Where they do not actually arise from deliberate

attempts to imitate the high Miltonic manner, they probably owe their

appearance to more or less conscious efforts to make the new blank verse

as attractive as possible to a generation of readers accustomed to the

polished smoothness of the couplet. Though such terms linger on until

the time of Cowper, and even invade the works of Wordsworth himself,

romanticism utterly rejected them, not only because of a prejudice in

favour of “Saxon simplicity,” but also because such artificial formations

lacked almost completely that mysterious power of suggestion and

association in which lies the poetical appeal of words. Wordsworth, it is

true, could win from them real poetic effects, and so occasionally could

Thomson, but in the main they are even more dead and dreary than the old

abstract diction of the neo-classicals.

The tendency towards archaism was much more successful in this respect,

because it was based on a firmer foundation. In harking back to “the

poet’s poet,” the eighteenth century versifiers were at least on a right

track, and though it was hardly possible, even with the best of them,

that more than a faint simulacrum of the music and melody of the “Faerie

Queene” could be captured merely by drawing drafts on Spenser’s diction,

yet they at least helped to blaze a way for the great men who were to

come later. The old unknown writers of the ballads and Spenser and the

Elizabethans generally were to be looked upon as treasure trove to which

Keats and Scott and Beddoes and many another were constantly to turn in

their efforts to revivify the language of poetry, to restore to it what

it had lost of freshness and vigour and colour.

The varieties or embellishments of poetical diction, which have just

been characterized, represent the special language of eighteenth

century poetry, as distinct from that large portion of language which

is common alike to prose and poetry. For it is scarcely necessary

to remind ourselves that by far the largest portion of the poetry of

the eighteenth century (as indeed of any century) is written in the

latter sort of language, which depends for its effects mainly upon the

arrangement of the words, rather than for any unique power in the words

themselves. In this kind of poetical diction, it is not too much to say

that the eighteenth century is pre-eminent, though the effect of the

Wordsworthian criticism has led to a certain failure or indisposition to

recognize the fact. Just as Johnson and his contemporaries do not give

direct expression to any approval of the admirable language, of which

Pope and some of his predecessors had such perfect command, so modern

criticism has not always been willing to grant it even bare justice,

though Coleridge’s penetrating insight had enabled him, as we have seen,

to pay his tribute to “the almost faultless position and choice of words,

in Mr. Pope’s _original_ compositions, particularly in his Satires and

Moral Essays.” It was, we may imagine, the ordinary everyday language,

heightened by brilliance and point, in which Pope and his coterie carried

on their dallyings and bickerings at Twickenham and elsewhere, and it was

an ideal vehicle, lucid and precise for the argument and declamation it

had to sustain. But it was more than that, as will be readily recognized

if we care to recall some of the oft-quoted lines which amply prove

with what consummate skill Pope, despite the economy and condensation

imposed by the requirements of the closed couplet, could evoke from this

plain and unadorned diction effects of imagination and sometimes even of

passion. Such lines as

He stooped to Truth and moralised his song,

or

In lazy apathy let stoics boast

Their virtue fixed: ’tis fixed as in a frost,

or

In Folly’s cup still laughs the bubble joy,

and dozens similar, show the lucidity, energy, and imaginative

picturesqueness with which Pope could endow his diction when the occasion

required it.[256] Such language is the “real language of men”; nearly

every word would satisfy the Wordsworthian canon.

And the same thing is true to a large extent of the poets, who are

usually considered as having taken Pope for their model. Whenever there

is a real concentration of interest, whenever they are dealing with the

didactic and moral questions characteristic of the “age of prose and

reason,” whenever they are writing of man and of his doings, his thoughts

and moods as a social member of civilized society, their language is,

as a rule, adequate, vivid, fresh, because the aim then is to present a

general thought in the language best adapted to bring it forcibly before

the mind of the reader. Here, as has been justly said,[257] rhetoric

has passed under the influence and received the transforming force of

poetry. “The best rhetorical poetry of the eighteenth century is not the

best poetry, but it is poetry in its own way, exhibiting the glow, the

rush, the passion which strict prose cannot, and which poetry can, give.”

Judged on the basis of this kind of poetical diction, the distinctions

usually drawn between the neo-classical “kind” of language in the

eighteenth century and the romantic “kind” all tend to disappear; at the

head (though perhaps we should go back to the Dryden of the “Religio

Laici” and “The Hind and the Panther”) is the “Essay on Criticism”;

in the direct line of descent are Akenside’s “Epistle to Curio,” large

portions of “The Seasons,” “The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,”

“The Vanity of Human Wishes,” the “Deserted Village,” and at the end of

the century, the “Village” of Crabbe. And in another _genre_, but just

as good in its own way, is that light verse, as it may perhaps best be

called, successfully ushered in, at the very beginning of the century, by

John Pomfret’s “The Choice,” and brought to perfection by Matthew Prior

in his lines “To a Child of Quality,” and many another piece.

Nor must it be forgotten that there is a large amount of eighteenth

century minor poetry which, whilst reflecting in the main the literary

tendency of the age in its fondness for didactic verse, presented in

the guise of interminably long and dull epics and epistles, yet reveals

to us, if we care to make the pilgrimage through the arid stretches of

Anderson’s “British Poets,” or Dodsley’s “Collection of Poets by Several

Hands,” or Bell’s “Fugitive Poetry,” or similar collections, the simple,

unambitious works of poets more or less unknown when they wrote and

now for the most part forgotten, who, unconscious or ignorant of the

accepted rules and regulations of their time, wrote because they felt

they must, and thus had no care to fetter themselves with the bondage of

the “classical” diction.[258] Their range was limited, but they were able

to express their thoughts and fancies, their little idylls and landscapes

in plain English without any trimmings, akin in its unaffected diction

and simplicity of syntax to the language of the genuine old ballads,

which were so largely and, for the most part, ineffectively, if not

ludicrously, imitated throughout the eighteenth century.

The Augustan age, then, was not without honour, even in poetry, where,

looking back after Romanticism had won and consolidated its greatest

triumphs, it would seem everything had gone wrong, there was not a little

from which the rebels themselves might well have profited. Nowadays we

are accustomed, perhaps too often, to think of the Romantic forerunners,

the poet of “The Seasons,” and Gray, and Collins, and Goldsmith, and the

rest, as lonely isolated outposts in hostile territory. So they were to

a large extent, but they could not, of course, altogether escape the

form and pressure of their age; and what we now admire in them, and

for which we salute them as the heralds of the Romantic dawn, is that

which shows them struggling to set themselves free from the “classical”

toils, and striving to give expression to the new ideas and ideals that

were ultimately to surge and sing themselves to victory. It is scarcely

necessary to recall many a well-known passage, in which, within a decade

of the death of Pope, or even before the mid-century, these new ideas

and ideals had found expression in language which really sounded the

death-knell of the old diction. Fine sounds, Keats within a few decades

was to proclaim exultantly, were then to be heard “floating wild about

the earth,” but already as early as Collins and Gray, and even now and

then in “The Seasons,” words of infinite appeal and suggestiveness were

stealing back into English poetry.

And this leads us to a consideration of the poetic diction of the

eighteenth century from a more general standpoint. For no discussion of

poetical language can be complete unless an attempt is made to consider

the question in its entirety with a view to the question of what really

constitutes poetic diction, what it is that gives to words and phrases,

used by certain poets in certain contexts, a magic force and meaning. The

history of poetic diction from the very beginning of English literature

down to present times has yet to be written, and it would be a formidable

task. Perhaps a syndicate of acknowledged poets would be the only fit

tribunal to pass judgment on so vital an aspect of the craft, but even

then we suspect there would be a good deal of dissension, and probably

more than one minority report. But the general aspects of the question

have formed a fruitful field of discussion since Wordsworth launched his

theories[259] and thus began a controversy as to the exact nature of

poetic language, the echoes of which, it would seem, have not yet died

away. For the Prefaces were, it may be truly said, the first great and

definite declaration of principle concerning a question which has been

well described as “the central one in the philosophy of literature, What

is, or rather what is not, poetic diction?”[260]

Judged from this wider standpoint, the diction of the “classical” poetry

of the eighteenth century, and even of a large portion of the verse

that announces the ultimate Romantic triumph, seems to have marked

limitations. The widespread poverty and sterility of this diction was

not, of course, merely the result of an inability to draw inspiration

from Nature, or of a failure to realize the imaginative possibilities of

words and phrases: it was, it would almost seem, the inevitable outcome

and reflex of an age that, despite great and varied achievements, now

appears to us narrow and restricted in many vital aspects. If poetry

is a criticism of life, in the sense in which Matthew Arnold doubtless

meant his dictum to be taken, the age of Pope and his successors is not

“poetic”; in many respects it is a petty and tawdry age—the age of the

coffee-house and the new press, of the club and the coterie. There are

great thinkers like Hume, great historians like Gibbon, great teachers

and reformers like John Wesley; but these names and a few others seem

only to throw into stronger light the fact that it was on its average

level an age of talk rather than of thought, of “fickle fancy” rather

than of imaginative flights, of society as a unit highly organized for

the pursuit of its own pastimes, pleasures, and preoccupations, in which

poetry, and literature generally, played a social part. Poetry seems to

skim gracefully over the surface of life, lightly touching many things

in its flight, but never soaring; philosophy and science and satire all

come within its purview, but when the eternally recurring themes of

poetry[261]—love and nature and the like—are handled, there is rarely or

never poignancy or depth.

The great elemental facts and thoughts and feelings of life seldom

confront us in the literature of the century as we make our way down the

decades; even in the forerunners of the Romantic revolt we are never

really stirred. “The Seasons,” and “The Elegy Written in a Country

Churchyard,” touch responsive chords, but are far from moving us to

thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls. Not until Blake and Burns is

the veneer of convention and artificiality, in both matter and manner,

definitely cast aside, and there is to be caught in English verse again,

not only the authentic singing note, but, what is more, the recognition

and exemplification of the great truth that the finest poetry most often

has its “roots deep in the common stuff,” and it is not to be looked for

in an age and environment when, with rationality apparently triumphant,

men seemed careless of the eternal verities, of the thoughts and feelings

that lie too deep for tears, or sadly recognized their impotence, or

their frustrated desires, to image them forth in poetry.

“What is it,” asks Gilbert Murray,[262] “that gives words their character

and makes a style high or low? Obviously, their associations: the

company they habitually keep in the minds of those who use them. A word

which belongs to the language of bars and billiard-saloons will become

permeated by the normal standard of mind prevalent in such places; a

word which suggests Milton or Carlyle will have the flavour of those

men’s minds about it. I therefore cannot resist the conclusion that if

the language of Greek poetry has, to those who know it intimately, this

special quality of keen austere beauty, it is because the minds of the

poets who used that language were habitually toned to a higher level both

of intensity and of nobility than ours. It is a finer language because

it expresses the mind of finer men. By ‘finer men’ I do not necessarily

mean men who behaved better, either by our standards or by their own:

I mean the men to whom the fine things of the world, sunrise and sea

and stars, and the love of man for man, and strife and the facing of

evil for the sake of good, and even common things like meat and drink,

and evil things like hate and terror had, as it were, a keener edge

than they have for us, and roused a swifter and nobler reaction.” This

passage has been quoted in full because it may be said to have a direct

and definite bearing on the question of the average level of poetic

language during the greater part of the eighteenth century: there were

few or no _trouvailles_, no great discoveries, no sudden releasings of

the magic power often lurking unsuspectedly in the most ordinary words,

because the poets and versifiers for the most part had all gone wrong

in their conception of the medium they essayed to mould. “The substance

of poetry,” writes Professor Lowes,[263] “is also the very stuff of

words. And in its larger sense as well the language of poetry is made up

inevitably of symbols—of symbols for things in terms of other things,

for things in terms of feelings, for feelings in terms of things. It is

the language not of objects, but of the complex relations of objects.

And the agency that moulds it is the ceaselessly active power that is

special to poetry only in degree—_imagination_—that fuses the familiar

and the strange, the thing I feel and the thing I see, the world within

and the world without, into a _tertium quid_, that interprets both.” The

eighteenth century was not perhaps so emphatically and entirely the “age

of prose and reason” as is sometimes thought, but it could scarcely be

called the “age of imagination,” and poetry, in its highest sense (“high

poetry,” as Maeterlinck would call it), being of imagination all compact,

found no abiding place there.

Most words, we may say, potentially possess at least two or more

significations, their connotative scope varying according to the

knowledge or culture of the speaker or reader. First of all, there is

the logical, their plain workaday use, we might call it; and next, and

above and beyond all this, they have, so to speak, an exciting force,

a power of stimulating and reviving in the mind and memory all the

associations that cluster around them. Nearly all words carry with them,

in vastly varying degrees, of course, this power of evocation, so that

even commonplace terms, words, and phrases hackneyed and worn thin by

unceasing usage, may suddenly be invested with a strange and beautiful

suggestiveness when they are pressed into the service of the highest

poetic imagination. And in the same way the æsthetic appeal of words of

great potential value is reinforced and strengthened, when in virtue of

their context, or even merely of the word or words to which they are

attached, they are afforded a unique opportunity of flashing forth and

bringing into play all the mysterious powers and associations gathered to

themselves during a long employment in prose and verse, or on the lips of

the people:

All the charm of all the muses

often flowering in a lonely word.

Poetry of the highest value and appeal may be, and often is, as we know

from concrete examples that flash into the mind, written in commonplace,

everyday terms, and we ask ourselves how it is done.[264] There are the

mysterious words of the dying Hamlet:

The rest is silence,

or the line quoted by Matthew Arnold[265] as an instance when

Wordsworth’s practice is to be found illustrating his theories:

And never lifted up a single stone,

or the wonderful lines which seem to bring with them a waking vision of

the beauty of the English countryside, radiant with the promise of Spring:

daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty.

In these and many similar passages, which the reader will recall for

himself, it would seem that the mere juxtaposition of more or less plain

and ordinary words has led to such action and reaction between them as

to charge each with vastly increased powers of evocation and suggestion,

to which the mind of the reader, roused and stimulated, instinctively

responds.

Similarly, the satisfaction thus afforded to our æsthetic sense, or

our emotional appreciation, is often evoked by a happy conjunction of

epithet and noun placed together in a new relation, instantly recognized

as adding an unsuspected beauty to an otherwise colourless word. The

poets and versifiers of the eighteenth century were not particularly

noteworthy for their skill or inspiration in the matter of the choice of

epithet, but the genius of Blake, in this as in other respects of poetic

achievement, raised him “above the age” and led him to such felicities of

expression as in the last stanza of “The Piper”:

And I made a _rural pen_

And I stained the water clear,

where, as has been aptly remarked,[266] a commonplace epithet is

strangely and, apparently discordantly, joined to an equally commonplace

noun, and yet the discord, in virtue of the fact that it sets the mind

and memory working to recover or recall the faint ultimate associations

of the two terms, endows the phrase with infinite suggestiveness. In the

same way a subtle and magic effect is often produced by inversion of

epithet, when the adjective is placed after instead of before the noun,

and this again is a practice or device little favoured in the eighteenth

century; the supremacy of the stopped couplet and its mechanical

requirements were all against it.

But the eighteenth century had little of this magic power of evocation;

the secret had departed with the blind Milton, and it was not till the

Romantic ascendancy had firmly established itself, not until Keats and

Shelley and their great successors, that English poetry was once more

able so to handle and fashion and rearrange words as to win from them

their total and most intense associations. Yet contemporary criticism,

especially in France, had not failed altogether to appreciate this

potential magic of words. Diderot, for instance, speaks of the magic

power that Homer and other great poets have given to many of their

words; such words are, in his phrase, “hieroglyphic paintings,” that is,

paintings not to the eye, but to the imagination.[267] What we feel about

all the so-called classical verse of the eighteenth century, as well as

of a good deal of the earlier Romantic poetry, is that writers have not

been able to devise these subtle hieroglyphics; lack of real poetical

inspiration, or the pressure of the prosaic and unimaginative atmosphere

of their times, has led to a general poverty in the words or phrases that

evoke some object before the inner eye, or charm the ear by an unheard

melody, terms that, like the magic words of Keats, or the evanescent

imagery of Shelley, stir us both emotionally and æsthetically. The

verse of Pope and his followers is not without something of this power,

but here the effect is achieved by the skill and polish with which the

words are selected and grouped within the limits of the heroic couplet.

Crabbe had marked down, accurately enough, this lack of word-power in his

description of Dryden’s verse as “poetry in which the force of expression

and accuracy of description have neither needed nor obtained assistance

from the fancy of the writer,” and again, more briefly, as “poetry

without an atmosphere.”[268] One negative indication of this “nudity”

is the comparative poverty of eighteenth century poetry in new compound

epithets, those felicitous terms which have added to the language some of

its most poetical and pictorial phrases.

The Prefaces of Wordsworth and the kindred comments and remarks of

Coleridge were not, it is hardly necessary to say, in themselves powerful

enough to effect an instant and complete revolution in poetical theory

and practice. But it was all to the good that inspired craftsmen were at

last beginning to worry themselves about the nature and quality of the

material which they had to mould and fashion and combine into poetry;

still more important was it that they were soon to have the powerful aid

of fellow-workers like Shelley and Keats, whose practice was to reveal

the magic lurking in words and phrases, so arranged and combined as to

set them reverberating in the depths of our sensibility. And, on the

side of form at least, this is the distinctively Romantic achievement;

the æsthetic possibilities and potentialities of the whole of our

language, past and present, were entrancingly revealed and magnificently

exemplified; new and inexhaustible mines of poetical word-power were thus

opened up, and the narrow and conventional limits of the diction within

which the majority of the eighteenth century poets had “tallied” their

verses were transcended and swept away.

FOOTNOTES

[1] A brief summary, which is here utilized, is given by Spingarn,

“Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century,” I, Intro. xxxvi, foll.

(Oxford, 1908).

[2] _Vide_ Spingarn, _op. cit._, _Intro._ XXXVI-XLVIII; and also

Robertson, “Studies in the Genesis of Romantic Theory in the XVIIIth

Century” (Cambridge, 1924), an attempt “to show that the Movement which

led to the dethronement of Reason, in favour of the Imagination, chief

arbiter in poetic creation, and which culminated with Goethe and Schiller

in Germany and the Romantic Revival in England, is to be put to the

credit not of ourselves, but of Italy, who thus played again that pioneer

rôle which she had already played in the sixteenth century.”

[3] Spingarn, _op. cit._, II, p. 118.

[4] _Ibid._, II, p. 310.

[5] _Ibid._, II, p. 273.

[6] “Apology for Heroic Poetry”: “Essays of John Dryden,” ed. W. P. Ker

(1909), Vol. I, p. 190.

[7] “There appears in every part of his [Horace’s] diction, or (to

speak English) in all his expressions, a kind of noble and bold

purity.”—_Ibid._, p. 266.

[8] “Lives”: Dryden, ed. G. B. Hill (1905), Vol. I, p. 420; and cp.

Goldsmith, “Poetry Distinguished from other Writing” (Miscellaneous

Works), 1821, Vol. IV, p. 381 foll.

[9] “Letters” (To R. West), 1742, ed. Tovey (1900); Vol. II, pp. 97-8.

[10] Ker, _op. cit._, Vol. I, pp. 17-8.

[11] _Ibid._, pp. 188 foll.

[12] Ker, _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 234.

[13] Edward Young, the author of “Night Thoughts,” was later to express

this tersely enough: “Words tarnished, by passing through the mouths of

the vulgar, are laid aside as inelegant and obsolete”—”Conjectures on

Original Composition,” 1759 (“English Critical Essays,” Oxford, 1922, p.

320).

[14] Pope’s Works, ed. Courthope and Elwin: “Life,” Vol. V, p. 69.

[15] That is to say, as Mr. John Drinkwater has recently put it, it

was “the common language, but raised above the common pitch, of the

coffee-houses and boudoirs.”—“Victorian Poetry,” 1923, pp. 30-32.

[16] _Vide_ Elton, “The Augustan Ages,” 1889, pp. 419 foll.

[17] Cp. “Essay on Criticism,” I, ll. 130-140.

[18] John Dennis, of course, at the beginning of the century, is to

be found pleading that “passion is the chief thing in poetry,” (“The

Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry,” 1701); but it is to be

feared that he is only, so to speak, ringing the changes on the Rules.

[19] “A Parallel of Poetry and Painting,” ed. Ker, _op. cit._, Vol. II,

p. 147.

[20] “A Parallel of Poetry and Painting,” Ker, _op cit._, Vol. II, p.

148. “_Operum Colores_ is the very word which Horace uses to signify

words and elegant expressions.” etc.

[21] Lessing’s “Laokoon,” which appeared in 1766, may in this, as in

other connexions, be regarded as the first great Romantic manifesto.

The limitations of poetry and the plastic arts were analysed, and the

fundamental conditions to which each art must adhere, if it is to

accomplish its utmost, were definitely and clearly laid down.

[22] “Polymetis” (1747), p. 311.

[23] “Biographia Literaria,” Chap. XXII.

[24] _Ibid._, Chap. IV.

[25] _Vide_ especially Babbitt, “The New Laocoon, An Essay on the

Confusion of the Arts” (1910), to which these paragraphs are indebted;

and for a valuable survey of the relations of English poetry with

painting and with music, see “English Poetry in Its Relation to Painting

and the other Arts,” by Laurence Binyon (London, 1919), especially pp.

15-19.

[26] _Vide_ “Elizabethan Critical Essays,” ed. Gregory Smith, Vol. I,

Intro. (Oxford, 1904).

[27] _Vide_, e.g., Addison, “Spectator” papers on “Paradise Lost” (No.

285, January 26, 1712).

[28] Essay, “Poetry Distinguished from other Writing” (Miscellaneous

Works, 1820, Vol. IV, pp. 408-14).

[29] _Ibid._, p. 22.

[30] “Lives,” Hill, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 420.

[31] “Lives”: Cowley; cp. “The Rambler,” No. 158.

[32] Cp. Boswell’s “Life” (1851 edition), Vol. I, p. 277: “He enlarged

very convincingly upon the excellence of rhyme over blank verse in

English poetry”; also _ibid._, Vol. II, p. 84.

[33] “Lives,” ed. Hill, _op. cit._, Vol. III, pp. 416 foll.

[34] _Ibid._, p. 341.

[35] This is of course exemplified in his own poetic practice, and it

has been held sufficient to explain the oft-debated scantiness of his

literary production. But for remarkable examples of his minuteness and

scrupulosity in the matter of poetic diction see the letter to West

referred to above; to Mason, January 13, 1758 (Tovey, _op. cit._, II, p.

12), and to Beattie, March 8, 1771 (_ibid._, II, p. 305).

[36] Cp. Courthope, “History of English Poetry,” Vol. V, pp. 218 foll.

[37] _Vide_ “Elizabethan Critical Essays,” _op. cit._, Intro., pp. LV-LX.

[38] Preface to the “Fables,” Ker, _op. cit._, Vol. II, pp. 266-67.

[39] _Vide_ Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, Vol. II.

[40] _Vide_ “Translation of Homer,” ed. Buckley, Intro., p. 47; and cp.

“The Guardian,” No. 78, “A Receipt to make an Epic Poem.”

[41] Tovey, _op. cit._, March 8, 1771 (Vol. II, pp. 305 foll.); Beattie’s

comments are given by Tovey, _ibid._, footnotes.

[42] “Rambler,” No. 121, May 14, 1751.

[43] “Lines written in Imitation of Certain Poems Published in 1777”;

and cp. William Whitehead’s “Charge to the Poets” (1762), which may be

taken to reflect the various attitudes of the reading public towards the

“revivals.”—(“Poets of Great Britain,” 1794, Vol. XI, pp. 935-7.)

[44] Works (1820), _op. cit._, Vol. IV, p. 124.

[45] September 27, 1788 (“Letters,” 4 vols, 1806, Vol. II, p. 106).

[46] Letter to Lady Hesketh, March 22, 1790 (“Correspondence of

William Cowper—Arranged in Chronological Order by T. Wright,” 4 vols.,

1904).—Vol. III, pp. 446, foll.

[47] 1807 ed., Vol. I, pp. 21 and 24; cp. also Campbell, “The Philosophy

of Rhetoric” (London, 1776), Vol. I, pp. 410-411.

[48] “Spectator,” 285, January 26, 1712.

[49] “Homer”; ed. Buckley, Intro., 49.

[50] Spingarn, _op. cit._, II, pp. 1-51; for Hobbes “Answer,” and

Cowley’s “Preface to Poems,” see _ibid._, pp. 54-90.

[51] “Dedication of the Æneis,” Ker, _op. cit._, Vol. II, pp. 154, foll.;

cp. Addison, “Spectator,” 297, January 9, 1712.

[52] _Vide_, e.g., E. Barat, “Le Style poétique et la Révolution

Romantique” (Paris, 1904), pp. 5-35.

[53] “Lives of the Poets. Pope,” ed. Birbeck Hill, Vol. III, p. 251.

[54] _Ibid._, p. 244.

[55] January 17, 1782 (Wright, _op. cit._, Vol. II, pp. 429-30).

[56] Prose Works, ed. Grosart, Vol. II, pp. 101 foll.

[57] “Biographia Literaria,” ed. Shawcross (1907), p. 26, Note; cp. also

Southey, “Works of Cowper” (1884 edition), Vol. I, p. 313.

[58] “The Progress of Taste,” III, ll. 7-10.

[59] Wordsworth himself of course stigmatized the “hubbub of words”

which was often the only result of these eighteenth century attempts to

paraphrase passages from the Old and the New Testament “as they exist in

our common translation.”—_Vide_ Prefaces, etc., “Poetical Works,” ed.

Hutchinson (Oxford, 1916). p. 943.

[60] For a detailed description of the stock diction of English

“Classical” poetry, see especially Myra Reynolds, “Nature in English

Poetry from Pope to Wordsworth” (Chicago, 1912), to which the foregoing

remarks are indebted.

[61] “Essay on Criticism,” I, l. 350 foll.

[62] “Essay on Men and Manners” (Works, 1764), Vol. II.

[63] “History of English Prosody” (1908), Vol. II, p. 449.

[64] Bysshe, “Art of Poetry,” Third Edition (1708), Chap. I, par. 1

(quoted by Saintsbury, “Loci Critici,” 1903, p. 174).

[65] To the Rev. John Newton, December 10, 1785 (Wright, _op. cit._, Vol.

II, pp. 404-406).

[66] _Vide_ Pope’s Works, ed. Courthope and Elwin (1889), Vol. V., p. 166.

[67] Philips has large supplies of the poetical stock-in-trade. He speaks

of “honeysuckles of a _purple_ dye,” and anticipates Gray in his couplet,

Like woodland Flowers which paint the desert glades

And waste their sweets in unfrequented shades.

(“The Fable of Thule”)

(_Vide_ “Poets of Great Britain,” 1794, Vol. IX, 384-407.)

[68] But, as de Selincourt points out in “Poems of John Keats” (1905,

Appendix C, p. 580), it is only the excessive and unnatural use of these

adjectives that calls for censure.

[69] Especially in the case of compound epithets. Cf. Earle, “Philology

of the English Tongue,” p. 601, for examples from the works of the poets

from Shakespeare to Tennyson. For Shakespeare’s use of this form, see

Schmidt, “Shakespeare Lexicon,” Vol. II, pp. 147 foll. (2nd Ed., London

and Berlin, 1886).

[70] But compare “Milton,” by Walter Raleigh (p. 249), where it is justly

pointed out that not a few of these circuitous phrases are justified by

“considerations of dramatic propriety.”

[71] Cf. Raleigh, “Milton,” _op. cit._, pp. 252-3.

[72] “Spring,” ll. 478 foll.

[73] In “Summer,” Thomson had first used _feathery race_ which was later

amended into _tuneful race_—apparently the best improvement he could

think of!

[74] For a detailed study of Thomson’s diction, see especially Leon

Morel, “James Thomson. Sa Vie et Ses Œuvres” (Paris, 1895), Chap. IV, pp.

412 foll.

[75] To Mason, January 13, 1758 (“Letters of Gray,” ed. Tovey, Vol. II,

pp. 13-14).

[76] _Vide_ “The Poems of Chatterton, with an Essay on the Rowley Poems,”

by W. W. Skeat (1871).

[77] Canto III, 652 foll.

[78] “A Paladin of Philanthropy” (1899), p. 59 (quoted by Courthope,

“History English Poetry,” V, 216).

[79] But cf. Courthope, “History English Poetry” (1910), Vol. V, p. 218.

[80] Arthur Symons, “William Blake” (1907), p. 39.

[81] To Mrs. Butts: “Poetical Works,” ed. Sampson (Oxford, 1914), p. 187.

[82] “Biographia Literaria,” ed. Shawcross, p. 16. (Oxford, 1907.)

[83] Cf. “Letters,” to Samuel Rose, December 13, 1787: “Correspondence”

arranged by W. Wright (1904), Vol. III, p. 190. To C. Rowley, February

21, 1788, _ibid._, pp. 231 foll.

[84] E.g. Charles Wesley’s “Wrestling Jacob,” or Watts’s “When I Survey

the Wondrous Cross.”

[85] _Vide_ Courthope, _op. cit._, Book V, Ch. XI; and cp. the confident

and just claims put forward by John Wesley himself on behalf of the

language of the hymns, in his “Preface to the Collection of Hymns for the

Use of the People called Methodists,” 1780.

[86] Cf. Coleridge “Biographia Literaria,” ed. Shawcross, _op. cit._, p.

11.

[87] _Vide_ especially the dialogue with a Bookseller on the language of

poetry.

[88] In both the first and the final forms “Poetical Works,” ed.

Hutchinson (Oxford, 1916) Appendix, pp. 592 foll.

[89] For a detailed account see E. Legouis, “La Jeunesse de Wordsworth”

(English translation, 1897; Revised edition, 1921).

[90] _Vide_ “Elizabethan Critical Essays,” ed. Smith, Vol. I, Intro., pp.

lv foll.

[91] Both the Fletchers also used many other latinized forms found before

their time, and which in some cases they probably took direct from

Spenser.

[92] E.g. by Courthope, “History of English Poetry” (1910), Vol. III, p.

339, where a list is given (“only a few of the examples”) of Milton’s

“coinages” and “creations.” Of this list only some half dozen (according

to the N.E.D.) owe their first literary appearance to Milton.

[93] E.g. _debel_, _disglorified_, _conglobe_, _illaudable_, etc., date

from the sixteenth century; _Battailous_ goes back to Wycliff (N.E.D.).

[94] Cf.“Milton,” by Walter Raleigh (1915), pp. 247 foll.

[95] _Vide_ Masson, “Milton’s Poetical Works,” Vol. III, pp. 77-78

(1890-).

[96] Similarly the “Virgil” translation has, e.g., _in a round error_ for

“wandering round and round,” etc.

[97] That it could easily become absurd was not unperceived in the

eighteenth century. Vide Leonard Welsted: “Epistle to Mr. Pope,” May,

1730 (“Works in Verse and Prose,” London, 1787, p. 141).

[98] _Vide_ “Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea,” ed. Myra Reynolds,

pp. 210-213 (Chicago, 1903).

[99] _Vide_ “Complete Poetical Works,” edited J. L. Robertson (Oxford,

1908), which includes a variorum edition of “The Seasons.”

[100] “Poetical Epistle to Mr. Thomson on the First Edition of his

‘Seasons’” (P.G.B., Vol. VIII, p. 504).

[101] “Letter to Mallett,” August 11, 1726.

[102] Cp. Morel, _op. cit._, pp. 419-424.

[103] E.g. ll. 766 foll., 828 foll., 881 foll.

[104] Cp. also ll. 126 foll.; 711 foll.

[105] Cp. also the respective versions of “Autumn,” ll. 748 and 962.

[106] Cp. also “Summer,” ll. 353, 376, 648; “Autumn,” ll. 349, 894-895.

[107] Cp. “Milton,” Raleigh, _op. cit._, pp. 252-3.

[108] One of the most noteworthy is the constant employment of adjectives

as adverbs in opposition (e.g., “the grand etherial bow, Shoots up

_immense_”) a device used both by Milton and Pope, but by neither with

anything like the freedom seen in “The Seasons.”

[109] Cf. Chapter VI, _infra._

[110] In the “Essay Supplementary to the Preface,” Hutchinson, _op.

cit._, p. 949.

[111] That Young’s readers and even his editors were occasionally puzzled

is seen by the history of the term “concertion.” This was the spelling

of the first and most of the subsequent editions, including that of

1787, where the Glossary explains it as meaning “contrivance.” But some

editions (e.g. 1751) have “consertion,” and some, according to Richardson

(“New Dictionary,” 1836), have “conception.”

[112] Armstrong’s “gelid cistern” for “cold bath” has perhaps gained the

honour of an unidentified quotation.

[113] _Vacant_ in the oft-quoted line from “The Deserted Village” (“The

loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind”), where the word is used in its

Latin sense of “free from care.”

[114] As in the case of Milton, Cowper’s latinized words appear to have

been floating about for a considerable period, though in most cases their

first poetic use is apparently due to him.

[115] Cp. also III, 229, 414; IV, 494.

[116] Apparently after he had done some pruning amongst them (_vide_

“Letter” to Joseph Hill, March 29, 1793, Wright, _op. cit._, Vol. IV,

p. 390), and compare his footnote to the “Iliad,” VII, 359, where he

apologizes for his coinage _purpureal_.

[117] For an account of the parallelism between certain of the eighteenth

century stock epithets and various words and phrases from the Latin

poets, especially Virgil (e.g. “hollow” and “_cavus_”: “liquid fountain”

and _liquidi fontes_), see Myra Reynolds, “Nature in English Poetry from

Pope to Wordsworth” (Chicago, 1909), pp. 46-49.

[118] Cf. Some apt remarks by Raleigh, “Milton,” _op. cit._, pp. 247 and

255.

[119] Cp. Saintsbury, “History of Literary Criticism” (1900-1904), Vol.

II, p. 479, note 1.

[120] Cp. Elton, “Survey of English Literature,” 1830-1880 (1920), Vol.

II, p. 17, remarks on Rossetti’s diction.

[121] Cp. also Morel, _op. cit._, pp. 423-424.

[122] _Vide_ Lounsbury, “Studies in Chaucer” (1892), Vol. III.

[123] “Scrannel” is either Milton’s coinage or a borrowing from some

dialect (N.E.D.).

[124] This of course is used by many later writers, and was perhaps not

regarded in Dryden’s time as an archaism.

[125] “New English Dictionary.”

[126] “Works,” ed. Courthope and Elwin, Vol. X, p. 120.

[127] The prevailing ignorance of earlier English is illustrated in that

stanza by Pope’s explanation of the expression “mister wight,” which he

had taken from Spenser, as “uncouth mortal.”

[128] “The Works of Mr. Edmund Spenser, in 6 Vols. with a glossary

explaining the old and obscure words. Published by Mr. Hughes, London.”

[129] _Ibid._, Vol. I, pp. 115-140.

[130] As in Prior’s “Susanna and the Two Elders” and “Erle Robert’s Mice”

(1712).

[131] “Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser,” 1754.

[132] “An Answer to the Sompner’s Prologue in Chaucer,” printed anon, in

“Lintott’s Miscellany,” entitled “Poems on Several Occasions” (1717), p.

147.

[133] “A Tale Devised in the Plesaunt manere of Gentil Maister Jeoffrey

Chaucer” (“Poets of Great Britain,” 1794, Vol. VII, p. 674).

[134] “Poems on Several Occasions,” by the Rev. Thomas Warton, 1748, p.

30.

[135] “Poems on Several Occasions,” London, 1711, pp. 203-223.

[136] _Vide_ List given by Phelps, “The Beginnings of the English

Romantic Movement” (1899), Appendix I, p. 175; and cf. an exhaustive

list, including complete glossaries, given in “Das Altertümliche im

Wortschatz der Spenser-Nachahmungen des 18 Jahrhunderts,” by Karl Reining

(Strassburg, 1912).

[137] E.g. Robert Lloyd, 1733-1764, in his “Progress of Envy” (Anderson,

Vol. V), defines _wimpled_ as “hung down”; “The Squire of Dames,” by

Moses Mendez (1700-1738) has many old words (“benty,” etc.), which are

often open to the suspicion of being manufactured archaisms.

[138] _Vide_ his letter to Graves, June, 1742.—“Works,” Vol. III, p. 63

(1769).

[139] “Poems on Several Occasions,” by William Thompson, M.A., etc.,

Oxford, 1757, pp. 1-13.

[140] _Ibid._, pp. 58-68.

[141] “The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper,” by Dr.

Samuel Johnson, 21 Vols. (London, 1810), Vol. XV, p. 32.

[142] Thompson has taken this wrong meaning direct with the word itself

from Spenser, “Shepherds Kalendar,” April, l. 26, where _glen_ is glossed

by E.K. as “a country hamlet or borough.”

[143] Cp. Joseph Warton’s “Essay on Pope,” Vol. I, p. 366 (4th edition,

1782). Wordsworth, too, as we know, called it a “fine poem” and praised

it for its harmonious verse and pure diction, but we may imagine that

he was praising it for its own sake without regard to its merits as a

Spenserian imitation (_vide_ Hutchinson, _op. cit._, p. 949).

[144] There are at least forty stanzas in the First Canto, without a

single archaic form, and an equal proportion in Canto Two: Cf. Morel,

_op. cit._, pp. 629-630.

[145] “The letter _y_,” he naïvely says in his “Glossary,” “is frequently

placed at the beginning of a word by Spenser, to lengthen it a syllable,

and _en_ at the end of a word, for the same reason.”

[146] Thompson seems to have been the first to use the word _bicker_ as

applied to running water, an application which was later to receive the

sanction of Scott and Tennyson (N.E.D.).

[147] Among the last examples was Beattie’s “Minstrel” (1771-74), which

occasioned some of Gray’s dicta on the use of archaic and obsolete words.

[148] Spenserian “forgeries” had also made their appearance as early as

in 1713, when Samuel Croxall had attempted to pass off two Cantos as the

original work of “England’s Arch-Poet, Spenser” (2nd edition, London,

1714). In 1747, John Upton made a similar attempt, though probably in

neither case were the discoveries intended to be taken seriously.

[149] See Phelps, _op. cit._, Chap. VIII, and Grace R. Trenery, “Ballad

Collections of the Eighteenth Century,” “Modern Language Review,” July,

1915, pp. 283 foll.

[150] _Vide_ “Preface to A Collection of Old Ballads,” 3 vols. (1723-52),

and cf. Benjamin Wakefield’s “Warbling Muses” (1749), Preface.

[151] Yet thirty years later the collections of Joseph Ritson, the last

and best of the eighteenth century editors, failed to win acceptance.

His strictly accurate versions of the old songs and ballads were

contemptuously dismissed by the “Gentleman’s Magazine” (August, 1790) as

“the compilation of a peevish antiquary.”

[152] “Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript,” edited Furnivall and Hales, 4

vols. (1867-68).

[153] _Vide_ Henry A. Beers, “A History of English Romanticism in the

Eighteenth Century,” 1899, Chap. VIII, pp. 298-302.

[154] Hutchinson, _op. cit._, p. 950.

[155] “Chatterton—Poetical Works,” with an Essay on the Rowley Poems,

by W. W. Skeat, and a memoir by Bell (2 vols., 1871-1875); and _vide_

Tyrwhitt, “Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas

Rowley and others in the fifteenth century” (London, 1777).

[156] _Vide_ Oswald Doughty, “English Lyric in the Age of Reason” (1922),

p. 251.

[157] _Vide_ John Sampson, “The Poetical Works of William Blake” (Oxford,

1905), Preface, viii.

[158] Until the middle of the eighteenth century the form _glen_ occurs

in English writers only as an echo of Spenser (N.E.D.).

[159] _Vide_ “The Dialect of Robert Burns,” by Sir James Wilson

(Oxford Press, 1923), and for happy instances of beautiful words still

lingering on in the Scots dialects, _vide_ especially “The Roxburghshire

Word-Book,” by George Watson (Cambridge, 1923).

[160] Sweet, “New English Grammar” (1892), Part II, pp. 208-212, and

Skeat, “Principles of English Etymology” (1887), Part I, pp. 418-420.

[161] The first literary appearance of each compound has been checked

as far as possible by reference to the “New English Dictionary.” It is

hardly necessary to say that the fact of a compound being assigned, as

regards its first appearance, to any individual writer, is not in itself

evidence that he himself invented the new formation, or even introduced

it into literature. But in many cases, either from the nature of the

compound itself, or from some other internal or external evidence, the

assumption may be made.

[162] Cp. Sweet, _op. cit._, p. 449.

[163] In the “Beowulf” there are twenty-three compounds meaning “Ocean,”

twelve meaning “Ship,” and eighteen meaning “Sword” (_vide_ Emerson,

“Outline History of the English Language,” 1906, p. 121).

[164] Cp. Champney’s “History of English” (1893), p. 192 and Note; and

Lounsbury, “History of the English Language” (1909), p. 109.

[165] Cp. Sidney’s remarks in the “Defence of Poesie—Elizabethan Critical

Essays,” ed. Smith, Vol. I, p. 204.

[166] E.g. Spenser’s “_sea-shouldering_ whales” (an epithet that

especially pleased Keats), Nashe’s “_sky-bred_ chirpers,” Marlowe’s

“_gold-fingered_ Ind,” Shakespeare’s “_fancy-free_,” “_forest-born_,”

“_cloud-capt_,” etc.

[167] Dryden, “English Men of Letters” (1906), p. 76.

[168] Pope’s “Homer,” ed. Buckley, Preface, p. xli.

[169] _Ibid._, p. 47; and cp. Coleridge, “Biographia Literaria,” ed.

Shawcross (Oxford, 1907), Vol. I, p. 2, Footnote.

[170] Here it may be noted that many of Pope’s compounds in his “Homer”

have no warrant in the original; they are in most cases supplied by Pope

himself, to “pad out” his verses, or, more rarely, as paraphrases of

Greek words or phrases.

[171] Shawcross, _op. cit._, p. 2, Footnote.

[172] “Lives” ed. Hill, _op. cit._, Vol. III, p. 298.

[173] _Vide_ Leon Morel, _op. cit._, Ch. IV, pp. 412 foll., for a

detailed examination of Thomson’s compound formations.

[174] It would appear that this epithet had particularly caught the

fancy of Collins. He uses it also in the “Ode on the Manners,” this time

figuratively, when he writes of “_dim-discovered_ tracts of mind.”

[175] “Works,” _op. cit._, Vol. IV, p. 203. In point of fact, there is

little or no evidence in favour of it. Even the Spenserian imitations

that flourished exceedingly at this time have little interest in this

respect. Shenstone has very few instances of compounds, but the poems

of William Thompson furnish a few examples: “_honey-trickling_ streams”

(“Sickness,” Bk. I), “_Lily-mantled_ meads” (_ibid._), etc. Gilbert

West’s Spenserian poems have no instances of any special merit; but

a verse of his Pindar shows that he was not without a gift for happy

composition: “The _billow-beaten_ side of the _foam-besilvered_ main.”

[176] “Letters,” Vol. III, p. 97.

[177] Hill, _op. cit._, Vol. III, p. 437.

[178] _Ibid._, p. 434.

[179] _Vide_ Edmund Gosse, “Two Pioneers of Romanticism” (Warton

Lecture), 1915.

[180] It is a coincidence to find that the N.E.D. assigns the first use

of the compound _furze-clad_ to Wordsworth.

[181] Bell’s “Fugitive Poets” (London, 1789), Vol. VI.

[182] Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. XI.

[183] Bell, _op. cit._

[184] Anderson, _op. cit._

[185] “British Poets,” Vol. X.

[186] _Ibid._, Vol. XI, Pt. I.

[187] _Ibid._, Pt. II.

[188] “British Poets,” Vol. XI, Pt. II.

[189] _Vide_ Legouis, _op. cit._ (English translation, 1897), pp. 133

foll.

[190] Shawcross, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 2, Note.

[191] See, e.g., de Selincourt’s remarks on Keats’ compound epithets;

“Poems” (1904), Appendix C, p. 581.

[192] “Biog. Lit.,” _op. cit._, and cp. “Poetical Works,” ed. Dykes

Campbell, Appendix K, p. 540.

[193] “History of English Prosody” (1908), Vol. II, p. 449.

[194] “History of English Prosody,” _op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 480; and cp.

_ibid._, p. 496.

[195] Prefaces, “Poetical Works,” ed. Hutchinson (Oxford, 1916), p. 936.

[196] _Vide_ Courthope, “History of English Poetry” (1910), Vol. I, Chap.

IX, for an account of mediaeval allegory and personification.

[197] E.g. “Palamon,” II, 480, 564, 565; Æneas XII, 505-506.

[198] “Black Melancholy” (ll. 163-168) and “Hope” (l. 278), the former of

which especially pleased Joseph Warton (“Essay on Pope”: Works, Vol. I,

p. 314).

[199] Elton, “The Augustan Ages” (1895), p. 209.

[200] Cf. “Suicide” (Canto II, 194-250).

[201] Cf. also Bk. I, ll. 10, 11; 548, etc.

[202] Especially in Book III of “The Duellist,” where the reader is

baffled and wearied by the unending array of bloodless abstractions.

[203] It may be noted incidentally that, according to the “New English

Dictionary,” the term _personification_ owes its first literary

appearance to the famous “Dictionary” of 1755, where it is thus defined,

and (appropriately enough) illustrated: “_Prosopopeia_, the change of

things to persons, as ‘Confusion heard his voice.’”

[204] Phelps, _op. cit._, pp. 37-38.

[205] “Letter” to Mallet, August 11, 1726: “I thank you heartily for your

hint about personizing of Inspiration: it strikes me.”

[206] Cf. also “Winter,” 794 and “Autumn,” 143.

[207] For some happy instances of its use in English poetry, as well

as for a detailed account of Thomson’s use of personification, see

especially Morel, _op. cit._, pp. 444-455.

[208] Poets of Great Britain (1793), Vol. IX, p. 414.

[209] “British Poets,” Vol. XXII (1822), p. 117.

[210] “A Collection of Poems by several hands,” 3 vols., 1748; 2nd

edition, with Vol. IV, 1749; Vol. V and VI, 1758; Pearch’s continuations,

Vol. VII and VIII, 1768, and Vol. IX and X, 1770.

[211] “Dodsley” (1770 ed.), Vol. IV, p. 50.

[212] _Ibid._, VI, 148.

[213] “Dodsley-Pearch,” X, p. 5.

[214] _Vide_ also Bell’s “Fugitive Poetry” (1791). Vol. XI, where there

is a section devoted to “Poems in the manner of Milton.”

[215] “Dodsley-Pearch,” X, p. 269.

[216] At the same time there appeared a similar volume of the Odes of

William Collins, “Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects,”

the original intention having been to publish in one volume. Collins’s

collection had a lukewarm reception, so that the author soon burned the

unsold copies. But see Articles in “The Times Literary Supplement,”

January 5th (p. 5) and January 12, 1922 (p. 28), by Mr. H. O. White,

on “William Collins and his Contemporary Critics,” from which it would

appear that the Odes were not received with such indifference as is

commonly believed.

[217] Cf. “Pope’s Works,” ed. Courthope and Elwin, Vol. V, p. 365.

[218] _Vide_ also “The Triumph of Isis” (1749), and “The Monody written

near Stratford-on-Avon.” (“Poets of Great Britain,” 1794, Vol. XI, pp.

1061-4.)

[219] Cf. Gosse, “A History of Eighteenth Century Literature” (1889), p.

233.

[220] Cf. Courthope, “Hist. Engl. Poetry,” Vol. V, pp. 397-8.

[221] “Lives,” ed. G. Birkbeck Hill, Vol. III, p. 341.

[222] “On Lyric Poetry—Poetical Works,” ed. Mitford (Aldine, ed. 1896),

Vol. II, p. 147.

[223] In the Aldine edition, ed. Thomas (1901) these personified

abstractions are not invested with a capital letter.

[224] “Biographia Literaria” (ed. Shawcross, 1907), p. 12; cf. also

“Table Talk” (October 23, 1833), ed. H. N. Coleridge (1858), p. 340.

“Gray’s personifications,” he said, “were mere printer’s devil’s

personifications,” etc.

[225] Two of Gray’s mechanical figures were marked down for special

censure by Dr. Johnson (“Lives,” Gray, ed. Birbeck Hill, Vol. III, p.

440), whose criticism was endorsed by Walpole (“Letters,” Vol. III, p.

98), who likened “Fell Thirst and Famine” to the devils in “The Tempest”

who whisk away the banquets from the shipwrecked Dukes.

[226] “Letters” (December 19, 1786), Tovey, _op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 322.

[227] In this connexion mention may be made of “William Blake’s Designs

for Gray’s Poems,” recently published for the first time with a valuable

introduction by H. J. C. Grierson (Oxford, 1922). “Blake’s imagination,”

says Professor Grierson, “communicates an intenser life to Gray’s

half-conventional personifications” (Intro., p. 17).

[228] Canto I: LXXIV-LXXV.

[229] Cp. also the detailed personification of “Thrift,” given by Mickle

in his “Syr Martyn” (1787).—“Poets of Great Britain” (1794), Vol. XI, p.

645.

[230] Cf. “Paradise Lost,” VI, 3; and Pope’s “Iliad,” V, 297.

[231] “Works” ed. Ellis and Yeats, Vol. I, Pref., x.

[232] July 6, 1803, “Letters,” ed. A. G. B. Russell (1906), p. 121.

[233] In the parallel verses of “The Songs of Experience” the human

attributes are attributed respectively to _Cruelty_, _Jealousy_,

_Terror_, and _Secrecy_.

[234] “Poetical Works,” ed. John Sampson (Oxford), 1914, p. 187.

[235] _Vide_, e.g., ll. 18-26.

[236] See also, e.g., “Midnight,” l. 272 foll, and l. 410 foll.

[237] A similar type of abstraction is found here and there in the

stanzas of the “Song to David” (1763), e.g.:

’Twas then his thoughts self-conquest pruned

And heavenly melancholy tuned

To bless and bear the rest.

But on the whole Smart’s famous poem is singularly free from the bane,

though the “Hymn to the Supreme Being” (_vide_ “A Song to David,” edited

Tutin (1904), Appendix, p. 32), has not escaped the contagion. But better

instances are to be found in the Odes (“Works,” 1761-1762), e.g., “Strong

Labour ... with his pipe in his mouth,” “Health from his Cottage of

thatch,” etc. _Vide_ also article on “Christopher Smart,” “Times Literary

Supplement,” April 6, 1922, p. 224.

[238] Cf. “Poems of William Cowper,” ed. J. C. Bailey (1905), Intro., p.

xl.

[239] There are faint personifications of the other seasons in Book

III, ll. 427 foll., but none perhaps as effective as William Mickle had

already given in his ode, “Vicissitude,” where he depicts Winter staying:

his creeping steps to pause

And wishful turns his icy eyes

On April meads.

[240] _Streaky_, for instance, is due to Thomson who, in the first draft

of “Summer” (ll. 47-48) had written:

Mildly elucent in the streaky east,

later changed to

At first faint-gleaming in the dappled east.

[241] “Letters,” edited E. Coleridge, 1895, p. 215.

[242] “Biographia Literaria,” Chap. I.

[243] The ridicule was crystallized in Canning’s famous parody, “The

Loves of the Triangles,” which appeared in “The Anti-Jacobin,” Nos. 23,

24 and 26, April to May, 1798. (_Vide_ “The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin,”

edited C. Edmonds, 1854, 3rd edition, 1890.)

[244] “The Botanic Garden” (4th edition, 1799), Interlude I, Vol. II, p.

64. Cp. also _ibid._, Interlude III, p. 182 foll.

[245] For details see Legouis, _op. cit._

[246] Both the original and the final versions of the “Evening Walk” and

the “Descriptive Sketches” are given by Hutchinson, _op. cit._, Appendix,

pp. 592, 601.

[247] But the artistic possibilities of Personification were not

unrecognized by writers and critics in the eighteenth century. _Vide_

Blair’s lecture on “Personification” (“Lectures on Rhetoric”) 9th

edition, 1803; Lec. XVI, p. 375.

[248] “The Stones of Venice” (1851), Vol. II, Chap. VIII, pp. 312

foll.—The Ducal Palace, “Personification is, in some sort, the reverse

of symbolism, and is far less noble. Symbolism is the setting forth of

a great truth by an imperfect and inferior sign ... and it is almost

always employed by men in their most serious moods of faith, rarely in

recreation.... But Personification is the bestowing of a human or living

form upon an abstract idea; it is in most cases, a mere recreation of

the fancy, and is apt to disturb the belief in the reality of the thing

personified.”

[249] For an illuminating analysis, see Elton, “A Survey of English

Literature,” 1780-1830 (1912), pp. 1-29.

[250] “Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise,” Vol. IV, pp. 175-178.

[251] Cf. Coleridge’s remarks in “Biographia Literaria,” ed. Shawcross,

Chap. I (Oxford, 1907).

[252] Elton, “The Augustan Ages” (1895), p. 211.

[253] “Sleep and Poetry,” ll. 188-201.

[254] Hutchinson, _op. cit._, p. 948.

[255] “Poets of Great Britain” (1794), Vol. X, p. 709.

[256] Cf. “Works” (1889), ed. Courthope and Elwin, Vol. V., p. 360-364.

[257] George Saintsbury, “Eighteenth Century Poetry” (“The London

Mercury,” December, 1919, pp. 155-163); an article in which a great

authority once again tilts an effective lance on behalf of the despised

Augustans.

[258] The best of them have been garnered by Mr. Iola A. Williams into

a little volume, “By-ways Round Helicon” (London, 1922), where the

interested reader may browse with much pleasure and profit, and where he

will no doubt find not a little to surprise and delight him. For a still

more complete anthology, _vide_ “The Shorter Poems of the Eighteenth

Century” (1923) by the same editor. But for the devil’s advocacy see

Doughty, “English Lyric in the Age of Reason” (London, 1922)

[259] The fountain head of all such studies is, of course, the

“Biographia Literaria,” for which see especially Shawcross’s edition,

1907, Vol. II, pp. 287-297. Of recent general treatises, Lascelles

Abercrombie, “Poetry and Contemporary Speech” (1914); Vernon Lee,

“The Handling of Words” (1923); Ogden and Richards, “The Meaning of

Meaning”(1923), may be mentioned.

[260] Elton, “Survey of English Literature” (1780-1830), Vol. II, pp. 88

foll.

[261] Cf. Elton, “The Augustan Ages” (1899), p. 209.

[262] “The Legacy of Greece” (Oxford, 1921), p. 11.

[263] “Convention and Revolt in Poetry” (London, 1921), p. 13.

[264] Just as this book was about to go to press, there appeared “The

Theory of Poetry,” by Professor Lascelles Abercrombie, in which a poet

and critic of great distinction has embodied his thoughts on his own art.

Chaps. III and IV especially should be consulted for a most valuable

account and analysis of how the poetical “magic” of words is achieved.

[265] “Essays in Criticism,” Second Series (1888): “Wordsworth” (1913

ed.), p. 157.

[266] O. Barfield, “Form in Poetry” (“New Statesman” August 7, 1920, pp.

501-2).

[267] “Œuvres” (ed. Assézat), I, p. 377 (quoted by Babbitt), _op. cit._,

p. 121.

[268] Preface to “The Tales” (Poems), ed. A. W. Ward, (Cambridge, 1906),

Vol. II, p. 10.

INDEX

Abercrombie, Lascelles, 197 n., 201 n.

Addison, Joseph, 21

“Ælla” (T. Chatterton’s), 163

Akenside, Mark, 16, 27, 69-70, 138-9, 189, 195

Dr. Johnson’s criticism, 16

“Epistle to Curio,” 195

Latinism, 69-70

Personification, 138-9

“Pleasures of the Imagination,” 69

“Alma” (M. Prior’s), 75

“Amyntor and Theodora,” 142

“Anti-Jacobin, The,” 173 n.

“Approach of Summer, The,” 179

“Archaism,” 17-21, 80-101

Aristotle, 10-12, 185

Armstrong, John, 69-70, 110

Arnold, Matthew, 2, 41, 181, 198, 201

“Art of Preserving Health,” 69, 110

Babbitt, I., 13 n., 203 n.

Bailey, J. C., 169 n.

Ballads, 95-7, 196

Barfield, Owen, 202 n.

“Bastard, The,” 111

Beattie, James, 19, 93 n., 125

Beers, H. A., 97 n.

“Beowulf, The,” 104 n.

Binyon, Laurence, 13 n.

“Biographia Literaria,” 13 n., 24 n., 48 n., 51 n., 127 n., 156 n.,

173 n., 185 n.

“Birth of Flattery, The” (G. Crabbe’s), 168

Blair, Robert, 110, 176 n.

Blake, William, 28, 46-7, 77, 99, 124, 129, 136-59, 163-7, 179-80,

181, 187 n., 198, 202

Allegory and Vision, remarks on, 165

Artist, as, 136, 159 n.

Compounds, 124, 129

Felicity of diction, 46-7, 202

“Imitation of Spenser,” 47, 165

“Letters,” 47 n., 164 n., 187 n.

“Muses, To the,” 47

Mysticism, 164

Personifications, 163-7, 179-80

“Piper, The,” 202

“Songs of Experience,” 46, 165 n., 166

“Songs of Innocence,” 46, 165

Stock diction, 46-7

Blount, T., 93

Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” 16 n.

“Botanic Garden” (E. Darwin’s), 12, 51-2, 126, 173-5

Bowles, William Lisle, 48

Boyce, S., 162

Bruce, Michael, 122

Burns, Robert, 28, 100, 198

Bysshe, Edward, 30

“By-ways Round Helicon”, 195 n.

Campbell, Dykes, 128 n.

Canning, George, 139, 173 n.

Capell, Edward, 95-6

“Castaway, The,” 49, 170

“Castle of Indolence,” 90-2, 161

Chapman, George, 105

“Charge to the Poets” (W. Whitehead’s), 20 n.

“Chase, The” (W. Somerville’s), 68, 110, 142

Chatterton, Thomas, 19, 42-3, 97-8, 123-4, 162-3

Compounds, 123-4

Personifications, 162-3

“Rowley Poems,” 97-8

Stock diction, 42-3

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 26, 84-6, 133

Chaucerian imitations, 84-6

Chesterfield, Lord, 20

“Child of Quality, Lines to” (M. Prior’s), 195

“Choice, The” (J. Pomfret’s), 195

Churchill, John, 139-40, 169-70

Classical literature (connexion with romantic), 181-2

Coleridge, H. N., 156 n.

Coleridge, S. T., 1, 13, 24, 31, 32, 51, 100, 127-8, 156, 173, 182,

193, 204

Archaisms, 100

Compounds, 127-8

Darwin, E., remarks, on, 13, 173

Gray’s personifications, on, 156

Imagination, on, 13

“Letters,” 173 n.

Pope’s style, on, 24, 32, 193

Collins, William, 16, 40-1, 71, 98, 116-7, 129, 149, 150-5, 166, 167,

191, 196

Archaisms, 98

Compounds, 116-7, 129

Dr. Johnson’s criticisms of, 16, 40, 151

“Odes,” 149 n., 150-5

Personifications, 150-5, 166, 167, 178, 179, 191

Romantic forerunner, a, 196

Stock diction, 40-1

Compound epithets, 4, 102-31, 204

“Convention and Revolt in Poetry,” 200 n.

Courthope, W. J., 9 n., 17 n., 45 n., 50 n., 57 n., 133 n., 149 n.,

194 n.

Coventry, F., 147

Cowper, William, 20, 24, 31, 48-50, 73-4, 76, 126, 168-73

Archaism, on, 20

Compounds, 126

Familiar style, on the, 24

“Homer” translation, 48, 74, 126

Latinism, 73-5

“Letters,” 20 n., 48 n., 74 n.

“Olney Hymns,” 49, 169

Personifications, 169-73, 179

Stock diction, 48-9

“Table Talk,” 49

“Task, The,” 49, 73-4, 170-1

Crabbe, George, 50-1, 124-5, 167-8, 179, 195, 204

Compounds, 124-5

Dryden’s style, on, 204

Personifications, 167-8, 179

Stock diction, 50-1

Croxall, Samuel, 93 n.

Cunningham, John, 27, 189

Darwin, Erasmus, 12, 37, 51-2, 53, 120, 173-5

Davenant, Sir William, 21

Denham, Sir John, 15

Dennis, John, 11 n.

De Quincey, Thomas, 52

“Descriptive Sketches,” 52, 175, 176 n.

“Deserted Village, The,” 45-6, 111-2, 195

Diderot, Denis, 203

Dodsley, Robert, 147, 195

Doughty, Oswald, 98 n., 195 n.

Drayton, Michael, 107

Drinkwater, John, 9 n.

Dryden, John, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 26-7, 28, 30, 31,

32, 33, 36, 58-9, 81-2, 83, 105-6, 109, 134, 181, 194, 204

“Annus Mirabilis,” 8

Archaisms, 18, 81-2

Chaucer “translations,” 26-7

Compounds, 105-6

“Essays” and “Prefaces,” 7-11

“Hind and Panther,” 195

Language of poetry, on, 8-9

Latinism, 58-9

Periphrasis, use of, 28, 33

Personifications, 134

“Religio Laici,” 194

Royal Society, 7

Satire, 106, 140

Technical terms, on, 21

“Duellist, The” (Charles Churchill’s), 140 n.

Dyer, John, 39, 70, 109, 142, 188-9

Earle, J., 35 n.

“Economy of Vegetation,” 12, 126, 173-4

Edmonds, C., 173 n.

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” 42, 72, 157, 159, 195, 198

“Eloisa to Abelard,” 134

Elton, Oliver, 10 n., 135 n., 182 n., 186 n., 197 n.

Emerson, O., 104 n.

“English Lyric in the Age of Reason,” 195

“Enthusiast, The,” 71, 121, 149

“Epistle to Curio” (M. Akenside’s), 195 n.

Epithalamium (W. Thompson’s), 160

“Essay on Criticism,” 9-10, 29 n., 195

“Eton College, Ode on a Distant View of,” 156

Evelyn, John, 7

“Evening, Ode to,” 41, 116, 155

“Evening Walk, The,” 52, 127, 175-6

“Excursion, The” (David Mallet’s), 142

“Faerie Queene,” 87, 94, 99, 133, 159-60, 192

Falconer, William, 22, 43-4

“Fleece, The,” (J. Dyer’s), 39, 70

Fletcher, Giles, 57

Fletcher, Phineas, 57

“Fugitive Poets” (Bell’s), 122, 147 n., 195

Furetière, Antoine, 5

Gay, John, 33, 109

Gibbon, Edward, 198

Glanvill, Joseph, 7

Goldsmith, Oliver, 14-15, 20, 44-6, 72, 111-2, 140-1, 195

Archaism, on, 20

Compounds, in, 117-8

Diction of poetry, on, 15

Latinism, 72-3

Personifications, 141-2, 179

Stock diction, 44-6

Graeme, James, 122

Grainger, James, 70, 110, 142

“Grave,” the (Robert Blair’s), 110

Gray, Thomas, 8, 16-17, 18-19, 21-2, 31, 41-2, 67, 71-2, 93 n., 98-9,

117-20, 146, 155-9, 177, 196

Archaisms, on, 18-19, 98-9

Coinages, on, 21

Compounds, 117-20

Diction of poetry, on, 8, 16-17

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” 42, 72, 157, 159, 195, 198

Latinism, 71-2

Letters, 8 n., 16 n.

Personifications, 155-9, 177, 191

Plain colloquial style, 17, 195

Romantic forerunner, A, 150, 196

Stock diction, 41-2

Technical terms, on, 22

Grierson, H. J. C., 159 n.

“Grongar Hill,” 39, 109, 184, 188, 190

Hamilton, William (of Bangor), 146

Hill, G. B., 8 n., 15 n., 16 n., 23 n., 112 n., 151 n.

“Hind and Panther, The,” 195

“Horror, Ode to,” 148

Hughes, John, 83

Hume, David, 198

Hutchinson, T., 52 n., 68 n., 97 n., 132 n., 176 n.

“Hymn to May” (W. Thompson’s), 160

“Il Bellicoso,” 147

“Il Pacifico,” 147

“Il Penseroso,” 71, 176

“Inebriety,” 167

Jago, R., 122

Johnson, Dr., 15-16, 17, 19-20, 23, 31, 40-2, 44, 72-3, 111, 119,

140-1, 151, 159, 177, 179

Archaism, 19-20

Collins, on, 150, 151

Compounds, 111, 119-20

Diction, on, 15-16

“Dictionary,” 140 n.

Dryden, on, 8

Gray’s personifications, on, 156 n.

Latinism, 73

Personifications, 140-1, 177, 179

Pope’s style, on, 23, 31, 193

Satire, 139

Stock diction, 45

Jonson, Ben, 17-18

Keats, John, 126, 128, 129, 144, 187, 188, 192, 196, 203, 204

Ker, W. P., 7 n., 8 n., 9 n., 11 n., 18 n., 21 n.

Kersey, John, 97

“L’Allegro,” 162, 176

Langhorne, J., 122

Langland, William, 133

Latinism, 56-79, 191-2

Lee, Vernon, 197 n.

“Legacy of Greece, The,” 199

Legouis, E., 53 n., 127 n., 175 n.

Lessing’s “Laokoon,” 12 n.

Lloyd, Robert, 88 n.

“London” (Dr. Johnson’s), 111, 140-1

“Loves of the Plants” (E. Darwin’s), 12, 173

“Loves of the Triangles” (G. Canning’s), 173 n.

Lowes, Professor J. L., 200

“Lyrical Ballads,” 1, 2, 175

Lyttleton, G., 119

Maeterlinck, M., 200

Mallet, D., 110, 144 n., 142

Marlowe, Christopher, 105 n.

Marriott, Dr., 147

Mason, William, 86, 146-7

Masson, David, 58 n.

Mendez, Moses, 88, 122

Mickle, William, 93, 125, 162 n., 171 n.

Milton, John, 8, 33-6, 41, 57-8, 60, 61, 62, 66, 70, 71, 72, 76, 77,

81, 94, 107, 133, 136, 142, 146-7, 148, 149, 150, 176-7, 191-2

Archaism, 81, 94

Compound epithets, 105

Diction, 34-6, 57-8

Imitated in eighteenth century, 60-70, 76-7, 146-50, 191-2

Latinism, 57-8, 177

Personification, 133, 137, 142, 146-7, 176-7

“Monody written near Stratford-on-Avon,” 149 n.

Morel, Leon, 39 n., 63 n., 78 n., 91 n., 114 n., 145 n.

Murray, Gilbert, 199

Nashe, Thomas, 105 n.

Neo-classicism, 9-13, 53-4

“Night Thoughts” (E. Young’s), 28, 68-9, 136-8

“Nocturnal Reverie” (Countess of Winchilsea’s), 187

Old English Compounds, 104

“Ossian” poems, 19, 166

“Paradise Lost,” 34-6, 57-8, 76, 133, 136, 184

Parnell, Thomas, 135-6

“Passions, Ode to the,” 153

“Penshurst” (F. Coventry’s), 147

Percy, Bishop, 96-7

Personification and abstraction, 133-80, 190-1

Phelps, W. L., 142 n.

Philips, John, 37, 60-1, 86, 109, 142

“Pity, Ode to” (W. Collins’), 153

“Pleasures of the Imagination” (M. Akenside’s), 69, 138-9, 189

“Pleasures of Melancholy, The” (T. Warton’s), 71, 121

“Poetical Character, Ode on the” (W. Collins’s), 152

“Poetical Sketches” (W. Blake’s), 99, 167, 181

Pomfret, John, 195

Pope, Alexander, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21-2, 23-4,

25, 29, 31-4, 36-7, 40, 42, 45, 46, 48, 50, 54, 59-60, 67, 73,

81, 82-3, 85, 106-9, 111, 115, 130, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140,

183, 184, 185, 189, 193-4, 204

Archaism, 18, 82-3

Compounds, 21, 106-9

Diction, 33, 36-7

“Dunciad,” 18, 134

“Essay on Criticism,” 14, 29 n., 195

Heroic couplet, 29-30, 31-2

“Homer,” 2, 14, 17, 31-2, 40, 48, 184

Language of poetry, 9-10

Latinism, 59-60

Personifications, 134

Satire, 139, 140

Potter, R., 122

Prior, Matthew, 75, 87, 95, 195

“Progress of Error” (W. Cowper’s), 170

“Progress of Poetry” (Thomas Gray’s), 72

“Prolusions” (E. Capell’s), 95-6

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 35 n., 58 n., 66 n.

“Rape of the Lock,” 134

“Religio Laici,” 194

“Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,” 19, 96-7

Reynolds, Myra, 28 n., 61 n., 75 n.

Ritson, Joseph, 96 n.

Robertson, J. L., 6 n., 62

Rogers, Samuel, 125-6

Romanticism, connexion with classicism, 181-2

Rowley poems, 42-4, 97-8, 162-3

“Ruins of Rome” (J. Dyer’s), 109, 142

Ruskin, John, 180

Russell, A. J. B., 164 n.

Saintsbury, George, 29-30, 76 n., 106, 130, 131, 194 n.

Sampson, John, 47 n., 99 n., 165 n.

Savage, Richard, 75, 111, 136

Schmidt’s “Shakespeare Lexicon,” 35

“Schoolmistress, The,” 88-9, 161

Scott, John, 123

Scott, Sir Walter, 100, 192

“Seasons, The” (J. Thomson’s), 37-9, 62-8, 112-6, 142-6, 190, 196, 198

Selincourt, B. de, 35 n., 128 n.

Shakespeare, William, 35, 105 n., 129

Shawcross, T. (_see_ “Biographia Literaria”).

Shelley, P. B., 126, 178, 203, 204

Shenstone, W., 26, 29, 75, 88-9, 118 n., 161

“Shorter Poems of the Eighteenth Century,” 195 n.

Sidney, Sir Philip, 105 n.

Skeat, W. W., 43 n., 97, 98 n., 102 n.

Smart, Christopher, 169 n.

Smith, Gregory, 14 n., 18 n., 56 n.

Somerville, William, 110, 142

“Song to David,” 169 n.

Spence, Joseph, 12

Spenser, Edmund, 80-1, 105 n., 133, 159-60, 191, 192

Spenserian imitations, 18, 84, 86-94, 160-2, 178, 191, 192

Spingarn, J. E., 5 n., 6 n., 7 n.

Sprat, Thomas, 6, 7

Stock diction, The, 25-55, 183-7

“Stones of Venice, The” (J. Ruskin’s), 180 n.

“Storie of William Canynge,” 163

“Sugar Cane, The,” 70, 110, 142

Sweet, Henry, 102 n., 103 n.

Swift, Jonathan, 139

Symbolism, 13, 164, 179, 180

Symons, Arthur, 47 n.

“Syr Martin,” 93, 125, 162 n.

“Table Talk” (S. T. Coleridge’s), 156 n.

“Table Talk” (W. Cowper’s), 49, 170

Taine, H., 183

“Task, The” (W. Cowper’s), 49, 73-4, 170-1

Theory of diction, 5-24

Thomson, James, 37-9, 62-8, 76, 77, 78, 90-2, 94, 112-6, 131, 142-6,

161, 167, 179, 186, 188

“Castle of Indolence,” 90-2, 161

Compounds, 112-6, 131

Diction generally, 37, 67

Latinism, 62-8, 78, 192

Miltonic borrowings, 37, 66

Nature poet, a, 37, 78, 186

Personifications, 142-6, 161, 166, 178-9

Romantic forerunner, a, 196

“Seasons, The,” 37-9, 62-8, 112-6, 142-6, 190, 195, 196, 198

Stock diction, 37-8

Thompson, W., 61-2, 85, 89-90, 118 n.

“Tintern Abbey, Lines written above,” 131

“Traveller, The” (O. Goldsmith’s), 45, 72, 112, 141

Trenery, Grace R., 95 n.

“Triumph of Isis,” 149 n.

Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 86, 98 n.

Upton, John, 93 n.

“Vacation, The,” 147

“Vale Abbey, Lines written at” (T. Warton’s), 149

“Valetudinarian, The,” 147

“Vanity of Human Wishes,” 73, 111, 140-1, 195

“Village, The” (G. Crabbe’s), 167, 168, 195

“Vision of Patience” (S. Boyce’s), 162

“Vision of Solomon” (W. Whitehead’s), 162

Wakefield, Benjamin, 95 n.

Waller, Edmund, 15

Walpole, Horace, 119, 156 n.

“Wanderer, The” (R. Savage’s), 111, 136

Ward, A. W., 204 n.

Warton, Joseph, 21, 70-1, 121, 134, 148-9

Warton, Thomas, 71, 83, 84, 85, 86, 120-1, 149

Watson, George, 100 n.

Watts, Isaac, 49

Welsted, Leonard, 59 n.

Wesley, John, 49, 50, 198

Wesley, Charles, 49

West, Gilbert, 118 n.

White, Gilbert (of Selborne), 28

White, H. O., 148 n.

Whitehead, W., 20 n., 122, 162

Williams, I. O., 195 n.

Wilson, Sir James, 100 n.

Winchilsea, Anne, Countess of, 61, 109, 187-8

“Windsor Forest,” 134

Wordsworth, William, 1, 3, 13, 15, 24, 25, 27 n., 28, 31, 32, 33, 35,

36, 48, 51-3, 67, 68, 77, 79, 97, 115, 132, 175, 182, 185, 187,

189, 192, 193, 197, 201, 204

Archaism, 100

Compounds, 127

Darwin’s (Erasmus) influence, 52-4, 175

Latinism, 79, 192

Percy’s “Reliques,” on, 97

Personifications, 133, 175-6, 178, 180

Pope’s style, on, 24

“Prefaces,” 1, 53, 132, 182, 197, 204

“Prelude, The,” 184-5

Wyche, Sir Peter, 7

“Yardley Oak” (W. Cowper’s), 131, 172

Yeats, W. B., 164 n.

Young, Edward, 9 n., 28, 68-9, 136-8, 151