: Yule-Tide in Many Lands by Pringle Mary Poague Urann Clara A Bridgman L J Lewis Jesse Illustrator - Christmas Christmas

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INDEX 207

PREFACE The studies on which this book is based were begun during my tenure of the "William Noble" Fellowship in English Literature at the University of Liverpool, and I wish to thank the members of the Fellowship Committee, and especially Professor Elton, under whom I had for two years the great privilege of working, for much valuable advice and criticism. I must also express my sincere obligation to the University for a generous grant towards the cost of publication.

POETIC DICTION

THE AGE OF PROSE AND REASON

From the time of the publication of the first Preface to the "Lyrical Ballads" the poetical language of the eighteenth century, or rather of the so-called "classical" writers of the period, has been more or less under a cloud of suspicion. The condemnation which Wordsworth then passed upon it, and even the more rational and penetrating criticism which Coleridge later brought to his own analysis of the whole question of the language fit and proper for poetry, undoubtedly led in the course of the nineteenth century to a definite but uncritical tendency to disparage and underrate the entire poetic output of the period, not only of the Popian supremacy, but even of the interregnum, when the old order was slowly making way for the new. The Romantic rebels of course have nearly always received their meed of praise, but even in their case there is not seldom a suspicion of critical reservation, a sort of implied reproach that they ought to have done better than they did, and that they could and might have done so if they had reacted more violently against the poetic atmosphere of their age. In brief, what with the Preface to the "Lyrical Ballads" and its successive expansions at the beginning of the century, and what, some eighty years later, with Matthew Arnold's calm description of the eighteenth century as an "age of prose and reason," the poetry of that period, and not only the neo-classical portion of it, fared somewhat badly. There could be no better illustration of the influence and danger of labels and tags; "poetic diction," and "age of prose and reason" tended to become a sort of critical legend or tradition, by means of which eighteenth century verse, alike at its highest and its lowest levels, could be safely and adequately understood and explained.

Nowadays we are little likely to fall into the error of assuming that any one cut and dried formula, however pregnant and apt, could adequately sum up the literary aspects and characteristics of an entire age; the contributory and essential factors are too many, and often too elusive, for the tabloid method. And now that the poetry of the first half or so of the eighteenth century is in process of rehabilitation, and more than a few of its practitioners have even been allowed access to the slopes, at least, of Parnassus, it may perhaps be useful to examine, a little more closely than has hitherto been customary, one of the critical labels which, it would almost seem, has sometimes been taken as a sort of generic description of eighteenth century verse, as if "poetic diction" was something which suddenly sprang into being when Pope translated Homer, and had never been heard of before or since.

This, of course, is to overstate the case, the more so as it can hardly be denied that there is much to be said for the other side. It may perhaps be put this way, by saying, at the risk of a laborious assertion of the obvious, that if poetry is to be written there must be a diction in which to write it--a diction which, whatever its relation to the language of contemporary speech or prose may be, is yet in many essential respects distinct and different from it, in that, even when it does not draw upon a special and peculiar word-power of its own, yet so uses or combines common speech as to heighten and intensify its possibilities of suggestion and evocation. If, therefore, we speak of the "poetic diction" of the eighteenth century, or of any portion of it, the reference ought to be, of course, to the whole body of language in which the poetry of that period is written, viewed as a medium, good, bad, or indifferent, for poetical expression. But this has rarely or never been the case; it is not too much to say that, thanks to Wordsworth's attack and its subsequent reverberations, "poetic diction," so far as the eighteenth century is concerned, has too often been taken to mean, "bad poetic diction," and it has been in this sense indiscriminately applied to the whole poetic output of Pope and his school.

In the present study it is hoped, by a careful examination of the poetry of the eighteenth century, by an analysis of the conditions and species of its diction, to arrive at some estimate of its value, of what was good and what was bad in it, of how far it was the outcome of the age which produced it, and how far a continuation of inherited tradition in poetic language, to what extent writers went back to their great predecessors in their search for a fresh vocabulary, and finally, to what extent the poets of the triumphant Romantic reaction, who had to fashion for themselves a new vehicle of expression, were indebted to their forerunners in the revolt, to those who had helped to prepare the way.

It is proposed to make the study both a literary and a linguistic one. In the first place, the aim will be to show how the poetic language, which is usually labelled "the eighteenth century style," was, in certain of its most pronounced aspects, a reflex of the literary conditions of its period; in the second place, the study will be a linguistic one, in that it will deal also with the words themselves. Here the attention will be directed to certain features characteristic of, though not peculiar to, the diction of the eighteenth century poetry--the use of Latinisms, of archaic and obsolete words, and of those compound words by means of which English poets from the time of the Elizabethans have added some of the happiest and most expressive epithets to the language; finally, the employment of abstractions and personifications will be discussed.

THE THEORY OF POETICAL DICTION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

About the time when Dryden was beginning his literary career the preoccupation of men of letters with the language as a literary instrument was obvious enough. There was a decided movement toward simplicity in both prose and poetry, and, so far as the latter was concerned, it was in large measure an expression of the critical reaction against the "metaphysical" verse commonly associated with the names of Donne and his disciples. Fureti?re in his "Nouvelle Allegorique ou Histoire des dernier troubles arrivez au Royaume d'Eloquence," published at Paris in 1658, expresses the parallel struggle which had been raging amongst French poets and critics, and the allegory he presents may be taken to symbolize the general critical attitude in both countries.

Rhetoric, Queen of the Realm of Eloquence, and her Prime Minister, Good Sense, are represented as threatened by innumerable foes. The troops of the Queen, marshalled in defence of the Academy, her citadel, are the accepted literary forms, Histories, Epics, Lyrics, Dramas, Romances, Letters, Sermons, Philosophical Treatises, Translations, Orations, and the like. Her enemies are the rhetorical figures and the perversions of style, Metaphors, Hyperboles, Similes, Descriptions, Comparisons, Allegories, Pedantries, Antitheses, Puns, Exaggerations, and a host of others. Ultimately the latter are defeated, and are in some cases banished, or else agree to serve as dependents in the realm of Eloquence.

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