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.