THOU AND YOU, IN POETRY.
The promiscuous use of thou and you is a common error among all our poets, not the best or most accurate excepted.
The cause of this anomaly is not of difficult investigation. The second person singular not being colloquial with us, (for we never use it to our familiar friends like the French,) it at once elevates our language above the level of common discourse—a most essential object to the poet, and therefore he readily adopts it; but when it comes to govern a verb, the combination of st is so harsh that he as readily abandons it.
In Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, the singular pronoun is constantly used till verse 65:
“—Heaven listen’d while you sung;”
for thou sungst (without considering the rhyme) would have been intolerable.
In lines 107, 109, the verb canst thou has a good effect; as by lengthening the syllable by position it becomes more emphatic, and the harshness is amply compensated by the superior force of canst thou to can you. The fastidious critic therefore would do well, before he passes his sentence, to consider whether an inaccuracy, which is never discovered except it be sought after, is not fairly entitled to the favour Aristotle grants to those deviations from strict propriety which tend to heighten the interest of a poem.
This change however is absolutely indefensible when used for the sake of rhyme only. Many instances of this occur in the same poem; the most striking will be found in two succeeding couplets:
O come! O! teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself,—and you:
Fill my fond heart with God alone; for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.
In some cases this change is strictly justifiable; as, when a person is addressed in a different style. For example, in Thomson’s Tancred and Sigismunda, when Siffredi discloses to Tancred that he is the king, he says,
Forgive me, sir! this trial of your heart.
For the respectful appellation sir demands the more colloquial term of address, but he immediately adds with animation,
Thou! thou! art he!
And so in Tancred’s subsequent speech to Siffredi, he first says,
I think, my lord! you said the king intrusted
To you his will!—
but soon after adds, in a more impassioned tone,
On this alone I will not bear dispute,
Not even from thee, Siffredi!
The same distinction will, in general, be found in the speeches of Sigismunda to Tancred.[352]
[352] Pye.