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.