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,