[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.