[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.