The fact that this stock language is not confined to the neo-classical poets proper, but is found to a large extent persisting to the very end of the eighteenth century, and even invading the early work of the writer who led the revolt against it, is indicative of another general cause of its widespread prevalence. Briefly, it may be said that not only did the conventional poetic diction reflect in the main the average neo-classical outlook on external nature; it reflected also the average eighteenth century view as to the nature of poetical language, which regarded its words and phrases as satisfying the artistic canon, not in virtue of the degree in which they reflected the individual thought or emotion of the poet, but according as they conformed to a standard of language based on accepted models.
CHAPTER IV
LATINISM IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY POETRY
There is now to be noticed another type of eighteenth century poetic diction which was in its way as prevalent, and, it may be added, as vicious, as the stock diction which has been discussed in the previous chapter. This was the use of a latinized vocabulary, from the early years of the century down to the days when the work of Goldsmith, Cowper, and Crabbe seemed to indicate a sort of interregnum between the old order and the new.
This fashion, or craze, for “latinity” was not of course a sudden and special development which came in with the eighteenth century: it was rather the culmination of a tendency which was not altogether unconnected with the historic development of the language itself. As a factor in literary composition, it had first begun to be discussed when the Elizabethan critics and men of letters were busying themselves with the special problem of diction. Latinism was one of the excesses to which poets and critics alike directed their attention, and their strictures and warnings were such as were inevitable and salutary in the then transitional confusion of the language.[90] In the early years of the seventeenth century this device for strengthening and ornamenting the language was adopted more or less deliberately by such poets as Phineas and Giles Fletcher, especially the latter, who makes free use of such coinages as elamping, appetence, elonging, etc.[91]
The example of the Fletchers in thus adding to their means of literary expression was soon to be followed by a greater poet. When Milton came to write his epics, it is evident, as has been said, that he felt the need for a diction in keeping with the exalted theme he had chosen, and his own taste and temperament, as well as the general tendencies of his age, naturally led him to make use of numerous words of direct or indirect “classical” origin. But his direct coinages from Latin and Greek are much less than has often been supposed.[92] What he seems to have done in many cases was to take words the majority of which had been recently formed, usually for scientific or philosophic purposes, and incorporate them in his poetical vocabulary. Thus Atheous, attrite, conflagrant, jaculation, myrrhine, paranymph, plenipotent, etc., are instances of classical formations which in most cases seem, according to “The New English Dictionary,” to have made their first literary appearance shortly before the Restoration. In other instances Milton’s latinisms are much older.[93] What is important is the fact that Milton was able to infuse these and many similar words with a real poetic power, and we may be sure that the use of such words as ethereal, adamantine, refulgent, regal, whose very essence, as has been remarked, is suggestiveness, rather than close definition, was altogether deliberate.[94] In addition to this use of a latinized vocabulary, there is a continuous latinism of construction, which is to be found in the early poems, but which, as might be expected, is most prominent in the great epics, where idioms like after his charge received (P.L., V 248), since first her salutation heard (P.R., II, 107) are frequent.[95]
Milton, we may say, of purpose prepense made or culled for himself a special poetical vocabulary which was bound to suffer severely at the hands of incompetent and uninspired imitators. But though the widespread use of latinized diction is no doubt largely to be traced to the influence of Milton at a time when “English verse went Milton mad,” it may perhaps also be regarded as a practice that reflected to a certain extent the general literary tendencies of the Augustan age.
When Milton was writing his great epics Dryden was just beginning his literary career, but though there are numerous examples of latinisms in the works of the latter, they are not such as would suggest that he had been influenced to any extent by the Miltonic manner of creating a poetical vocabulary. There is little or no coinage of the “magnificent” words which Milton used so freely, though latinized forms like geniture, irremeable, praescious, tralineate, are frequent. Dryden, however, as might be expected, often uses words in their original etymological sense. Thus besides the common use of prevent, secure, etc., we find in the translation of the “Metamorphoses”:
He had either led
Thy mother then,