where led is used in the sense of Latin ducere (marry) and “refers the limbs,” where “refers” means “restores.”[96] Examples are few in Dryden’s original works, but “Annus Mirabilis” furnishes instances like the ponderous ball expires, where “expires” means “is blown forth,” and “each wonted room require” (“seek again”), whilst there is an occasional reminiscence of such Latin phrases as “manifest of crimes” for manifestus sceleris (“Ab. and Achit.”).
What has been said of the latinisms of Dryden applies also to those of Pope. Words like prevent, erring, succeed, devious, horrid, missive, vagrant, are used with their original signification, and there are passages like
For this he bids the nervous artists vie.
Imitations of Latin constructions are occasionally found:
Some god has told them, or themselves survey
The bark escaped.
Phrases like “fulgid weapons,” “roseate unguents,” “circumfusile gold,” “frustrate triumphs,” etc., are probably coinages imposed by the necessities of translation. Other similar phrases, such as (tears) “conglobing on the dust,” “with unctuous fir foment the flame,” seem to anticipate something of the absurdity into which this kind of diction was later to fall.[97]
On the whole, the latinisms found in the works of Dryden and Pope are not usually deliberate creations for the purpose of poetic ornament. They are such as would probably seem perfectly natural in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, when the traditions of classical study still persisted strongly, and when the language of prose itself was still receiving additions from that source. Moreover, the large amount of translation done by both poets from the classics was bound to result in the use of numerous classical terms and constructions.
In 1705 there appeared the “Splendid Shilling” of John Philips, followed by his “Cyder” and other poems a year later. These poems are among the first of the Miltonic parodies or imitations, and, being written in blank verse, they may be regarded as heralding the struggle against the tyranny of the heroic couplet. Indeed, blank verse came to be distinctly associated with the Romantic movement, probably because it was considered that its structure was more encouraging to the unfettered imagination than the closed couplets of the classicists. It is thus interesting to note that the reaction in form, which marks one distinct aspect of Romanticism, was really responsible for some of the excesses against which the manifestoes afterwards protested; for it is in these blank verse poems especially that there was developed a latinism both of diction and construction that frequently borders on the ludicrous, even when the poet’s object was not deliberately humorous.
In “Blenheim” terms and phrases such as globous iron, by chains connexed, etc., are frequent, and the attempts at Miltonic effects is seen in numerous passages like