(Ibid., 480)
play their part in the delivery of those “smacks in the face” of which Professor Saintsbury speaks in his discussion of Dryden’s satiric manipulation of the heroic couplet.[167]
In the verse of Pope, compound formations are to be found in large numbers. This may partly be attributed, no doubt, to the amount of translation included in it, but even in his original poetry there are many more instances than in the work of his great predecessor. When engaged on his translation of Homer the prevalence of compounds naturally attracted his attention, and he refers to the matter more than once in his Preface.[168] As might be expected from the apostle of “correctness,” he lays down cautious and conservative “rules” of procedure. Such should be retained “as slide easily of themselves into an English compound, without violence to the ear, or to the received rules of composition, as well as those which have received the sanction from the authority of our best poets, and are become familiar through their use of them.”[169]
An examination of Pope’s compounds in the light of “the received rules of composition,” shows his examples to be of the usual types. Of noun plus noun combinations he has such forms as “monarch-savage,” (“Odyss.” IV), whilst he is credited with the first use of “the fury-passions” (Epistle III). More originality and imagination is reflected in his compound epithets; of those formed from a noun and a present participle, with the first element usually in an objective relation to the second, his instances include “love-darting-eyes” (“Unfortunate Lady”), as well as others found before his time, like the Elizabethan “heart-piercing anguish” (ibid., XII) and “laughter-loving dame” (ibid., III). He has large numbers of compounded nouns and past-participles, many of which—“moss-grown domes” (“Eloisa”), “cloud-topped hills” (“Essay on Man,” I, 100), “Sea-girt isles” (“Iliad,” III)—were common in the seventeenth century, as well as “borrowed” examples, such as “home-felt joys” (Epistle II) or “air-bred people” (“Odyss.,” LX, 330), presumably from Milton and Drayton respectively. But he has a few original formations of this type, such as “heaven-directed spire” (Epistle III), “osier-fringed bank,” (“Odyss.,” XIII), the latter perhaps a reminiscence of Sabrina’s song in “Comus,” as well as happier combinations, of which the best examples are “love-born confidence” (“Odyss.,” X) and “love-dittied airs” (“Odyss.,” II).
Pope, however, makes his largest use of that type of compound which can be formed with the greatest freedom—an adjective, or an adjective used adverbially, joined to a present or past participle. He has dozens of examples with the adverbial long, wide, far, loud, deep, high, etc., as the first element, most of the examples occurring in the Homer translations, and being attempts to reproduce the Greek compounds.[170] Other instances have a higher æsthetic value: “fresh-blooming hope” (“Eloisa”), “silver-quivering rills” (Epistle IV), “soft-trickling waters” “Iliad,” IX), “sweet airs soft-circling” (ibid., XVII), etc. Of the formations beginning with a true adverb, the most numerous are the quasi-compounds beginning with “ever”—“ever-during nights,” “ever-fragrant bowers” (“Odyss.,” XII), etc.; or “well”—“well-sung woes” (“Eloisa”) or “yet”—“yet-untasted food” (“Iliad,” XV), etc. These instances do not reveal any great originality, for the very ease with which they can be formed naturally discounts largely their poetic value. Occasionally, however, Pope has been more successful; perhaps his best examples of this type are “inly-pining hate” (“Odyss.,” VI—where the condensation involved in the epithet does at least convey some impression of power—and “the softly-stealing space of time,” (“Odyss.,” XV), where the compound almost produces a happy effect of personification.
Of the irregular type of compound, already mentioned in connexion with Dryden, Pope has a few instances—“white-robed innocence” (“Eloisa”), etc. But perhaps Pope’s happiest effort in this respect is to be seen in that quatrain from the fourth book of the “Dunciad,” containing three instances of compound epithets, which help to remind us that at times he had at his command a diction of higher suggestive and evocative power than the plain idiom of his satiric and didactic verse:
To isles of fragrance, lily-silver’d vales
Diffusing languor in the panting gales;
To lands of singing or of dancing slaves