Jean Ingelow’s “vice of design” is very sadly shown, too, in her vocabulary. She wanders about in dusty, unused dictionaries, searching out odd, obsolete, obscure, and ambiguous words. Because a term is confessedly obsolete is no sound reason why it should not be revived;
but there is no justification for inserting it in a text where it must play the unbecoming part of a conspicuous intruder who can make no satisfactory excuse for his presence in uncongenial company. Where the silenced lexicons do not afford the desired material, she is not loath to make new combinations, and we are harassed by “bewrayed,” “amerce,” “ancientry,” “thrid,” “scorpe,” “eygre,” “chine,” “brattling,” etc. The best illustration of the artificiality and affectation of her style is found in one of her most pleasing and most popular poems, and it would be deservedly much more popular were these blemishes of etymology and simperings of rhetoric removed. We quote stanzas enough of “Divided” to exhibit her individuality both of thought and diction:
“An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom;
We two among them, wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
* * * * *
“Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Groweth the cleft with her golden ring,
’Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,