and “daisie-whitened plain,” “crystal-streamed Esk” are among his new formations in “Eskdale Braes.”

James Beattie has a large number of compounds in his poems, and though many of these are mechanical formations, he has a few new “nature” epithets which are real additions to the vocabulary of poetical description, as “sky-mixed mountain” (“Ode to Peace,” 38), the lake “dim-gleaming” (“Minstrel,” 176), “the wide-weltering waves” (ibid., 481), the wave “loose-glimmering” (“Judgment of Paris,” 458). He has also a few instances of Type VII chiefly utilized, as often with compounds of this type, as personifying epithets: “the frolic moments purple-pinioned” (“Judgment of Paris,” 465) and “loose-robed Quiet” (“Triumph of Melancholy,” 64).

The “Pleasures of Memory” (1792) by Samuel Rogers has one or two compound formations: “moonlight-chequered shade” (Part II). Hope’s “summer-visions” (ibid.) and “the fairy-haunts of long-lost hours” (ibid.), have a trace at least of that suggestive power with which Keats and Shelley were soon to endow their epithets. Brief reference only need be made to the works of Erasmus Darwin, which have already been mentioned as the great example of eighteenth century stock diction used to the utmost possible extent. He has plenty of instances of compound epithets of every type, but his favourite formation appears to be that of a noun plus part-participle, as “sun-illumined fane” (“Botanic Garden,” I, 157), “wave-worn channels” (ibid., I, 362), and as seen in such lines as

Many of Darwin’s compounds have a certain charm of their own; in the mass they contribute towards that dazzling splendour with which eighteenth century diction here blazed out before it finally disappeared.

Cowper, like Blake and Crabbe, is not especially distinguished for his compound epithets. Though he has a large number of such formations, very few of them are either new or striking, a remark which applies equally to his original work and his translations. Many instances of all the types are to be found in the “Homer,” but scarcely one that calls for special mention, though here and there we come across good epithets well applied: “accents ardour-winged” (IV, 239) or “silver-eddied Peneus” (II, 294).

Before attempting to sum up the use of compound epithets in eighteenth century poetry, brief reference may be made to their use in the early work of the two poets who announced the definite advent of the new age. Wordsworth in his early poems has many instance of compound words, most of which are either his own formations, or are rare before his time. The original and final drafts both of the “Evening Walk” and the “Descriptive Sketches” show some divergence in this respect, compounds found in the 1793 version being omitted later, whilst on the other new formations appear in the revised poems. Besides imitative instances such as “cloud-piercing pine trees” (D.S., 63), there are more original and beautiful compounds, such as the “Lip-dewing song and the ringlet-tossing dance” (ibid., 132), which does not appear until the final draft.

Examples of Type IV are “holly-sprinkled steeps” (E.W., 10), “The sylvan cabin’s lute-enlivened gloom” (D.S., 134, final); and of Types V and VI, “green-tinged margin” (D.S., 122), “clear-blue sky” (D.S., 113), “dim-lit Alps” (D.S., 1793 only, 217), and “the low-warbled breath of twilight lute” (D.S., 1793, 749). Wordsworth’s early poems, it has been noted, are almost an epitome of the various eighteenth century devices for producing what was thought to be a distinctively poetical style,[189] but he soon shakes off this bondage, and “Guilt and Sorrow,” perhaps the first poem in which his simplicity and directness of expression are fully revealed, is practically without instances of compound epithets.

The critics, it would appear, had already marked down as a fault a “profusion of new coined double epithets”[190] in a “small volume of juvenile poems” published by Coleridge in 1794. In replying to, or rather commenting on, the charge, Coleridge makes an interesting digression on the use of such formations, defending them on “the authority of Milton and Shakespeare,” and suggesting that compound epithets should only be admitted if they are already “denizens” of the language, or if the new formation is a genuine compound, and not merely two words made one by virtue of the hyphen. “A Language,” he adds, “which like the English is almost without cases, is indeed in its very genius unfitted for compounds. If a writer, every time a compounded word suggests itself to him, would seek for some other mode of expressing the same sense, the chances are always greatly in favour of his finding a better word.” Though there is a good deal of sound sense in these remarks, we have only to recall the wealth of beautiful compound epithets with which Keats, to take only one example, was soon to enrich the language, to realize that English poetry would be very much the poorer if the rule Coleridge lays down had been strictly observed. It would perhaps be truer to say that the imaginative quality of the compound epithets coined by a poet is a good test of his advance in power of expression.[191]

As regards his own practice, Coleridge goes on to say[192] that he “pruned the double epithets with no sparing hand”; but the pruning was not very severe, judging from a comparison of the two volumes. Yet these early poems are not without examples of good compound epithets: “zephyr-haunted brink,” (“Lines to a Beautiful Spring”), “distant-tinkling stream” (“Song of the Pixies,” 16), “sunny-tinctured hue” (ibid., 43), “passion-warbled strain,” (“To the Rev. W. J. H.”), etc.

When we review the use of compound epithets in the poetry of the eighteenth century we are bound to admit that in this, as in other aspects of the “purely poetical,” the eighteenth century stands apart from other periods in our literary history. Most readers could probably at will call to their mind half a dozen compound epithets of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan period, of Milton, or of more modern writers, such as Keats, that are, as it were, little poems in themselves, Shakespeare’s “young-eyed cherubim,” or Milton’s “grey-hooded even,” or Keats’s “soft-conched shell.” It is safe to say that few eighteenth century words or phrases of this nature have captured the imagination to a similar degree; Collins’s “dim-discovered spires” is perhaps the only instance that comes readily to the mind.

There are, of course, as our study has shown, plenty of instances of good compound epithets, but in the typical eighteenth century poetry these are rarely the product of a genuine creative force that endows the phrase with imaginative life. Even the great forerunners of the Romantic revolt are not especially remarkable in this respect; one of the greatest of them, William Blake, gave scarcely a single new compound epithet to the language, and whilst this fact, of course, cannot be brought as a reproach against him, yet it is, in some respects at least, significant of the poetical atmosphere into which he was born. It has often been remarked that when Latin influence was in the ascendant the formation of new and striking compound epithets has been very rare in English poetry, whilst it has been always stimulated, as we know from the concrete examples of Chapman and Keats, by the influence of a revived Hellenism.

Another fact is worthy of attention. Many of the most beautiful compound epithets in the English language are nature phrases descriptive of outdoor sights and sounds. The arrested development, or the atrophy of the sense of the beauty of the external world, which is a characteristic of the neo-classical school, was an unconscious but effective bar to the formation of new words and phrases descriptive of outdoor life. The neo-classical poet, with his eye fixed on the town and on life as lived there, felt no necessity for adding to the descriptive resources of his vocabulary, especially when there was to his hand a whole gradus of accepted and consecrated words and phrases. It is in the apostles of “the return to Nature” that we find, however inadequately, to begin with, a new diction that came into being because these poets had recovered the use of their eyes and could sense the beauty of the world around them.

And this fact leads to a further consideration of the use of compound epithets from the formal viewpoint of their technical value. It has already been suggested that their use may not be unconnected with the mechanism of verse, and the æsthetic poverty of eighteenth century poetry in this respect may therefore be not unjustly regarded as an outcome of the two great prevailing vehicles of expression. In the first place, there was the heroic couplet as brought to perfection by Pope. “The uniformity and maximum swiftness that marked his manipulation of the stopped couplet was achieved,” says Saintsbury, “not only by means of a large proportion of monosyllabic final words, but also by an evident avoidance of long and heavy vocables in the interior of the lines themselves.”[193] Moreover, perhaps the commonest device to secure the uniform smoothness of the line was that use of the “gradus epithet” which has earlier been treated; these epithets were for the most part stock descriptive adjectives—verdant, purling, fleecy, painted, and the like—which were generally regarded by the versifiers as the only attendant diction of the couplet. If we compare a typical Pope verse such as

with the line already quoted,

we may perhaps see that the free use of compound epithets was not compatible with the mechanism of the couplet as illustrated in the greater part of Pope’s practice; they would tend to weaken the balanced antithesis, and thus spoil the swing of the line.

The most formidable rival of the heroic couplet in the eighteenth century was blank verse, the advent of which marked the beginning of the Romantic reaction in form. Here Thomson may be regarded as the chief representative, and it is significant that the large number of compound epithets in his work are terms of natural description, which, in addition to their being a reflex of the revived attitude to natural scenery, were probably more or less consciously used to compensate readers for the absence of “the rhyme-stroke and flash” they were accustomed to look for in the contemporary couplet. “He utilizes periodically,” to quote Saintsbury again,[194] “the exacter nature-painting, which in general poetic history is his glory, by putting the distinctive words for colour and shape in notable places of the verse, so as to give it character and quality.” These “distinctive words for colour and shape” were, with Thomson, for the most part, compound epithets; almost by the time of “Yardley Oak,” and certainly by the time of “Tintern Abbey,” blank verse had been fully restored to its kingdom, and no longer needed such aid.