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”:

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

Imitations of Latin constructions are occasionally found:

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

In “Cyder” latinisms are still more abundant: the nocent brood (of snails), treacle’s viscuous juice, with grain incentive stored, the defecated liquour, irriguous sleep, as well as passages like

or

This kind of thing became extremely common and persisted throughout the eighteenth century.

Incidentally, it may here be remarked that the publication of Philips’s poems probably gave to Lady Winchilsea a hint for her poem “Fanscombe Barn.”[98] Philips, as has been noted, was one of the very first to attempt to use Milton’s lofty diction, and his latinized sentence structure for commonplace and even trivial themes, and no doubt his experiment, having attracted Lady Winchilsea’s attention, inspired her own efforts at Miltonic parody, though it is probably “Cyder” and “The Splendid Shilling,” rather then “Paradise Lost,” that she takes as her model. Thus the carousings of the tramps forgathered in Fanscombe Barn are described:

and the whole poem shows traces of its second-hand inspiration.

Even those who are now remembered chiefly as Spenserian imitators indulge freely in a latinized style when they take to blank verse. Thus William Thompson, who in his poem “Sickness” has many phrases like “the arm ignipotent,” “inundant blaze” (Bk. I), “terrestrial stores medicinal” (Bk. III), with numerous passages, of which the following is typical:

William Shenstone, the author of one of the most successful of the Spenserian imitations, is more sparing in this respect, but even in his case passages such as

are not infrequent.

But it is not only the mere versifiers who have succumbed to this temptation. By far the most important of the early blank verse poems was Thomson’s “Seasons,” which, first appearing from 1726-1730, was subsequently greatly revised and altered up to the edition of 1746, the last to be issued in the author’s lifetime.[99] The importance and success of “The Seasons” as one of the earliest indications of the “Return to Nature” has received adequate recognition, but Thomson was an innovator in the style, as well as in the matter, of his poem. As Dr. Johnson remarked, he saw things always with the eyes of a poet, and the quickened and revived interest in external nature which he reflects inevitably impelled him to search for a new diction to give it expression. We can see him, as it were, at work trying to replace the current coinage with a new mintage of his own, or rather with a mixed currency, derived partly from Milton, and partly from his own resources. His diction is thus in some degrees as artificial as the stock diction of his period, especially when his attempts to emulate or imitate the magnificence of Milton betray him into pomposity or even absurdity; but his poetical language as a whole is leavened with so much that is new and his very own as to make it clear that the Romantic revival in the style, as well as in the contents, of poetry has really begun. The resulting peculiarities of style did not escape notice in his own time. He was recognized as the creator of a new poetical language, and was severely criticized even by some of his friends. Thus Somerville urged with unusual frankness a close revision of the style of “The Seasons”:

Thomson’s comment on this criticism was emphatic: “Should I alter my ways I should write poorly. I must choose what appears to be the most significant epithet or I cannot proceed.”[101] Hence, though lines and whole passages of “The Seasons” were revised, and large additions made, the characteristics of the style were on the whole preserved. And one of the chief characteristics, due partly to the influence of Milton, and partly to the obvious fact that for Thomson with new thoughts and impressions to convey to his readers, the current and conventional vocabulary of poetry needed reinforcement, is an excessive use of latinisms.[102]

Thus in “Spring” we find, e.g., “prelusive drops,” “the amusive arch” (the rainbow), “the torpid sap detruded to the root,” etc., as well as numerous passages such as

In “Summer” the epithet gelid appears with almost wearisome iteration, with other examples like flexile wave, the fond sequacious bird, etc., while the cloud that presages a storm is called “the small prognostic” and trees are “the noble sons of potent heat and floods.” Continuous passages betray similar characteristics:

Autumn furnishes even more surprising instances: the stag “adhesive to the track,” the sands “strowed bibulous above,” “forests huge incult,” etc., as well as numerous passages of sustained latinism.[103]

In “Winter,” which grew from an original 405 lines in 1726 to 1,069 lines in 1746, latinism of vocabulary is not prominent to the same extent as in the three previous books, but the following is a typical sample:

The revisions after 1730 do not show any great pruning, or less indulgence in these characteristics; rather the contrary, for many of them are additions which did not appear until 1744. Now and then Thomson has changed his terms and epithets. Thus in the lines

the expression “melts into” has replaced the earlier “attenuates to.”[105] One of the best of the emendations, at least as regards the disappearance of a latinism, is seen in “Summer” (48-9), where the second verse of the couplet,

has replaced the

of the earlier version. Often Thomson’s latinisms produce no other effect on the reader than that of mere pedantry. Thus in passages such as

or

or

or the description of the tempest

(where there is Latin order as well as diction), it is certain that the terms in question have little or no poetic value, and that simpler words in nearly every case would have produced greater effects. Now and then, as later in the case of Cowper, the pedantry is, we may suppose, deliberately playful, as when he speaks of the cattle that

or indicates a partial thaw by the statement

The words illustrated above are rarely, of course, Thomson’s own coinage. Many of them (e.g. detruded, hyperborean, luculent, relucent, turgent) date from the sixteenth century or earlier, though from the earliest references to them given in the “New English Dictionary” it may be assumed that Thomson was not always acquainted with the sources where they are first found, and that to him their “poetic” use is first due. In some cases Milton was doubtless the immediate source from which Thomson took such words, to use them with a characteristic looseness of meaning.[107]

It would be too much to say that Thomson’s use of such terms arises merely out of a desire to emulate the “grand style”; it reflects rather his general predilection for florid and luxurious diction. Moreover, it has been noted that an analysis of his latinisms seems to point to a definite scheme of formation. Thus there is a distinct preference for certain groups of formations, such as adjectives in “-ive” (affective, amusive, excursive, etc.), or in “-ous” (irriguous, sequacious), or Latin participle forms, such as clamant, turgent, incult, etc. In additions Latin words are frequently used in their original sense, common instances being sordid, generous, error, secure, horrid, dome, while his blank verse line was also characterized by the free use of latinized constructions.[108] Thomson’s frequent use of the sandwiched noun, “flowing rapture bright” (“Spring,” 1088), “gelid caverns woodbine-wrought,” (“Summer,” 461), “joyless rains obscure” (“Winter,” 712), often with the second adjective used predicatively or adverbially,

is also worthy of note.

Yet it can hardly be denied that the language of “The Seasons” is in many respects highly artificial, and that Thomson was to all intents and purposes the creator of a special poetic diction, perhaps even more so than Gray, who had to bear the brunt of Wordsworth’s fulminations. But on the whole his balance is on the right side; at a time when the majority of his contemporaries were either content to draw drafts on the conventional and consecrated words, phrases, and similes, or were sedulously striving to ape the polished plainness of Pope, he was able to show that new powers of expression could well be won from the language. His nature vocabulary alone is sufficient proof of the value of his contributions to the poetic wealth of the language, not a few of his new-formed compounds especially being expressive and beautiful.[109] His latinisms are less successful because they can hardly be said to belong to any diction, and for the most part they must be classed among the “false ornaments” derided by Wordsworth;[110] not only do they possess none of that mysterious power of suggestion which comes to words in virtue of their employment through generations of prose and song, but also not infrequently their meaning is far from clear. They are never the spontaneous reflection of the poet’s thought, but, on the contrary, they appear only too often to have been dragged in merely for effect.

This last remark applies still more forcibly to Somerville’s “Chase,” which appeared in 1735. Its author was evidently following in the wake of Thomson’s blank verse, and with this aim freely allows himself the use of an artificial and inflated diction, as in many passages like

About the same time Edward Young was probably writing his “Night Thoughts,” though the poem was not published until 1742. Here again the influence of Thomson is to be seen in the diction, though no doubt in this case there is also not a little that derives direct from Milton. Young has Latin formations like terraqueous, to defecate, feculence, manumit, as well as terms such as avocation, eliminate, and unparadize, used in their original sense. In the second instalment of the “Night Thoughts” there is a striking increase in the number of Latin terms, either borrowed directly, or at least formed on classical roots, some of which must have been unintelligible to many readers. Thus indagators for “seekers,” fucus for “false brilliance,” concertion for “intimate agreement,” and cutaneous for “external,” “skin deep”:

It is difficult to understand the use of such terms when simple native words were ready at hand, and the explanation must be that they were thought to add to the dignity of the poem, and to give it a flavour of scholarship; for the same blemishes appear in most of the works published at this time. Thus in Akenside’s “Pleasures of the Imagination” (1744) there is a similar use of latinized terms: pensile planets, passion’s fierce illapse, magnific praise, though the tendency is best illustrated in such passages as

In “The Poet” there is a striking example of what can only be the pedantic, even if playful, use of a cumbrous epithet:

Similar examples are to be found in “The Art of Preserving Health” by John Armstrong, published in the same year as Akenside’s “Pleasures.” The unpoetical nature of this subject may perhaps be Armstrong’s excuse for such passages as

but this latinizing tendency was perhaps never responsible for a more absurd periphrasis than one to be found in the second part of the poem, which treats of “Diet”:

The high Miltonic manner was likewise attempted by John Dyer in “The Fleece,” which appeared in 1757, and by James Grainger in “The Sugar Cane” (1764), to mention only the most important. Dyer, deservedly praised for his new and fresh descriptive diction, has not escaped this contagion of latinism: the globe terraqueous, the cerule stream, rich sapinaceous loam, detersive bay salt, etc., while elsewhere there are obvious efforts to recapture the Miltonic cadence. In “The Sugar Cane” the tendency is increased by the necessity thrust upon the poet to introduce numerous technical terms. Thus

Meanwhile Joseph Warton had written his one blank verse poem “The Enthusiast” (1740), when he was only eighteen years old. But though both he and his brother Thomas are among the most important of the poets who show the influence of Milton most clearly, that influence reveals itself rather in the matter of thought than of form, and there is in “The Enthusiast” little of the diction that marred so many of the blank verse poems. Only here and there may traces be seen, as in the following passage:

There is still less in the poems of Thomas Warton, who was even a more direct follower of Milton than his elder brother. There is scarcely one example of a Latinism in “The Pleasures of Melancholy,” which is really a companion piece to “The Enthusiast.” The truth is that it was Milton’s early work—and especially “Il Penseroso”—that affected most deeply these early Romanticists, and even their blank verse is charged with the sentiments and phrases of Milton’s octosyllabics. Thus the two poets, who were among the first to catch something of the true spirit of Milton, have little or nothing of the cumbersome and pedantic diction found so frequently in the so-called “Miltonics” of the eighteenth century, and this in itself is one indication of their importance in the earlier stages of the Romantic revival.

This is also true in the case of Collins and Gray, who are the real eighteenth century disciples of Milton. Collins’s fondness for personified abstractions may perhaps be attributed to Milton’s influence, but there are few, if any, traces of latinism in his pure and simple diction. Gray was probably influenced more than he himself thought by Milton, and like Milton he made for himself a special poetical language, which owes not a little to the works of his great exemplar. But Gray’s keen sense of the poetical value of words, and his laborious precision and exactness in their use, kept him from any indulgence in coinages. Only one or two latinisms are to be found in the whole of his work, and when these do occur they are such as would come naturally to a scholar, or as were still current in the language of his time. Thus in “The Progress of Poesy” he has

where “pencil” stands for “brush” (Latin, pensillum); whilst in a translation from Statius he gives to prevent its latinized meaning

There is also a solitary example in the “Elegy” in the line

The contemporary fondness for blank verse had called forth the strictures of Goldsmith in his “Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning,” and his own smooth and flowing couplets have certainly none of the pompous epithets which he there condemns. His diction, if we except an occasional use of the stock descriptive epithets, is admirable alike in its simplicity and directness, and the two following lines from “The Traveller” are, with one exception,[113] the only examples of latinisms to be found in his poems:

and

Dr. Johnson, who represented the extreme classicist position with regard to blank verse and other tendencies of the Romantic reaction, had a good deal to say in the aggregate about the poetical language of his predecessors and contemporaries. But the latinism of the time, which was widespread enough to have attracted his attention, does not seem to have provoked from him any critical comment. His own poetical works, even when we remember the “Vanity of Human Wishes,” where plenty of instances of Latin idiom are to be found, are practically free from this kind of diction, though this does not warrant the inference that he disapproved of it. We know that his prose was latinized to a remarkable extent, so that his “sesquipedalian terminology” has been regarded as the fountain-head of that variety of English which delights in “big,” high-sounding words. But his ideal, we may assume, was the polished and elegant diction of Pope, and his own verse is as free from pedantic formations as is “The Lives of the Poets,” which perhaps represents his best prose.

It is in the works of a poet who, though he continues certain aspects of neo-classicism, yet announces unmistakably the coming of the new age, that we find a marked use of a deliberately latinized diction. Cowper has always received just praise for the purity of his language; he is, on the whole, singularly free from the artificialities and inversions which had marked the accepted poetic diction, but, on the other hand, his language is latinized to an extent that has perhaps not always been fully realized.

This is, however, confined to “The Task” and to the translation of the “Iliad.” In the former case there is first a use of words freely formed on Latin roots, for most of which Cowper had no doubt abundant precedents,[114] but which, in some cases, must have been coined by him, perhaps playfully in some instances; twisted form vermicular, the agglomerated pile, the voluble and restless earth, etc. Other characteristics of this latinized style are perhaps best seen in continuous passages such as

or in such a mock-heroic fling as

On these and many similar occasions Cowper has turned his predilection to playful account, as also when he diagnoses the symptoms of gout as

or speaks of monarchs and Kings as

There is still freer use of latinisms in the “Homer”:[116] her eyes caerulean, the point innocuous, piercing accents stridulous, the triturated barley, candent lightnings, the inherent barb, his stream vortiginous, besides such passages as

The instances given above fully illustrate on the whole the use of a latinized diction in eighteenth century poetry.[117] It must not, however, be supposed that the fashion was altogether confined to the blank verse poems. Thus Matthew Prior in “Alma,” or “The Progress of the Mind,” has passages like

whilst Richard Savage in his “Wanderer” indulges in such flights as

One short stanza by William Shenstone, from his poem “Written in Spring, 1743,” contains an obvious example in three out of its four lines:

But it is in the blank verse poems that the fashion is most prevalent, and it is there that it only too often becomes ludicrous. The blind Milton, dying, lonely and neglected, a stranger in a strange land, is hardly likely to have looked upon himself as the founder of a “school,” or to have suspected to what base uses his lofty diction and style were to be put, within a few decades of his death, by a swarm of poetasters who fondly regarded themselves as his disciples.[118] The early writers of blank verse, such as John Philips, frankly avowed themselves imitators of Milton, and there can be little doubt that in their efforts to catch something of the dignity and majesty of their model the crowd of versifiers who then appeared on the scene had recourse to high-sounding words and phrases, as well as to latinized constructions by which they hoped to elevate their style. The grand style of “Paradise Lost” was bound to suffer severely at the hands of imitators, and there can be little doubt but that much of the preposterous latinizing of the time is to be traced to this cause. At the same time the influence of the general literary tendencies of the Augustan ages is not to be ignored in this connexion. When a diction freely sprinkled with latinized terms is found used by writers like Thomson in the first quarter, and Cowper at the end of the century, it may perhaps also be regarded as a mannerism of style due in some degree to influences which were still powerful enough to affect literary workmanship. For it must be remembered that in the eighteenth century the traditional supremacy of Latin had not yet altogether died out: pulpit and forensic eloquence, as well as the great prose works of the period, still bore abundant traces of the persistency of this influence.[119] Hence it need not be at all surprising to find that it has invaded poetry. The use of latinized words and phrases gave, or was supposed to give, an air of culture to verse, and contemporary readers did not always, we may suppose, regard such language as a mere display of pedantry.

In this, as in other respects of the poetic output of the period, we may see a further reflex of the general literary atmosphere of the first half or so of the eighteenth century. There was no poetry of the highest rank, and not a great deal of poetical poetry; the bulk of the output is “poetry without an atmosphere.” The very qualities most admired in prose—lucidity, correctness, absence of “enthusiasm”—were such as were approved for poetry; even the Romantic forerunners, with perhaps the single exception of Blake, felt the pressure of the prosaic atmosphere of their times. No doubt had a poet of the highest order appeared he would have swept away much of the accumulated rubbish and fashioned for himself a new poetic language, as Thomson tried, and Wordsworth later thought to do. But he did not appear, and the vast majority of the practitioners were content to ring the changes on the material they found at hand, and were not likely to dream of anything different.

It is thus not sufficient to say that the “rapid and almost simultaneous diffusion of this purely cutaneous eruption,” to borrow an appropriate description from Lowell, was due solely to the potent influence of Milton. It reflects also the average conception of poetry held throughout a good part of the eighteenth century, a conception which led writers to seek in mere words qualities which are to be found in them only when they are the reflex of profound thought or powerful emotion. In short, latinism in eighteenth century poetry may be regarded as a literary fashion, akin in nature to the stock epithets and phrases of the “descriptive” poetry, which were later to be unsparingly condemned as the typical eighteenth century poetical diction.

Of the poetic value of these latinized words little need be said. Whether or no they reflect a conscious effort to extend, enrich, or renew the vocabulary of English poetry, they cannot be said to have added much to the expressive resources of the language. This is not, of course, merely because they are of direct Latin origin. We know that around the central Teutonic core of English there have slowly been built up two mighty strata of Latin and Romance formations, which, in virtue of their long employment by writers in prose and verse, as well as on the lips of the people, have slowly acquired that force and picturesqueness which the poet needs for his purpose. But the latinized words of the eighteenth century are on a different footing. To us, nowadays, there is something pretentious and pedantic about them: they are artificial formations or adoptions, and not living words. English poets from time to time have been able to give a poetical colouring to such words,[120] and the eighteenth century is not without happy instances of this power. James Thomson here and there wins real poetic effects from his latinized vocabulary, as in such a passage as