POETIC DICTION
POETIC DICTION
A STUDY OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VERSE
BY
THOMAS QUAYLE
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
First Published in 1924
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | THE AGE OF PROSE AND REASON | 1 |
| II. | THE THEORY OF DICTION | 5 |
| III. | THE “STOCK” DICTION | 25 |
| IV. | LATINISM | 56 |
| V. | ARCHAISM | 80 |
| VI. | COMPOUND EPITHETS | 102 |
| VII. | PERSONIFICATION AND ABSTRACTION | 132 |
| VIII. | THE DICTION OF POETRY | 181 |
| Index | 207 |
The studies on which this book is based werebegun during my tenure of the “WilliamNoble” Fellowship in English Literature at theUniversity of Liverpool, and I wish to thank themembers of the Fellowship Committee, and especiallyProfessor Elton, under whom I had for two years thegreat privilege of working, for much valuable adviceand criticism. I must also express my sincere obligationto the University for a generous grant towardsthe cost of publication.
From the time of the publication of the firstPreface to the “Lyrical Ballads” (1798) thepoetical language of the eighteenth century, orrather of the so-called “classical” writers of theperiod, has been more or less under a cloud of suspicion.The condemnation which Wordsworth thenpassed upon it, and even the more rational andpenetrating criticism which Coleridge later brought tohis own analysis of the whole question of the languagefit and proper for poetry, undoubtedly led in thecourse of the nineteenth century to a definite butuncritical tendency to disparage and underrate theentire poetic output of the period, not only of thePopian suprema