Revolutions in the Queen's English. 47 says, "The Greeks, and other more ancient | A poet is at perfect liberty to employ denations, by fabulous inventions, and by scriptive words of this kind if they have breaking into parts the story of the crea- passed into general use, and so far lost their tion, and by delivering it over in a mystical purely technical character as to be at once sense, wrapping it up mixed with their own understood by all intelligent readers. The trumperie, have sought to obscure the truth words and phrases condemned by Addison thereof." Now, considering the light in which Milton regarded the tawdry Romish With regard to the architectural terms, as unfit for poetry belong to this class. ceremonial, and the solemn masquerade of architrave is perhaps the only one retaining its monkish orders, no single word probably anything of a specially technical character. could have been applied to them at once so But Pope does not consider even this term compendious, descriptive, and appropriate of art too technical for poetical use, as the as the word trumpery. At the close of the following lines show :— passage from which the extract is taken, the full significance of the allusion is expanded in harmony with the central meaning of the word as follows: "And now St. Peter at Heaven's wicket seems To wait them with his keys, and now at foot Of Heaven's ascent they lift their feet, when lo! A violent cross-wind from either coast Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues away, Into the devious air. Then might ye see And fluttered into rags; then reliques, beads, -Bk. iii. 481-97. In a further criticism of the same passage, Addison again unconsciously reveals his ignorance of the great writers of the previous age. He suggests that Milton fabricated the word eremite out of hermit for the convenience of his verse. But the form "eremite," so far from being peculiar to Milton, is in common use amongst the Elizabethan writers. In the same criticism he tells us that there are in Milton's great poem several words of his own coining, and gives embryon and miscreated as illustrations. Both words are however to be found in the Elizabethan poets, the latter being used by Shakespeare himself, as well as by Spenser in his "Faëry Queene," "Westward a sumptuous frontispiece appear'd, On Doric pillars of white marble rear'd, Crown'd with an architrave of antique mould And sculpture rising on the roughen'd gold." Frieze again occurs in one of Shakespeare's celebrated by Sir Joshua Reynolds as a best-known and most beautiful passages, fine example of what in painting is called and Banquo as they approach Macbeth's repose the short dialogue between Duncan The limitation of Addison's urban dialect is further seen in his urging as a fault in Milton's style the use of such technical terms as Doric pillars, cornice, frieze, and architrave, in the description of buildings, and such phrases as dropping from the zenith, and culminating from the equator, in describing the appearance of shooting stars and the sun's noonday rays. to such words and phrases, Addison clearly In objecting has no perception of the true law with regard to the literary use of technical terms. castle : This breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, With regard to the astronomical terms same reply is to be made. All of them, and phrases objected to by Addison the and many others of a like nature, are in common use amongst the poets, and especially amongst the more distinguished of Addison's own day, Dryden being specially fond of astronomical allusions. not only to words and phrases tinged with Addison applies the same restrictive rule an archaic or technical hue, but to words and phrases of comparatively recent intrcduction, but which from their convenience had already come into general use. In a lively Spectator paper he complains of a jargon of French phrases describing military operations, and introduced by the late newspaper and gazette, as well as in conwar, which are now to be found in every versation and private letters; and he gives as specimens of them,-reconnoiter, pontoon, defile, marauding, corps, gasconade, carte blanche, fosse, and commandant. He virtually admits, however, that the protest against these and other neologisms was too late in emphasizing the fact of their uniemployed as good English terms by more versal use. Many of them were indeed than one of his own literary contemporaries. Не Pope had the keenest natural instinct for language, and, as a natural result of his active poetical labours, his range of expression is wider than Addison's. He is more tolerant both of the older and newer elements of expressive diction; and with all their exquisite finish, there are words and phrases to be found in his poems which Addison would probably never have used. But a poet cannot wholly dissociate himself from the dominant influences around him; and Pope still reflects the relative limitation that marks the literary and poetical vocabulary of his day. In a criticism of Phillip's Pastorals, for example, he censures the words sheen, whilom, welkin, younglings, nurslings, witless, as antiquated English; and elsewhere he condemns as archaic, emprise, nathless, dulcet, paynim, and umbrageous, with other words and phrases still belonging to the poetical vocabulary of the language. On the other hand, in the preface to his translation of Homer, he rejects amongst other terms the word campaign as too modern to be used in an epic poem. Johnson's vocabulary and style constitute an indirect criticism of the language quite as one-sided as Addison's, though in a very different direction. In his horror of colloquial barbarisms and anxiety to avoid a too familiar style of writing, he adopted the over-Latinized swelling and sonorous diction that is identified with his name. In the words of Dryden criticising the style of his namesake, Ben Jonson, "he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them, wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours." But, unlike Addison, he could relish styles wholly different from his own, and appreciate forms of literary and poetical excellence opposed to the current taste of his day, and in many cases openly condemned by its more artificial canons of literary judgment. His defence of Shakespeare's dramatic art against the charge of being rude, irregular, and incongruous, urged by classical purists and pedants on both sides of the Channel, shows a much wider range of critical insight than was common at the time. But in dealing critically with language he does not always show an equal freedom from contemporary prejudice, and some of his incidental criticisms of Shakespeare's diction strongly illustrate the exclusive notions that prevailed. To enforce the criticism that poetry is degraded, and the reader's mind alienated and disquieted by low and mean expressions, he takes the following example: "When Macbeth is confirming himself in the horrid purpose of stabbing his king, he breaks out amidst his emotions into a wish natural to a murderer'Come thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, Hold, hold!' In this passage is exerted all the force of poe- That Johnson should have been capable "But now the mingled fight urally employed to describe the dense roll- | the more cultivated readers, not only of ing columns of artificial cloud produced by Johnson's time, but of the whole period to the sulphurous smoke of hidden fires, and which he belonged. Even Dryden, for exof its application in this sense, the same as ample, seems to have a fellow-feeling with Shakespeare's, we have many good exam- Johnson in his objection to the poetical use ples in modern poetry. Thus in Bowles' of the word knife, for in remodelling ShakeBattle of the Nilespeare's Troilus and Cressida, he substitutes the word sword for it, and the change must be assumed to rank amongst the improvements which he claims to have effected in Shakespeare's language. In the preface to his revision, Dryden says, "I undertook to remove the heaps of rubbish with which many excellent thoughts lay wholly buried;" adding, "I need not say that I have refined his language, which before was obsolete." The passages in question are worth quoting as a specimen of the manner in which Dryden did his work, and as throwing light on Begins its awful strife again And many a tow'ring mast with dreadful crash Slow o'er the shadowy wave the grey dawn breaks." And in the better known poem of Hohen- the taste and feeling of the time, as reprelinden "'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun Can pierce the war-clouds rolling dun, A similar reply may be made to a further VOL. L. N-4 sented by its foremost poet and critic. Shakespeare, Troilus says: In In Shakespeare the two last lines are a grand personification of intense elemental feeling, expressed in the simplest, most direct, and poignant words. According to the commonplace poetical machinery, Cupid is said to pierce the susceptible bosom with his arrows, but this cold and distant fancy pales before the white heat of Troilus' passion, and love, transformed to a mortal foe, armed with the murderer's weapon, rushes on his defenceless victim, and with reiterated stabs gashes the suffering heart. But in Dryden's version, the whole force of the conception, as well as the fire of the words, is lost, by the mere introduction of the pronoun, and, the passion gone, the further changes simply reduce the concentrated utterance of intense emotion to a conventional sentiment clothed in incongruous phrase. This illustrates the process of improving Shakespeare's diction by excluding common words "connected with sordid offices," which found favour not only with the dramatists of the Restoration, who could hardly be expected to appreciate the language of real passion, but to a certain extent with Johnson bimself. At least, as we have seen, Johnson unites with critics of the same age and school in condemning the use of such terms. The great critic was indeed haunted with the notion, common to many of his immediate predecessors, of refining and fixing the language so as finally to exclude all rustic and vulgar elements from the authorized vocabulary of the lettered and polite. Dryden, as we have seen, had a vague idea of establishing an academy for this purpose, and Swift formally addressed a letter to the Earl of Oxford, suggesting that, as a member of the Government, he should take the initiative in devising some means for "ascertaining and fixing the language for ever, after such alterations are made in it as shall be thought requisite." This notion of circumscribing the language within some artificial boundary was indeed the dominant conception on the subject of the whole period, from the days of Dryden, who reigned at its commencement, to those of Johnson, who saw its close, and whose Dictionary, the partial realization of his original plan, was published about the eighteenth century. Early in the second half of the eighteenth century the tide of conventional restriction began almost imperceptibly to turn. In the works of Collins, Goldsmith, and Thomson, the despotic influences of the town and the Court are somewhat relaxed, and there is, at least, a partial return to the simplicity of nature to the varied charm of rural sights and sounds, and the moving realities of a more homely human experience. The works of Percy, Crabbe, Cowper, and Burns fed the rising tide until the fountains of the great deep were once more broken up by the French Revolution following the American War. The criticism of the eighteenth century, cold and negative as it sometimes appeared, had at length done its work, and a work of unexpected magnitude it proved to be. It struck a mortal blow at theories of feudal privileges and divine right, which had become prolific sources of evil; and gradually undermined the despotic institutions that were fatal barriers to human progress, until at last they fell with a crash, and there swept over them the wild tumultuous tide of emancipated humanity. These great events stirred the intellect and heart, not only of England but of Europe. But one of the most striking effects on our literature of this moral upheaval is the exuberance of origi nal poetic genius that marked the opening decades of the present century. The names of Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Campbell, Shelley, Keats, not to mention others of equal rank though of more recent fame, represent an age of original imaginative power and productiveness second only to the Elizabethan. The literary influence of the profound reaction produced by the critical movement of the eighteenth century has however been often traced, and in its general outline is tolerably well known to the majority of intelligent readers. But, as in the case of the Elizabethan period, the influence on the national speech of this great original movement of the national mind, has never yet been carefully analysed, and only noticed at all in a very partial and imperfect manner. As might, however, have been expected from the circumstances of the case, the movement had a direct and powerful influence on the vocabulary of the lan guage. The change is, moreover, well worth detailed notice, both for its own sake, and for the sake of the deeper tendencies and characteristics of the modern period of which it is a striking sign and index. Though, like all natural developments, gradual and for the most part unperceived, it neverthe less represents a revolution in the resources of literary and current English, greater than any that had taken place since the formation of the language, with the exception of the Elizabethan era. As the causes affecting the national mind in the two periods were to some extent similar, so there is a likeness in the effects. In both, the national intellect was roused by the commanding impulse of great public events, the national heart stirred to its depths by fresh interests and more generous sympathies, and the national imagination quickered by the exciting stimulus of new and glorious hopes. But in the modern period the national movement had a wider sweep, and was naturally of a more self-conscious and reflective character. Towards the close of the sixteenth century the dominant feeling was a national one, the strong desire to secure and maintain com plete independence,-scope for the free manifestation of the nation's energies, and the full development of its civil and ecclesiasti cal life. But at the end of the eighteenth century, wider thoughts and sympathies, quickened by the stirring of new life in other lands than our own, modified the isolated conception of nationality that had hitherto ruled the English mind with undisputed | tion between nations, to express the fact that sway. Under the liberalizing stimulus of different peoples, so far from being, accordlarger vital interests, the limited notion of ing to the traditional view, rivals and antag nationality, of national welfare as an exclu- onists, are one in the higher conditions of sive end, broadened, deepened, and expanded welfare and progress, have common duties into that of humanity at large. The more and responsibilities, and, as members of the open, sensitive, and eager minds of the time, same family, ought to unite in efforts for the as well as the more far-seeing and reflective, promotion of the common good; or, to vary were stirred with a truer and more enlarged the metaphor, as soldiers fighting under the notion of liberty and justice as the indis- same banner share together the hardships pensable conditions of real progress every- and perils to be encountered in securing the where. They were kindled to righteous in- triumph of the common cause. dignation against bondage of every kind, social and political, intellectual and spiritual, and keenly sympathized with the rising struggles of long oppressed European peoples to throw off the yoke of hereditary despotic rule, and secure for themselves the national liberty and independence essential to the development of higher individual character and progressive national life. This new conception of nations being bound together by common interests and relationships, soon enriched our own language with a new word for its expression. Coleridge justly says that any new word expressing a fact or relationship, not expressed by any other word in the language, is a new organ of thought; and this is true of the term international, a coinage of our own century, which aptly expresses one of its most characteristic and operative conceptions. We are now so familiar with the term, and the idea it expresses, that it is difficult to realize fully the extreme recentness of both. Hardly any conception is however at once more thoroughly novel, and more expressive of the modern spirit, than that represented by the term international. For though the word, it is true, does not necessarily denote friendly interests and relationships, it was originally introduced to express them, and since its introduction has been largely used for the same purpose. It was not, indeed, until the perception of common interests and connexions between nations had risen into importance, and occupied the attention of public writers and speakers, that the want of a term to express them was generally felt or adequately supplied. A more advanced phase of the same conception is expressed by another word, wholly new, and less suited, perhaps, to the genius of the language, but which, nevertheless, has already passed into reputable use, and will, probably, on account of its convenience, be ultimately adopted. This is the word solidarity, as in the phrase "solidarity of the peoples," first popularized by Kossuth during his visit to this country after the revolutionary movement of 1848. It is employed to denote essential community of interest and obliga This expansion of social and political interests had a powerful intellectual effect, and helped directly to widen the horizon in every department of inquiry, in history and philosophy, science and literature. In pure literature the effect was perhaps most immediately seen in the opening up of fresh and living sources of interest in every department of imaginative activity. The poets, in particular, looked at nature and human life no longer through the medium of books and traditional representations, or artificial lights and conventional draperies, but face to face; and in the growing light and kindling rapture of that open vision, the whole universe of life, including its most familiar objects and experiences, was completely transfigured. The obscuring veil of custom was rent, the indurating scales of indifference fell away, and this goodly frame, the earth, o'ercanopied with this majestical roof, "fretted with golden fire," and peopled by this quintessence of breathing dust, so noble in reason and infinite in faculty, appeared once more, as it ever does to the purified and observant eye, in all the dewy freshness and beauty of a new creation. The multitude of new thoughts and feelings and experiences arising from this quickened creative activity of the intellect, imagination, and affections, demanded to some extent, at least, a new vehicle for their full and appropriate expression. The limited vocabulary of the satirical and didactic poetry of the eighteenth century was, in fact, almost ludicrously inadequate to the larger wants and requirements of the lyrical, descriptive, and dramatic poets of the nineteenth. Some of its more conventional elements were moreover unsuitable from their artificial character. Hence Wordsworth's vigorous protest against "what is usually called poetical diction," the adulterated phraseology arising from a lavish but wholly mechanical use of figures of speech and sterotyped metaphorical phrases, as simply a hindrance and a snare to the true poet of nature. Throwing aside this useless lumber, the representatives of the new and natural school of poetry sought in all directions, wherever they could |