w their humid train,

criticism is less at ease. We feel that we are drawing near to the
"poetic diction" of the eighteenth century. Eve's tears are called

precious drops that ready stood
Each in their crystal sluice,

but the description is saved by the lines that immediately precede, where
Milton says the word, and thereby shows that he is not seeking idle
periphrasis:--

But silently a gentle tear let fall
From either eye, and wiped them with her hair.

His constant preference for words of Latin origin certainly brings Milton
near at times to the poetic diction banned by Wordsworth. "Vernal bloom"
for "spring flowers," "humid bow" for "rainbow," the description of the
brooks rolling--

With mazy error under pendent shades,

the use of phrases like "nitrous powder" or "smutty grain" for
"gunpowder," and "optic glass" or "optic tube" for the telescope or
"perspective," are instances of the approximation. A certain number of
these circuitous phrases are justified by considerations of dramatic
propriety. When Raphael describes the artillery used in Heaven, he speaks
of cannon balls as "iron globes" and "balls of missive ruin," and calls
the linstock the "incentive reed pernicious," thereby perhaps drawing
attention to the strange character of the new invention. No such reason
can be invoked for his justification when he tells how the sun receives
from earth

his alimental recompense
In humid exhalations;

still less when, speaking of food, with which he confesses himself to be
familiar, he calls it "corporal nutriment."

But the chief sinner is Adam. If the evil passions of the rebel Angels
invented the pun, it was the pomposity of our father Adam that first
brought "poetic diction" into vogue. When the curse has fallen in Eden he
makes a long speech for the comfort of Eve, in the course of which he
alludes to "the graceful locks of these fair spreading trees," speaks of
the sun as "this diurnal star," and, studying protection against the
newly experienced cold, advises--

how we his gathered beams
Reflected may with matter sere foment,
Or by collision of two bodies grind
The air attrite to fire;

--for all the world as if he were a man of science lecturing to some
Philosophic Institute on the customs of savages.

If, then, the term "poetic diction" is to be used as Wordsworth used it,
Johnson's account of its origin must be amended. There was little