or no
poetic diction, of the kind condemned by Wordsworth, before the time of
Milton. In the Elizabethan age all diction was free to poetry, and was
freely used. Drawing on his accumulated stores of literary reminiscence,
and using them for his own special purpose, Milton invented "poetic
diction," and bore a main part in the founding of the English school of
poetry which is called "Classical." His diction is called "poetic,"
because it was absolutely fitted to his purpose, which could have been
conceived only by the loftiest poetic genius. His style was admired,
misunderstood, and imitated for a century. The diction of his imitators
is called "poetic," because, for the most part, they believed that dull
nonsense and trading platitudes could be made into poetry by a borrowed
system of diction.

Even the best poets of the age are not freer than the rest from the
baneful Miltonic infection. Coleridge found the source of "our
pseudo-poetic diction" in Pope's _Homer_. But Pope was from boyhood a
sedulous student of Milton, and a frequent borrower. The mock-heroics of
the _Dunciad_ are stilted on Miltonic phrases; and in the translation of
Homer, above all, reminiscences of Milton abound. In most of them
Milton's phraseology is weakened and misapplied. Two instances among many
may serve. When Vulcan, in the First Iliad, warns Juno against rousing
the anger of Jove, he adds:--

Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,
Hurled headlong downward from th' ethereal height.

The word "flaming" in Milton's splendid line did not suit Pope's
purpose--so it disappears, and with it half the glory of the original. In
place of it, to eke out the syllables, he inserts the idle, if not
foolish, substitute "downward." This is the art of sinking in poetry.
Again, Ulysses, narrating his adventures, in the Ninth Odyssey,
remarks:--

In vain Calypso long constrained my stay,
With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.

The whole line, so beautiful when it describes the modesty of Eve, in its
new context becomes stark nonsense. It is Ulysses who is "reluctant," and
Calypso who is "amorous." The misuse of Milton's line makes the situation
comic.

James Thomson (to take another example) with a genuine thin vein of
originality, too often conceals it under Miltonic lendings. The trail of
_Paradise Lost_ runs all through _The Seasons_. In such a description as
this of the Moon in Autumn there is a cluster of reminiscences:--