little, men select and agree to use some single term for the object, and, when the term is uttered, it calls to mind this object and no other. In this way, words in every language are constantly becoming more exact in meaning, and not only so, but they are constantly accumulating. Different shades of meaning are perpetually assuming definite shape in forms of thought; as, indeed, is needed where the thought of each succeeding age is constantly becoming more complex as well as comprehensive. Of course, as words become exact in meaning, they have less in them suggestive of a different meaning. So, as a language grows conventional and scientific, it loses much of its imaginative and poetic force. When men have arbitrary symbols to express precisely what they wish to say, their fancies do not search for others to suggest what, at best, can but vaguely picture it. We hear them speak of engines and of locomotives, not of "horses breathing fire."

The question now arises: Amid circumstances like these must poetry succumb? If not, in what way can the poet overcome them? Certainly in one way only—by recognizing his conditions, and making the most of the material at his disposal. He must use a special poetic diction. In doing this two things are incumbent on him. The first is to choose from the mass of language words that have poetic associations. All our words convey definite meanings not only, but accompanying suggestions; and some of these are very unpoetic. Particular sights or sounds in the material world, or concepts in the mind, are instantly represented to the imagination, as well as presented to the understanding, when these words are heard. For this reason, therefore, though they do not in themselves embody comparisons, they are sufficiently representative, for a part, at least, of the purposes of poetry.

It is words like these, though not suggested in a like connection, that Grant Allen mentions in his "Physiological Esthetics," when, carrying out his theory that "the purpose of poetry" is "the production of massive pleasurable emotion," because it "depends for its effect upon the unbroken succession of beautiful ideas and images," he says that terms like violet, palfrey, and ruby, because suggesting what is more pleasing, are more poetic than terms like cabbage, donkey, and chalk; and terms, in the sphere of light, like scarlet, crimson, pink, orange, golden, green, blue, azure, purple, and violet, are more poetic than gray, brown, dun, black, bay, and drab. So brilliant, sparkling, sheeny, polished, lustrous, luminous, twinkling, glancing, silvery, pearly, are more poetic, he says, than dull, dingy, rough, turbid; and rounded, curling, graceful, lithe, flowing, are more poetic than straight, stiff, awk ward, and upright; and, in the sphere of sound, terms like clear, ringing, silvery, musical, sweet, melodious, mellow, rich, low, are more poetic than shrill, hoarse, grating, harsh, loud, and croaking; and, in the sphere of touch, terms like soft, waxen, fleecy, smooth, delicate, slender, are more poetic than hard, rough, harsh, tough, and coarse; and, in the sphere of smell, terms like fragrant, sweet, perfumed, scented, odorous, are more poetic than stench and stinking; and, in the sphere of taste, terms like luscious, melting, honeyed, sugared, are more poetic than bitter, sour, biting, acid, acrid; and, in the sphere of organic sensations, terms like cool, fresh, buoyant, warm, easy, pure, are more poetic than hot, close, weary, cold, and chilly.

Most of the words thus instanced,-only a small proportion of those in Mr. Allen's lists, depend but little for their poetic or unpoetic effects, on any comparison suggested by their origin or expressed in the passage in

which they are placed. They depend for these mainly upon the ideas that they conventionally represent-ideas invariably associated with them, whenever they are heard. This fact is enough to show us that the distinction between poetry and prose lies deeper than can be determined solely by the etymological character of the phraseology.

But there is a second thing incumbent on the poet in view of the present unpoetic tendencies of language. (He must choose from the mass of language words that embody poetic comparisons,―choose them not only negatively, by excluding terms too scientific or colloquial, which, with material and mean associations, break the spell of the ideal and spiritual; but positively, by going back in imagination to the view-point of the child, and (either because arranging old words so as to reveal the pictures in them, or because originating new expressions of his own) by substituting for the commonplace that which is worthy of an art which should be æsthetic. Wordsworth did not exclude the unpoetic, disenchanting comparison, when in his otherwise beautiful, She was a Phantom of Delight, he wrote of his love:

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine.

And Shelley did go back to the view-point of the child, when he wrote:

And multitudes of dense, white, fleecy clouds

Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind.

-Prometheus Unbound, ii., I.

Only a moment's thought will reveal to us that the principles just unfolded are closely related-in connection,

however, with one or two other considerations-to that preference which almost all English poets exhibit for words of native or Anglo-Saxon origin, as distinguished from those derived from foreign sources, especially from the Latin through the French. "Remuneration ?" says Shakespear's clown Costard'; "O that 's the Latin word for three farthings." "Are you aware," says the author' of the "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton" to his heroine, "that, at a lecture Coleridge gave in the Royal Institution in 1808, he solemnly thanked his Maker that he did not know a word of that frightful jargon, the French language?" From the few contrasted expressions considered a little while ago, we can understand what Coleridge with his fine poetic conceptions probably felt. Concealed, threw a veil over,-depravity, grossness,—integrity, uprightness,—impaired, bends,—severe, pressing,—and others might be added to the list, intelligence, understanding,—defer, put off,-divest, strip off,-retire, go to bed. No one can fail to see how much more capacity for producing representative effects there is in the latter words of these pairs than in the former. This is so for several reasons. Το begin with, as Herbert Spencer suggests in his "Essay on Style," the words of Anglo-Saxon origin include most of those used in our youth, in connection with which, therefore, through long familiarity with them, we have the most definite possible associations; whenever we hear them, therefore, they seem preëminently representative.

Then, too, we hear in the Anglo-Saxon derivatives, to a greater extent than in the foreign, the sounds which, when originally uttered, were meant to be significant of their sense. In fact, almost all the words instanced in another place as having sounds of this kind were Anglo'Love's Labor Lost, iii., I. 'William Black.

Saxon. On the contrary, almost all our words derived from the Latin through the French have suffered a radical change in sound, both in the French language and in our own. Therefore their sounds, if ever significant of their meanings, can scarcely be expected to be so now.

Again, we know, as a rule, the history of our AngloSaxon terms, inasmuch as we still use them in their different meanings and applications, as developed by association and comparison. But foreign words are usually imported into our language in order to designate some single definite conception, and often one very different from that which they designated originally. All of us, for instance, can see the different meanings of a word like way or fair and the connections between them; but to most of us words like dunce and pagans, from the Latin Duns and pagani, have only the effects of arbitrary symbols.

One other reason applies to compound words. If the different terms put together in these exist and are in present use in our own language, as is the case with most of our native compounds, then each part of the compound conveys a distinct idea of its separate meaning; so that we clearly perceive in the word its different factors. For instance, the terms uprightness, overlook, underwriter, understanding, pastime, all summon before the mind both of the ideas which together make up the word. We recognize, at once, whatever comparison or picture it represents. In compound words of entirely foreign origin, on the contrary, it is almost invariably the case that, at least, one of the factors does not exist at present in our own tongue. Integrity meant a picture to the Roman. But none of us use the word from which its chief factor is derived. So we fail to see the picture. Nor do we use either factor of the words depravity, defer, retire.