tional. It is governed by emotion in this passage, for instance, from Shelley's Ode to the West Wind:

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

But the rhythm may also be intellectual, as in the wellknown lines from Goldsmith's Deserted Village:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

Intellectual energy may expend itself in the pulsation of a rhythmical line, as well as emotional energy; and the one movement is as genuine art as the other. Intelligent readers of Dryden appreciate how perfectly his art expresses the vigor of his mind. But we need not limit ourselves to the eighteenth century in illustrating intellectual rhythm; Browning, for instance, frequently reasons, or even argues, in poetry: as in Old Pictures in Florence and Rabbi Ben Ezra.

What has been said of rhythm or "numbers" applies also to the couplet. Cowper, who should have known better, in as much as he owed some of the effects of his own art to Pope, called Pope's art mechanical. But if Pope and the other writers of the couplet really aimed at "significant numbers," then either their art was not mechanical or else they failed completely to achieve their definite and conscious purpose. The riming couplet was of course the unit of Pope's art, but we must not be betrayed by the apparent uniformity of it. Its inner structure was complex enough to

permit of exquisite variations, and Pope, especially, was virtuoso enough to understand them. However, these variations are minute and delicate, and lost on any but the experienced and attuned ear. "It is like looking at the world through a microscope," says Hazlitt, speaking of Pope's poetry in general, "where everything assumes a new character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference." To say that all cameos look alike is to advertise that one has not looked closely at them. And it is of primary importance to appreciate that the couplet was not the same instrument in the hands of Dryden, Pope, Young, Johnson, Goldsmith and Cowper, just as everyone distinguishes the individual styles of the great eighteenth century writers of prose.

Moreover, the couplet is often handled with such freedom as a part of a larger rhythmical paragraph, that the reader does not really feel each couplet as an independent unit. Recall the supreme passages in Pope, such as the descriptive and narrative paragraphs in The Rape of the Lock,-or the character of Atticus, with its cumulative force of ironical laughter, breaking into tears in the last line, or the slow, dirge-like cadence of the conclusion of the Dunciad,-is not the movement in each case something larger, which envelopes the couplet and sweeps it along, rather than a mere succession of couplets? The delicate graces of the individual couplets should not interfere with our appreciation of the larger design. The quotableness of individual lines is justly put down to the credit of the artistic genius of the Classical period. But one can get only a very inadequate understanding of this artistic genius from a dictionary of familiar quotations. The

eighteenth century was interested in the whole work of art, not in fragments.

It is interesting, in view of the concern of criticism since Wordsworth's time with the false poetic diction of the Classicists, to note how small a value they assigned to the beauties of diction. "Expression, and all that belongs to words," says Dryden, "is that in a poem which coloring is in a picture." Now it is well known what little importance the Classical painters conceded to coloring. We are told by Félibien (1658– 1733), that Poussin (1594-1665) in his early career studied the coloring of Titian. "But in proportion as he perfected his art," says Félibien, “he was always more and more concerned with form and correctness of design, which he well understood constituted the principal part of painting." Le Brun (1619-1690) in a lecture before the French Royal Academy, developed the proposition that "design imitates all real things, whereas color only imitates that which is accidental." One might collect a volume of quotations to prove this scorn of coloring as giving a pleasure of a lower order than beauty of design. But we are concerned with. poetic diction. It was Mrs. Lamode in Gildon's Complete Art of Poetry (1718) who wanted "wit and poetry of a fashionable turn, fine things and fine language." She received the following reply:

As for your Ladyship's fine Things, and fine Language, to prefer these to more charming, and more essential excellencies, wou'd be as ridiculous, as to prefer your Ladyship's Dress to your Person: A Complement, I dare believe, that you wou'd not think so gallant, as the Mode and Fashion require. It is indeed, in some Poems, and some sort of Poetry the most valuable part; but then that sort is of the most inferior rank, and full of the most base Allay; as perhaps the Men may really think some Women of less value than their Cloaths.

Gildon also pays his respects to the Criticaster, the "meer Piece-Broker of Parnassus," who he says "reaches no farther than Words and Sentences; dealing in the very Scraps of Poetry; a Couplet, an Expression is the utmost he pretends to. But for a Design, or complete Poem, to meddle with it, he accounts Pedantry, or Imposition."

In this emphasis on design the Classicists looked to the ancients for their authority. "Invention," says John Hughes, "was among the Antients universally look'd upon to be the principal part of poetry." And he quotes Plutarch as follows: "Neither the Numbers, nor the ranging of the Words, nor the Elevation and Elegance of the Stile, have so many graces as the artful contrivance and Disposition of the Fable." Likewise Pope recalls that Aristotle called the "Fable" the "Soul of Poetry." "Invention," says Pope, "is the very foundation of Poetry. It is the Invention that in different degrees distinguishes all great Genius's." It is illuminating to see in what order Pope discusses the aspects of Homer's genius: first the fable, then the characters, the speeches, the sentiments, the descriptions, images and similes, where he continues: "If we descend from hence to the Expression, we see the bright Imagination of Homer shining out in the most enliven'd Forms of it. We acknowledge him the the Father of Poetical Diction, the first who taught that Language of the Gods to men. His expression is like the coloring of some great Masters, which discovers itself to be laid on boldly, and executed with Rapidity." To Pope, poetical diction, though it be the language of the gods, was not so divine as the more essential beauty of design, the beauty of the whole work of art.

From the point of view of æsthetics it is of course a serious fault of the Classical age that it failed to see that coloring and diction should be an essential and organic part of the design or composition. Had they rated poetic diction higher, they might have erred less in their practical handling of it. But in spite of this just criticism, the wise reader of eighteenth century poetry will tactfully adjust himself and read in the spirit in which the poetry was written. He will remember that the Classical age is no more truly represented by its poetic diction than by literary fragments and incompleted masterpieces.

The eighteenth century poets and readers loved the beauty of design, the beauty of the artistic whole, more than the beauty of fragments and diction, because they believed that beauty of design called into play the highest faculties of the mind. Such qualities as proportion, harmony, graceful disposition of parts to form a satisfying unity,-these appealed not to the sensual ear, but to the intelligence that loves divine order, truth, harmony-the intelligence that is disciplined to the desire for an organized world. To the Classicists this ideal of art seemed so clear and self-evident that they never seriously subjected it to critical examination. They constantly stated it as axiomatic. Hence the rules. If the end of art is so clearly determinable, it must be possible, they reasoned, to formulate principles to guide the artist in the attainment of that end. It was not that genius could be dispensed with; the artist must first have the divine urge. But genius must be educated and regulated. In the formulation of the rules the Classicists of course went to extremes, as have also, for example, some modern enthusiastic formulators of dramatic technique since Ibsen. How