Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 2.djvu/406

398 Poet's character, and in flattering the Reader's self-love by bringing him nearer to a sympathy with that character; an effect which is accomplished by unsettling ordinary habits of thinking, and thus assisting the Reader to approach to that perturbed and dizzy state of mind in which if he does not find himself, he imagines that he is balked of a peculiar enjoyment which poetry can, and ought to bestow.

The sonnet which I have quoted from Gray, in the Preface, except the lines printed in Italics, consists of little else but this diction, though not of the worst kind; and indeed, if I may be permitted to say so, it is far too common in the best writers, both ancient and modern. Perhaps I can in no way, by positive example, more easily give my Reader a notion of what I mean by the phrase poetic diction than by referring him to a comparison between the metrical paraphrase which we have of passages in the Old and New Testament, and those passages as they exist in our common Translation. See Pope's "Messiah" throughout, Prior's "Did sweeter sounds adorn my flowing tongue," &c. &c. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels," &c. &c. See 1st Corinthians, chapter xiiith. By way of immediate example, take the following of Dr. Johnson:

"Turn on the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes,

Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise;

No stern command, no monitory voice,

Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice;

Yet, timely provident, she hastes away

To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day;

When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain,

She crops the harvest and she stores the grain.

How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours,

Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers?