Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/200

 194 Whitford and ethical standards. Of "Perdita" Robinson, one of Merry's friends, he wrote, See Robinson forget her state, and move On crutches tow'rds the grave, to 'Light o' Love.' 101 At another place he described indecently the " lascivious odes" of grandams. 102 Most morally, he quoted with disgust a blas- phemous passage from a poem which Merry addressed to Mrs. Robinson. 103 Nevertheless Gifford's satirical criticism was aesthetic as well as ethical. Upon this second line his two chief objects of attack were the unnatural, overdecorated diction and the un- justified emotionality of his enemies' " splay-foot madrigals." Thus he characterized the poetry of Delia Crusca himself: Abortive thoughts that right and wrong confound, Truth sacrific'd to letters, sense to sound, False glare, incongruous images, combine: And noise, and nonsense, clatter through the line. 104 Later, in The Maeviad, he said the same thing in other words: He taught us first the language to refine, To crowd with beauties every sparkling line, Old phrases with new meanings to dispense, Amuse the fancy, and confound the sense. 105 Especially he deprecated the revival of old words, which he traced to its principal source, interest in the middle ages and particularly in English literature of the early Renaissance. He ascribed to the influence of this " Black Letter mania" the jargon of sentimental poetry, This motley fustian, neither verse nor prose, This old, new, language that defiles our page, The refuse and the scum of every age. 106 m Baviad, 10. To this couplet Peter Pindar replied by remarks upon Gifford's hunched back. 102 7^,49. 103 Ibid., 26-28. Ibid., 15-16. 106 Ibid., 86-87. 108 Ibid., 36.