lo Prosscr Hall Fryc 



Naturally the use or abuse of such devices is confined to no 

 one particular literary age or group. This is the way in which 

 Shakespeare himself spells poison. 



'"The leperous distilment, whose effect 

 Holds such an enmity with blood of man 

 That swift as quicksilver it courses through 

 The natural gates and alleys of the body, 

 And with a sudden vigour it doth posset 

 And curd, like eager droppings into milk, 

 The thin and wholesome blood.'" 



And even today, when we are still sufifocating with righteous 

 indignation against Pope, there is supposed to be some particular 

 virtue resident in words like "fulfill" — 



"fulfilled of precious spice," 

 and phrasing like 



"His eyes were strange arid glad and perilous." 



Such vices are usually indicative of second-hand inspiration and 

 literary decline. But even so, although they were no more an 

 essential part of the poetic program of the eighteenth century 

 than they are of ours, yet there has probably never been another 

 school so liable to such errors by the very nature of its poetical 

 postulates and theory. 



And the same general remark is true also with regard to its 

 character for imitation. The danger of imitation is one that be- 

 sets every literary movement. After the peculiar conception of 

 art which inspires a particular movement has been thoroughly 

 worked out and brought to all possible perfection, there is noth- 

 ing left save to repeat the fornmla indefinitely or else to find a 

 new idea and strike out a new line of development. That is the 

 eternal difficulty of art — its impermanence. After an innovator 

 like Dryden there is still mtich to be done in carrying out the 

 ideas which he has succeeded in realizing— perhaps recognizing — 

 only partially. .After Pope, however, there is nothing for it ex- 

 cept imitation or a new school. Rut this imitation, which is in- 



' Shakespeare. II ainlct I, v. 



lO 



