Drydcn and the Critical Canons of the EightecnfJi Century g 



vention in literature, are capable in the hands of Racine of the 

 happiest results. But when a convention is nothing more than a 

 symbol, standing for a feeling which it is incapable of express- 

 ing, then the writer is no longer a poet but an algebraist. In 

 this way arises the poetic formula, the cant or stock phrase or 

 term, the cliche, the circumlocution, which are accepted as poetic 

 regardless what significance they actually possess or whether 

 they possess any significance at all. Such in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury was the use of words like "Philomela," "nymph," "urn," the 

 personification of abstractions like "V^irtue," the retention of an- 

 tiquated mythological machinery, the arbitrar}- distinction be- 

 tween the vocabulary of poetry and prose, the deviousness and 

 indirection of paraphrases like the following : 



"With slaughtering guns the unwearied fowler roves 

 When frosts have whitened all the naked groves ; 

 Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o'ershade, 

 And lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade. 

 He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye: 

 Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky: 

 Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, 

 The clamorous lapwings feel the leaden death. "^ 



Even the heroic couplet itself becomes a convention when ap- 

 plied, as it was, to all manner of themes indififerently. By such 

 means as these it is cjuite possible to write something which will 

 pass for poetry by virtue of rhyme and metre without producing 

 a single genuine poetic effect. And into this sort of thing, it 

 must be confessed that a good deal of the verse of the time 

 resolves. 



"A little learning is a dangerous thing! 

 Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."" 



To say nothing of the chcville, "Pierian spring" is pure conven- 

 tion ; the remainder of these admired lines are plain prose. The 

 illusion of poetry is produced by the nervous agitation of rhyme 

 and measure. 



^ Pope, jy incisor Forest. 

 "Pope. An Essay on Criticism. 



