f his Verses into one another.

L.

[Footnote 1: Aristotle, Poetics, ii. Sec.26.

The excellence of Diction consists in being perspicuous without being
mean.]

[Footnote 2:

Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura.

De Ar. Poet., II. 351-3.]

[Footnote 3: [see an Instance or two]]

[Footnote 4: Poetics, ii. Sec. 26]

[Footnote 5: [,like those in Milton]]

[Footnote 6:

That language is elevated and remote from the vulgar idiom which
employs unusual words: by unusual, I mean foreign, metaphorical,
extended--all, in short, that are not common words. Yet, should a poet
compose his Diction entirely of such words, the result would be either
an enigma or a barbarous jargon: an enigma if composed of metaphors, a
barbarous jargon if composed of foreign words. For the essence of an
enigma consists in putting together things apparently inconsistent and
impossible, and at the same time saying nothing but what is true. Now
this cannot be effected by the mere arrangement of words; by the
metaphorical use of them it may.]

[Footnote 7: On Life and Poetry of Homer, wrongly ascribed to Plutarch,
Bk. I. Sec. 16.]

[Footnote 8: Poetics, II. Sec. 26.

A judicious intermixture is requisite ... It is without reason,
therefore, that some critics have censured these modes of speech, and
ridiculed the poet for the use of them; as old Euclid did, objecting
that versification would be an easy business, if it were permitted to
lengthen words at pleasure, and then giving a burlesque example of
that sort of diction... In the employment of all the species of
unusual words, moderation is necessary: for metaphors, foreign words,
or any of the others improperly used, and with a design to be
ridiculous, would produce the same effect. But how great a difference
is made by a proper and temperate use of such words may be seen in
heroic verse. Let any one put common words in the place of the
metaphorical, the foreign, and others of the same kind, and he will be
convinced of the truth of what I say.

He then gives two or three examples of the effect of changing poetical
for common words. As, that (in plays now lost):

the same Iambic verse occurs in AEschylus and Euripides; but by means
of a single alteration--the substitution of a foreign for a common and
usual word--one of t