language, because it was the language of
extraordinary occasions; but it was really spoken by men, language which
the Poet himself had uttered when he had been affected by the events
which he described, or which he had heard uttered by those around him.
To this language it is probable that metre of some sort or other was
early superadded. This separated the genuine language of Poetry still
further from common life, so that whoever read or heard the poems of
these earliest Poets felt himself moved in a way in which he had not
been accustomed to be moved in real life, and by causes manifestly
different from those which acted upon him in real life. This was the
great temptation to all the corruptions which have followed: under the
protection of this feeling succeeding Poets constructed a phraseology
which had one thing, it is true, in common with the genuine language of
poetry, namely, that it was not heard in ordinary conversation; that it
was unusual. But the first Poets, as I have said, spake a language
which, though unusual, was still the language of men. This circumstance,
however, was disregarded by their successors; they found that they could
please by easier means: they became proud of modes of expression which
they themselves had invented, and which were uttered only by themselves.
In process of time metre became a symbol or promise of this unusual
language, and whoever took upon him to write in metre, according as he
possessed more or less of true poetic genius, introduced less or more of
this adulterated phraseology into his compositions, and the true and the
false were inseparably interwoven until, the taste of men becoming
gradually perverted, this language was received as a natural language:
and at length by the influence of books upon men, did to a certain
degree really become so. Abuses of this kind were imported from one
nation to another, and with the progress of refinement this diction
became daily more and more corrupt, thrusting out of sight the plain
humanities of Nature by a motley masquerade of tricks, quaintnesses,
hieroglyphics, and enigmas.

It would not be uninteresting to point out the causes of the pleasure
given by this extravagant and absurd diction. It depends upon a great
variety of causes, but upon none, perhaps, more than its influence in
impressing a notion of the peculiarity and exaltation of the Poet's
character, and in flattering the Reader's self-love by bringing him
nearer to a sym