than estimate or value; it implies to "value justly." All words are good which come when they are wanted; all which come when they are not wanted, should be dismissed.

Tooke. Let us return from new words to the old spelling of Benjamin Jonson, which other learned men followed: deprest, speke, grete, fede, reson, reper, sheves, relefe, leve, grene, wether, erthe, breth, seke, seson, sege, meke, stepe, rome, appere, dere, throte, tothe, betwene, swete, deth, hele, chere, nere, frende, tretise, teche, conceve, tonge, bere, speche, stere. Altogether there are about forty words, out of which the unnecessary diphthong is ejected. He always omits the s in island and isle; he writes sovrane, subtil, childe, and werke. He would no more have written sceptre than quivre.

Johnson. Milton too avoided the diphthong: he wrote drede and redy. Mandeville wrote dede, and grane of incense.

Tooke. You tell us that the letter never ends a word according to English orthography; yet it did formerly both in words of Saxon origin and British, as Eric, Rod-eric, Caradoc, Madoc. Wenlock, the name of a town in Shropshire, formerly ended in c, and Hume always writes Warwic.

Johnson. Sir, do not quote infidels to me. sic and quic?

Would you write

Tooke. I would if we derived them from the Greek or Latin. Johnson. Without the authority of Ben Jonson, on whom you so relie?

Tooke. There is in Jonson strong sense, and wit too strong; it wants airiness, ease, and volatility. I do not admire his cast-iron ornaments, retaining but little (and that rugged and coarse-grained) of the ancient models, and nothing of the workmanship. But I admire his judgment in the spelling of many words, and I wish we could return to it. In others we are afraid of being as English as we might be and as we ought to be. Some appear to have been vulgarisms which are no longer such.

By vulgarism I mean what

is unfounded on ratiocination or necessity for instance, underneath.

Johnson. Our best writers have used it.

Tooke. They have; and wisely; for it has risen up before them in sacred places, and it brings with it serious recollections. It was inscribed on the peasant's gravestone, long before it shone amid heraldic emblems in the golden line of Jonson, ushering in

"Pembroke's sister, Sydney's mother."9

Beside, it is significant and euphonious. Either half conveys the full meaning of the whole. But it is silly to argue that we gain ground by shortening on all occasions the syllables of a sentence. Half a minute, if indeed so much is requisite, is well spent in clearness, in fulness, and pleasureableness of expression, and in engaging the ear to carry a message to the understanding. Whilst is another vulgarism which authors have adopted, the last letter being added improperly. While is "the time when"; whiles "the times when." 10

Johnson. I am inclined to pay little attention to such fastidiousness, nor does it matter a straw whether we use the double e instead of ete in sweet, and the other words you recited from good authors. But I now am reminded that near is nigher, by Sir Thomas More writing "never the nere." However, you are not to suppose that I undervalue the authority of Benjamin Jonson. find sometimes his poetry unsatisfactory and troublesome; but his prose is much better, and now and then almost harmonious; which his verses never are for half a dozen lines together. Tooke. I know little about poetry; but it appears to me that in his, where he has not the ague, he has the cramp. his thoughts are stolen. The prettiest of his poems,

"Drink to me only with thy eyes,"

Nearly all

is paraphrased from Scaliger's version of Aristænetus. He collected much spoil from his campaign in the Low Countries of

9 From Jonson's "Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke," beginning "Underneath this sable hearse," but Landor, or his editor, has accidentally misplaced "Pembroke's" and "Sydney's."

10 Another etymological error. It is an old genitive case.

Literature. However, his English for the most part is admirable, and was justly looked up to until Milton rose, overshadowing all England, all Italy, and all Greece. Since that great man's departure we have had nothing (in style I mean) at all remarkable. Locke and Defoe were the most purely English: and you yourself, who perhaps may not admire their simplicity, must absolve them from the charge of innovation. I perceive that you prefer the spelling of our gentlemen and ladies now flourishing to that not only of Middleton but of Milton.

Johnson. Before I say a word about either, I shall take the liberty, Sir, to reprehend your unreasonable admiration of such writers as Defoe and Locke. What, pray, have they added to the dignity or the affluence of our language?

Tooke. I would gladly see our language enriched as far as it can be without depraving it. At present we recur to the Latin and reject the Saxon. This is strengthening our language just as our empire is strengthened, by severing from it the most flourishing of its provinces. In another age we may cut down the branches of the Latin to admit the Saxon to shoot up again; for opposites come perpetually round. But it would be folly to throw away a current and commodious piece of money because of the stamp upon it, or to refuse an accession to an estate because our grandfather could do without it. A book composed of merely Saxon words (if indeed such a thing could be) would only prove the perverseness of the author. It would be inelegant, inharmonious, and deficient in the power of conveying thoughts and images, of which indeed such a writer could have but extremely few at starting. Let the Saxon however be always the groundwork."

11 Lack of space will not permit further selection, but the sticklers for our present irrational spelling would do well to read these dialogues of Johnson and Tooke, as well as those of Hare and Landor.

XXX.

LEIGH HUNT.

(1784-1859.)

AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, “WHAT IS POETRY?”

INCLUDING REMARKS ON VERSIFICATION.1

[Written in 1844.]

POETRY, strictly and artistically so called, that is to say, considered not merely as poetic feeling, which is more or less shared by all the world, but as the operation of that feeling, such as we see it in the poet's book, is the utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying and illustrating its conceptions by imagination and fancy, and modulating its language on the prin ciple of variety in uniformity. Its means are whatever the universe contains; and its ends, pleasure and exaltation. Poetry stands between nature and convention, keeping alive among us the enjoyment of the external and the spiritual world: it has constituted the most enduring fame of nations; and, next to Love and Beauty, which are its parents, is the greatest proof to man of the pleasure to be found in all things, and of the probable riches of infinitude. Poetry is a passion, because it seeks the deepest impressions; and because it must undergo, in order to convey

them.

It is a passion for truth, because without truth the impression

would be false or defective.

It is a passion for beauty, because its office is to exalt and refine

1 The introduction to LEIGH HUNT'S selections from the English Poets,

entitled Imagination and Fancy.

by means of pleasure, and because beauty is nothing but the loveliest form of pleasure.

It is a passion for power, because power is impression triumphant, whether over the poet, as desired by himself, or over the reader, as affected by the poet.

It embodies and illustrates its impressions by imagination, or images of the objects of which it treats, and other images brought in to throw light on those objects, in order that it may enjoy and impart the feeling of their truth in its utmost conviction and affluence.

It illustrates them by fancy, which is a lighter play of imagination, or the feeling of analogy coming short of seriousness, in order that it may laugh with what it loves, and show how it can decorate it with fairy ornament.

It modulates what it utters, because in running the whole round of beauty it must needs include beauty of sound; and because, in the height of its enjoyment, it must show the perfections of its triumph, and make difficulty itself become part of its facility and joy.

And lastly, Poetry shapes this modulation into uniformity for its outline, and variety for its parts, because it thus realizes the last idea of beauty itself, which includes the charm of diversity within the flowing round of habit and ease.

Poetry is imaginative passion. The quickest and subtlest test of the possession of its essence is in expression; the variety of things to be expressed shows the amount of its resources; and the continuity of the song completes the evidence of its strength and greatness. He who has thought, feeling, expression, imagination, action, character and continuity, all in the largest amount and highest degree, is the greatest poet.

Poetry includes whatsoever of painting can be made visible to the mind's eye, and whatsoever of music can be conveyed by sound and proportion without singing or instrumentation. But it far surpasses those divine arts, in suggestiveness, range, and intellectual wealth; the first, in expression of thought, combination of images, and the triumph over space and time; the second,