The discriminating character of ease consists
principally in the diction; for all true poetry requires that the
sentiments be natural. Language suffers violence by harsh or by daring
figures, by transposition, by unusual acceptations of words, and by any
licence, which would be avoided by a writer of prose. Where any artifice
appears in the construction of the verse, that verse is no longer easy.
Any epithet which can be ejected without diminution of the sense, any
curious iteration of the same word, and all unusual, though not
ungrammatical structure of speech, destroy the grace of easy poetry.
The first lines of Pope's Iliad afford examples of many licences which
an easy writer must decline:
Achilles' _wrath_, to Greece the _direful spring_
Of woes unnumber'd, _heav'nly_ Goddess sing;
The wrath which _hurl'd_ to Pluto's _gloomy reign_
The souls of _mighty_ chiefs untimely slain.
In the first couplet the language is distorted by inversions, clogged
with superfluities, and clouded by a harsh metaphor; and in the second
there are two words used in an uncommon sense, and two epithets inserted
only to lengthen the line; all these practices may in a long work easily
be pardoned, but they always produce some degree of obscurity and
ruggedness.
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