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the highest kind of graceful poetry. By such a want the general result is injured; but no particular word or line can be made responsible for the fault.

Perhaps the following passage, without being extremely faulty, is not free from this fault :

But now and then with pressure of his thumb

To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube
That fumes beneath his nose.

COWPER.

54. The Forcible Style is well exemplified by the Elizabethan dramatists. No words are rejected by them that express the meaning with clearness and force :—

(a) Covering discretion with a coat of folly,
As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
That shall first spring and be most delicate.

Henry V.

(b) Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow
Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat
The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon.

Ib.

(c) Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar'd host,
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps:
The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks
With torch-staves in their hand: and their poor jades
Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips,
The gum down-roping from their pale dead eyes,
And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit
Lies foul with chewed grass, still and motionless.

Ib.

In this last passage, ungraceful and offensive words are studiously selected as appropriate for the boaster who exults

in the prospect of a victory over a dejected enemy. Many passages of Pope furnish examples of this style :

Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt that stinks and sings:
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.

55. Dangers of the Forcible Style: Coarseness. - This passage from Pope points out the danger of coarseness to which the forcible style is peculiarly liable. The first two lines are so unpleasant that they can scarcely be tolerated even in satire. Many passages in which force has degenerated into coarseness might also be quoted from Shakspeare's plays:

And then the hearts

Of all his people shall revolt from him,
And kiss the lips of unacquainted change,
And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath
Out of the bloody fingers' ends of John.

King John.

But it is very difficult to say how far the coarseness is intentional, meant to express the natural disposition, or the intense passion of the speaker, and not at all characteristic of the dramatist. Thus it would be wrong to criticise the language when the ecstasy of a mother's grief makes Constance cry,

Death! death! O amiable lovely death,
Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,

And I will kiss thy detestable bones,

And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows,
And ring these fingers with thy household worms,
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
And be a carrion monster like thyself;

Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest,

And buss thee as thy wife.

King John, iii. 4. 25–35.

And perhaps a similar explanation may justify the following address of the Queen to Richard II.:—

Thou mass of honor, thou King Richard's tomb,
And not King Richard; thou most beauteous inn,
Why should hard-favor'd grief be lodged in thee,
When triumph is become an alehouse guest!

Yet the following passage, justifiable itself, shows the possibility of erring in the direction of coarseness:

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Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,

And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food,
here, here will I remain

With worms that are thy chambermaids.

And again in the following:

Romeo and Juliet.

First the fair reverence of your highness curbs me
From giving reins and spurs to my free speech:
Which else would post, until it had returned
These terms of treason doubled down his throat.

Richard II.

With a foul traitor's name stuff I thy throat.

Ere my tongue

Shall wound my honor with such feeble using,

Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear
The slavish motive of recanting fear,

And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,

Where shame doth harbor, even in Mowbray's face,

Richard II.

the expressions are most appropriate for two furious combatants, one or both conscious of guilt; but in themselves they are exaggerated as well as unpleasing, and exceed the usual limit of the forcible style.

The forcible and graceful style are combined in the songs of the Elizabethan dramatists, and the Elizabethan poetry generally. Shakspeare's sonnets, although always forcible, and often using the most familiar words and images, are for the most part graceful also:

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair,

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.

Sonnet 70.

The occasional violence and coarseness of the forcible style led to a reaction in favor of urbanity. This finally degenerated into the conventional style common in the eighteenth century, and described above. But the gulf between the forcible and conventional is bridged by Dryden, who in a most happy manner combines grace and force :

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When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat:

Yet fool'd with hope men favor the deceit,
Trust on, and hope to-morrow will repay :
To-morrow's falser than the former day,

Lies worse; and when it says we shall be blest

With some new joys, cuts off what we possessed.
Strange cozenage! none would live past days again,
Yet all hope pleasure from what yet remain,
And from the dregs of life hope to receive
What the first sprightly runnings could not give.
I'm tired of waiting for this chymic gold

That fools us young, and beggars us when old.

56. The Want of Force, like the want of grace, is not a fault that can often be localized in any particular words or expressions. Tameness or weakness arises from a general inability to use language rightly, and often from the ignorance of the exact meanings and distinctions of words, and hence a preference for the vaguest words, as most likely to cover ignorance. Sententious tameness is exemplified by the following parody of Crabbe:

John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire ;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polish'd Stubb's shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter—a safe employ, etc.

Rejected Addresses.

In the poetry of Crabbe himself the following lines are

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Something had happen'd wrong about a bill

Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill;

So, to amend it, I was told to go

And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co.

57. The Simple Style is common in ballads. It is used in narrative, where the story is the principal consideration, and the words require to be especially clear and simple. Most

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