Note 168 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
Reading edition
From Dryden. "He creeps along with ten little words in every line, and helps out his numbers with for, to, and unto, and all the pretty expletives he can find, while the sense is left half-tired behind it." Essay on Dram. Poetry.—Warburton.
A collection of monosyllables when it arises from a correspondence of subject is highly meritorious. Let a single example from Milton suffice:
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death.
How successfully does this range of little words represent to our imaginations,
The growing labours of the lengthened way.—Wakefield.
"It is pronounced by Dryden," says Johnson, "that a line of monosyllables is almost always harsh. This is evidently true, because our monosyllables commonly begin and end with consonants." As Dryden expressed it, "they are clogged with consonants," and "it seldom," he says, "happens but a monosyllable line turns verse to prose, and even that prose is rugged and inharmonious." The authority of Dryden has led many persons to mistrust their own ears, and imagine, like Johnson and Wakefield, that monosyllables were only fitted at best to produce some special effect. Numerous examples in Dryden's poetry contradict his criticism, and Milton abounds in sweet and sonorous monosyllabic lines, as Par. Lost, v. 193:
His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines, With ev'ry plant, in sign of worship wave.
And ver. 199:
ye birds, That singing up to heaven gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Melodious lines, such as the first verse in the first of these passages, which have the monosyllables relieved but by a single dissyllable, are past counting up. Addison praised Pope for exemplifying the faults in the language which condemned them. "The gaping of the vowels in the second line, the expletive 'do' in the third line, and the ten monosyllables in the fourth, give such a beauty to this passage, as would have been very much admired in an ancient poet." The feat was too easy to call for much admiration. There was more difficulty in eschewing than in mimicking the vicious style of bad versifiers. Pope himself has not avoided the frequent use of "low words" and "feeble expletives."