Greek literature could not overlook this truth. For example, Professor Jebb, in his admirable account of the "Attic Orators," observes that one of the leading contrasts between Athenian and modern eloquence, such as that of Pitt or Burke, is to be found in the artistic feeling of the Greek orators, who, having once discovered a combination of words peculiarly fitted to convey a certain combination of ideas, do not hesitate to repeat such a sentence or phrase; whereas the modern orator, from whom at least the appearance of an extempore speech is expected, carefully avoids such repetitions. These relations of sound to idea may, moreover, partially explain two facts exceedingly interesting in the development of literature, the growth of poetic diction and the decadence of poetry in an age of analytic thought—facts in which we shall find further illustrations of the relativity of literature to social life.
§ 15. We are all familiar with Wordsworth's conception of "poetic diction" as an "unnatural" growth. The early poets of all nations, he tells us, wrote generally from passions excited by real events; they wrote "naturally," and so their language was daring and figurative in the highest degree. But succeeding poets mechanically adopted such language, applied it "to feelings and thoughts with which it had no natural connection whatsoever," and insensibly produced a language "differing materially from the real language of men in any situation." This conception of "poetic diction" as a "distorted language," gradually separated from that of real life, is only true of certain literary epochs which may be
It is no mere accident that the Greek and Latin metres admit of easy imitation in German, with its comparatively strong inflections, while in English, the language of lost inflections, efforts such as those of Tennyson, Longfellow, A. H. Clough, contrast feebly with those of Schiller and Goethe.
