the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness of his feelings. Every
man's language has, first, its individualities; secondly, the common properties
of the class to which he belongs; and thirdly, words and phrases of universal
use. The language of Hooker, Bacon, Bishop Taylor, and Burke2 differs from
the common language of the learned class only by the superior number and
novelty of the thoughts and relations which they had to convey. The language
of Algernon Sidney3 differs not at all from that which every well-educated
gentleman would wish to write, and (with due allowances for the undeliber
ateness and less connected train of thinking natural and proper to conversa
tion) such as he would wish to talk. Neither one nor the other differ half as
much from the general language of cultivated society as the language of Mr.
Wordsworth's homeliest composition differs from that of a common peasant.
For 'real' therefore we must substitute ordinary, or lingua communis,4 And
this, we have proved, is no more to be found in the phraseology of low and
rustic life than in that of any other class. Omit the peculiarities of each,
and the result of course must be common to all. And assuredly the omissions
and changes to be made in the language of rustics before it could be trans
ferred to any species of poem, except the drama or other professed imitation,
2. Richard Hooker (1554-1600), author of The prose styles. Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity; Francis Bacon (1561? 3. Republican soldier and statesman (1622? 1626), essayist and philosopher, and Jeremy Taylor 1683), author of Discourses Concerning Govern- were all, together with the late-18th-century poli-ment, executed for his part in the Rye House Plot tician and opponent of the French Revolution to assassinate Charles II.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), lauded for their 4. The common language (Latin).
.
BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA / 48 5
are at least as numerous and weighty as would be required in adapting to the
same purpose the ordinary language of tradesmen and manufacturers. Not to
mention that the language so highly extolled by Mr. Wordsworth varies in every
county, nay, in every village, according to the accidental character of the cler
gyman, the existence or nonexistence of schools; or even, perhaps, as the excise-
man, publican, or barber happen to be, or not to be, zealous politicians and
readers of the weekly newspaper pro bono publico.5 Anterior to cultivation the
lingua communis of every country, as Dante has well observed, exists every
where in parts and no where as a whole.6
Neither is the case rendered at all more tenable by the addition of the words
'in a state of excitement.'7 For the nature of a man's words, when he is strongly
affected by joy, grief, or anger, must necessarily depend on the number and
quality of the general truths, conceptions, and images, and of the words
expressing them, with which his mind had been previously stored. For the
property of passion is not to create, but to set in increased activity. At least,
whatever new connections of thoughts or images, or (which is equally, if not
more than equally, the appropriate effect of strong excitement) whatever gen
eralizations of truth or experience the heat of passion may produce, yet the
terms of their conveyance must have pre-existed in his former conversations,
and are only collected and crowded together by the unusual stimulation. It is
indeed very possible to adopt in a poem the unmeaning repetitions, habitual
phrases, and other blank counters which an unfurnished or confused under
standing interposes at short intervals in order to keep hold of his subject which
is still slipping from him, and to give him time for recollection; or in mere aid
of vacancy, as in the scanty companies of a country stage the same player pops
backwards and forwards, in order to prevent the appearance of empty spaces,
