style. Under this name I refer to the sudden and unprepared
transitions from lines or sentences of peculiar felicity (at all events
striking and original) to a style, not only unimpassioned but
undistinguished.

"The second defect I can generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the
reader will pardon an uncouth and newly-coined word. There is, I
should say, not seldom a _matter-of-factness_ in certain poems. This
may be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the
representation of objects, and there positions, as they appeared to the
poet himself; secondly, the insertion of accidental circumstances, in
order to the full explanation of his living characters, their
dispositions and actions; which circumstances might be necessary to
establish the probability of a statement in real life, when nothing is
taken for granted by the hearer; but appear superfluous in poetry,
where the reader is willing to believe for his own sake. . .

"Third; an undue predilection for the _dramatic_ form in certain poems,
from which one or other of two evils result. Either the thoughts and
diction are different from that of the poet, and then there arises an
incongruity of style; or they are the same and indistinguishable, where
two are represented as talking, while in truth one man only speaks. . .

"The fourth class of defects is closely connected with the former; but
yet are such as arise likewise from an intensity of feeling
disproportionate to such knowledge and value of the objects described,
as can be fairly anticipated of men in general, even of the most
cultivated classes; and with which therefore few only, and those few
particularly circumstanced, can be supposed to sympathize: in this
class, I comprise occasional prolixity, repetition, and an eddying,