is vague and conventional, and the language abounds in classical
insipidities, epithets that describe nothing, and generalities at second
hand from older poets, who may once, perhaps, have written with their
"eyes upon the object." Blushing Flora paints the enameled ground;
cheerful murmurs fluctuate on the gale; Eridanus through flowery meadows
strays; gay gilded[32] scenes and shining prospects rise; while
everywhere are balmy zephyrs, sylvan shades, winding vales, vocal shores,
silver floods, crystal springs, feathered quires, and Phoebus and
Philomel and Ceres' gifts assist the purple year. It was after this
fashion that Pope rendered the famous moonlight passage in his
translation of the Iliad:

"Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies," etc.

"Strange to think of an enthusiast," says Wordsworth, "reciting these
verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures in
the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity." The poetic
diction against which Wordsworth protested was an outward sign of the
classical preference for the general over the concrete. The vocabulary
was Latinized because, in English, the _mot propre_ is commonly a Saxon
word, while its Latin synonym has a convenient indefiniteness that keeps
the subject at arm's length. Of a similar tendency was the favorite
rhetorical figure of personification, which gave a false air of life to
abstractions by the easy process of spelling them with a capital letter.
Thus:

"From bard to bard the frigid caution crept,
Till Declamation roared whilst Passion slept;
Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread,