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INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
It is of course a somewhat delicate task to decide what
motives have been decisive in the choice of words and
in the word-formation of a poet. Only the number and
frequency of evidences can establish a motive quite
certainly; and from this point of view I have felt able to lay
down the following four motives as decisive for the whole
of Swinburne’s work.
The preceding paragraphs must already have shown
to how large an extent the grammar of Swinburne is an
artificial attempt at a revival of dead stages of English.
Not only the general spirit but also the details of his
grammar are borrowed from the language of the Elizabethan,
and pre-Elizabethan, times. We shall find the same facts
in an investigation of his vocabulary. Take at random a
poem of Swinburne’s and you must be struck by the
old-time breath that issues from it: the words may be archaisms
of that kind which is partly known to the average reader,
or they may be completely waked up from oblivion by
Swinburne. Statistics would, I think, show a large
percentage of his vocabulary to fall under these categories;
but no statistics are wanted to convince us of the fact that
Swinburne’s vocabulary is fundamentally different from
that of modern English. Even a cursory perusal of any
of his works is quite sufficient.
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