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68
VOCABULARY
This archaism in the choice of words has involved
the creation of words after archaic models. In this
category of formations I count, for instance, those of
substantives in -ing, -er, and several adjective derivations. The
former chiefly occur in connections, and under
circumstances, that make this supposition probable; and a
fullness of meaning is bestowed on formations with suffixes
like -fill, -less, whose prime meaning is now completely
forgotten. Compounds of this type are of course difficult
to register, as the analogy that underlies a compound must
always be a matter of conjecture more than anything else.
In the formation of most compounds, as well as in
most derivations, the chief motive will always be the same:
to give a greater power of speaking, a greater pregnancy
or living energy to the individual word. As this is one
of the most essential and elementary conditions of poetry,
there is hardly any need to enter on a special and detailed
statement. The aim at freshness and originality must
logically underlie every other motive that can be established.
In public opinion in England and elsewhere, as I have
remarked in the Introduction (page 7), Swinburne stands
and will stand as the Paganini of lyrical poetry. It is
always a hazardous enterprise to prophesy about these things:
Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Shelley, each after his own
generation, have found new possibilities of expression in the
English language and have all been supposed to reach the
final point, only to be excelled by their successors. I
have seen one and the same poem by Byron — «Though
the day of my destiny’s over» — declared to be ’perfect
music’ by Poe, and relegated to a foot-note by Wratislaw,
as being ’intolerable doggerel’. It hardly seems probable,
however, that it will be so in the case of Swinburne, and,
to return to the subject, his mastership of word-music has
been of the greatest importance from our present point of
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