ABSTRACT
William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge with their new theories of diction undermined the idea that poetry had a special language reserved for it, and in time the diction they rebelled against fell into disuse. Most of the English poetry written from John Dryden’s time to the time of the Romantics is called neoclassic. Sometimes it is known merely as eighteenth-century poetry, and the phrase is useful, since a certain style and diction seem to have been characteristic of the whole period. There are, of course, other combinations of the parts of speech, but these just illustrated are in Thomas Quayle’s judgment the most common forms to be found in the eighteenth century. The significance of their use as part of a stock diction is hardly to be comprehended in a single generalization, but that they form a characteristic part of this diction is evident.
