As respects Diction, _that_ becomes formal and technical when poetry has come to be considered an artifice rather than an art, and when its sole object is to revive certain pleasurable feelings already conventional, instead of originating new sources of delight. Then it is truly earth to earth; dead language used to bury dead emotion in. This kind of thing was carried so far by the later Scandinavian poets that they compiled a dictionary of the metaphors used by the elder Skalds (whose songs were the utterance of that within them which _would_ be spoken), and satisfied themselves with a new arrangement of them. Inspiration was taught, as we see French advertised to be, in six lessons. In narrative and descriptive poetry we feel that proper keeping demands a certain choice and luxury of words. The question of propriety becomes one of prime importance here. Certain terms have an acquired imaginative value from the associations they awake in us. Certain words are more musical than others. Some rhymes are displeasing; some measures wearisome. Moreover, there are words which have become indissolubly entangled with ludicrous or mean ideas. Hence it follows that there is such a thing as Poetic Diction, and it was this that Milton was thinking of when he spoke of making our English “search her coffers round.” I will illustrate this. Longfellow’s “Evangeline” opens with a noble solemnity: This is the forest primeval; the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like the Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.