The varieties or embellishments of poetical diction, which have just been characterized, represent the special language of eighteenth century poetry, as distinct from that large portion of language which is common alike to prose and poetry. For it is scarcely necessary to remind ourselves that by far the largest portion of the poetry of the eighteenth century (as indeed of any century) is written in the latter sort of language, which depends for its effects mainly upon the arrangement of the words, rather than for any unique power in the words themselves. In this kind of poetical diction, it is not too much to say that the eighteenth century is pre-eminent, though the effect of the Wordsworthian criticism has led to a certain failure or indisposition to recognize the fact. Just as Johnson and his contemporaries do not give direct expression to any approval of the admirable language, of which Pope and some of his predecessors had such perfect command, so modern criticism has not always been willing to grant it even bare justice, though Coleridge’s penetrating insight had enabled him, as we have seen, to pay his tribute to “the almost faultless position and choice of words, in Mr. Pope’s _original_ compositions, particularly in his Satires and Moral Essays.” It was, we may imagine, the ordinary everyday language, heightened by brilliance and point, in which Pope and his coterie carried on their dallyings and bickerings at Twickenham and elsewhere, and it was an ideal vehicle, lucid and precise for the argument and declamation it had to sustain. But it was more than that, as will be readily recognized if we care to recall some of the oft-quoted lines which amply prove with what consummate skill Pope, despite the economy and condensation imposed by the requirements of the closed couplet, could evoke from this plain and unadorned diction effects of imagination and sometimes even of passion. Such lines as He stooped to Truth and moralised his song, or In lazy apathy let stoics boast Their virtue fixed: ’tis fixed as in a frost, or In Folly’s cup still laughs the bubble joy, and dozens similar, show the lucidity, energy, and imaginative picturesqueness with which Pope could endow his diction when the occasion required it.[256] Such language is the “real language of men”; nearly every word would satisfy the Wordsworthian canon.