the figure of “the East” is hardly emphasised at all by “gorgeous.” “Splendid” alone would have done the work as well, and not have disturbed our sense of fitness by any pretentiousness. If Wordsworth, we feel, wanted to say more than that the East was splendid, to convey the distinguishing quality of that splendour, it was his business to do it somehow precisely, and not to evade his responsibility by using a word that, so far as qualification of “splendid” goes, leaves us in the air. And, from some subtle essence in its nature, the word “magnificent” would have served his turn. Had he said “the magnificent East,” we should--or so it seems decisively to my perception--have received the idea of “splendid” from the primary meaning of the epithet, which epithet would in turn have, by its peculiar evocative power, gathered to itself from the context the explicit kind of splendour of light and colour and jewelled opulence that we associate with the East. The word “magnificent,” in short, is an organic one in poetry, while “gorgeous” is not. When Browning speaks of “that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go,” we get the image of glowing health reinforced by the idea of a superb physical power and functioning, conveyed through the word “magnificent” in relation to “pulse.” “Splendid” here would have been measurably less significant, while “gorgeous”--if we may strain the word’s meaning for the purpose of illustration--would, in qualifying “splendid,” have weakened the impression instead of strengthening it. Again, as a last example, Sir William Watson in his _Autumn_ has, within a few lines of each other-- At thy mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, Crumbles the gorgeous year.... and And passage and departure all thy theme Whose life doth still a splendid dying seem, And thou, at height of thy magnificence, A figment and a dream.... the one of which is nebulous and the other shaped. And the language has many pairs or groups of words, not necessarily synonymous but of a like character, that fall respectively into the “gorgeous” or “magnificent” class, as, for instance, valorous, heroic; and transparent, crystalline; and regrettable or deplorable as against lamentable or grievous; and vicious, malignant; and vague, dim; and conceited, vain; and expensive, costly, and so on. It is hardly safe to say of any word that it can never be used seriously in poetry, but of those given as belonging to the “gorgeous” group--there are hundreds like them--it can at least be said that poetry would almost always lose more than she would gain by them.