And this is merely exaggeration. One takes pleasure in
rebuking the false ecstasy by a word thus prim and prosaic. The poet
intended to impose upon us, and he fails; we "withdraw our attention," as
Dr. Johnson did when the conversation became foolish. In truth we do
more, for we resent exaggeration if we care for our English language. For
exaggeration writes relaxed, and not elastic, words and verses; and it is
possible that the language suffers something, at least temporarily--during
the life of a couple of generations, let us say--from the loss of
elasticity and rebound brought about by such strain. Moreover,
exaggeration has always to outdo itself progressively. There should have
been a Durdles to tell this Swinburne that the habit of exaggerating,
like that of boasting, "grows upon you."
It may be added that later poetry shows us an instance of exaggeration in
the work of that major poet, Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie. His violence and
vehemence, his extremity, are generally signs not of weakness but of
power; and yet once he reaches a breaking-point that power should never
know. This is where his Judith holds herself to be so smirched and
degraded by the proffer of a reverent love (she being devoted to one
only, a dead man who had her heart) that thenceforth no bar is left to
her entire self-sacrifice to the loathed enemy Holofernes. To this, too,
the prim rebuke is the just one, a word for the mouth of governesses: "My
dear, you exaggerate.
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