[Sidenote: THE DANGERS OF ADAPTING TRUTH TO THE MINDS OF THE VULGAR]
There are, in every country, times when the few who know the truth have clothed it for the vulgar, and addressed the vulgar in the vulgar language and modes of conception, in order to convey any part of the truth. This, however, could not be done with safety, even to the _illuminati_ themselves in the first instance; but to their successors, habit gradually turned lie into belief, partial and _stagnate_ truth into ignorance, and the teachers of the vulgar (like the Franciscan friars in the South of Europe) became a part of the vulgar--nay, because the laymen were open to various impulses and influences, which their instructors had built out (compare a brook in open air, liable to rainstreams and rills from new-opened fountains, to the same running through a mill guarded by sluice-gates and back-water), they became the vulgarest of the vulgar, till, finally, resolute not to detach themselves from the mob, the mob at length detaches itself from them, and leaves the mill-race dry, the moveless, rotten wheels as day-dormitories for bats and owls, and the old grindstones for wags and scoffers of the taproom to whet their wits on.
When there are few literary men, and the vast 999999/10000000 of the population are ignorant, as was the case of Italy from Dante to Metastasio, _from causes I need not here put down, there will be a poetical language_; but that a poet ever uses a word as poetical--that is, formally--which he, in the same mood and thought, would not use in prose or conversation, Milton's Prose Works will assist us in disproving. But as soon as literature becomes common, and critics numerous in any country, and a large body of men seek to express themselves habitually in the most precise, sensuous, and impassioned words, the difference as to mere words ceases, as, for example, the German prose writers. Produce to me _one_ word out of Klopstock, Wieland, Schiller, Goethe, Voss, &c., which I will not find as frequently used in the most energetic prose writers. The sole difference in style is that poetry demands a severe keeping--it admits nothing that prose may not often admit, but it oftener rejects. In other words, it presupposes a more continuous state of passion. _N.B._--Provincialisms of poets who have become the supreme classics in countries one in language but under various states and governments have aided this false idea, as, in Italy, the Tuscanisms of Dante, Ariosto, and Alfieri, foolishly imitated by Venetians, Romans, and Neapolitans. How much this is against the opinion of Dante, see his admirable treatise on "Lingua Volgare Nobile," the first, I believe, of his prose or _prose and verse_ works; for the "Convito" and "La Vita Nuova" are, one-third, in metre.