Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the
general character of them who use them; and the disgust which they
produce, arises from the revival of those images with which they are
commonly united. Thus if, in the most solemn discourse, a phrase happens
to occur which has been successfully employed in some ludicrous
narrative, the gravest auditor finds it difficult to refrain from
laughter, when they who are not prepossessed by the same accidental
association, are utterly unable to guess the reason of his merriment.
Words which convey ideas of dignity in one age, are banished from
elegant writing or conversation in another, because they are in time
debased by vulgar mouths, and can be no longer heard without the
involuntary recollection of unpleasing images.
When Macbeth is confirming himself in the horrid purpose of stabbing his
king, he breaks out amidst his emotions into a wish natural to a
murderer:
--Come, thick night!
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;
Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold! hold!--
In this passage is exerted all the force of poetry; that force which
calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates
matter: yet, perhaps, scarce any man now peruses it without some
disturbance of his attention from the counteraction of the words to the
ideas.
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