Edward Bysshe and the Poet's Handbook

Abstract

Lucian, looking inside a gold and ivory statue by Phidias, was shocked ' to see “one tangle of bars, bolts, nails, planks, wedges, with pitch and mortar and everything that is unsightly; not to mention a possible colony of rats and mice.” And Lamb, on seeing the Cambridge manuscript of Milton's minor poems, swore never again to go into the workshop of a great artist. For behind the poem often lie the “unsightly” dictionary of rhymes, the thesaurus, the dictionary of synonyms—all the helps which collectively we call the poet's handbook. Perhaps because of its unsightliness it has never been studied, but it is obviously no less important for an understanding of the poet's craft than the planks and wedges are for the sculptor's.