Purity of Diction in English Verse (Lives & Letters)

"Purity of Diction in English Verse" (1952) explains how the vocabulary choice of late 18th-century writers like Cowper, Goldsmith and Dr Johnson gave them a force and moral value different from Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley. "Articulate Energy" examines the major theories of how syntax - the basic building blocks of language - functions in poetry, using examples from Byron and Eliot, Pope and Pound, Sidney and Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Paul Valery and W.B. Yeats. Davie draws on his experience as a poet and a critic. The final chapters explore what is meant by "modern poetry" and why the greatest poetry must always "reek of humanity".