I propose the hypothesis that this shift in primary modification which took place a little more than two hundred years ago represents, in connection with objects modified and specific contexts, a fundamental change in poetic reference, a new idea of the poetic medium which is still very close to us, and which has strongly pervaded the poetry of our ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’ predecessors. I propose, then, to demonstrate the representative nature of this primary modification by tracing more closely, and qualitatively as well as quantitatively, the developing relation of the standards epithets good and bad to the qualities epithets bright and dark through the work and the concordance listings of four or five poets on either side of 1740.