the praise is but moderate; if refused, the scorn is assured. Yet we must adventure; for things, at first hard and rough, are by use made tender and gentle. It is an honest error that is committed, following great chiefs.

CXXIX.

Consuetudo.-Perspicuitas, Venustas.-Authoritas.

-Virgil.-Lucretius.-Chaucerism.-Paronomasia. -Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the public stamp makes the current money. But we must not be too frequent with the mint, every day coining, nor fetch words from the extreme and utmost ages; since the chief virtue of a style is perspicuity, and nothing so vicious in it as to need an interpreter. Words borrowed of antiquity do lend a kind of majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes. For they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win themselves a kind of grace-like newness. But the

eldest of the present, and newness of the past language, is the best. For what was the ancient language, which some men so dote upon, but the ancient custom? yet when I name custom, I understand not the vulgar custom; for that were a precept no less dangerous to language than life, if we should speak or live after the manners of the vulgar: but that I call custom of speech, which is the consent of the learned; as custom of life, which is the consent of the good. Virgil was most loving of antiquity; yet how rarely doth he insert aquai, and pictai! Lucretius is scabrous and rough in these; he seeks them: as some do Chaucerisms with us, which were better expunged and banished. Some words are to be culled out for ornament and colour, as we gather flowers to strow houses, or make garlands; but they are better when they grow to our style; as in a

meadow, where though the mere grass and greenness delight, yet the variety of flowers doth heighten and beautify. Marry we must not play or riot too much with them, as in Paronomasies; nor use too swelling or ill-sounding words; Quæ per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt. It is true, there is no sound but shall find some lovers, as the bitterest confections are grateful to some palates. Our composition must be more accurate in the beginning and end than in the midst, and in the end more than in the beginning; for through the midst the stream bears us. And this is attained by custom more than care or diligence. We must express readily and fully, not profusely. There is difference between a liberal and prodigal hand. As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail; so to take it in and contract it, is of no less praise, when the argument doth ask it. Either of them hath their fitness in the place. A good man always profits by his endeavour, by his help, yea, when he is absent, nay, when he is dead, by his example and memory. So good authors in their style: a strict and succinct style is that, where you can take away nothing without loss, and that loss to be manifest.

CXXX.

De Stylo.-Tacitus.-The Laconic.-Suetonius.— Seneca, and Fabianus.-The brief style is that which expresseth much in little. The concise style, which expresseth not enough, but leaves somewhat to be understood. The abrupt style, which hath many breaches, and doth not seem to end, but fall. congruent and harmonious fitting of parts in a sentence hath almost the fastening and force of knitting and connection; as in stones well squared, which will rise strong a great way without mortar.

The

CXXXI.

Periodi.-Obscuritas offundit tenebras.-Superlatio. -Periods are beautiful, when they are not too long; for so they have their strength too, as in a pike or javelin. As we must take the care that our words and sense be clear; so if the obscurity happen through the hearer's or reader's want of understanding, I am not to answer for them, no more than for their not listening or marking; I must neither find them ears nor mind. But a man cannot put a word so in sense, but something about it will illustrate it, if the writer understand himself. For order helps much to perspicuity, as confusion hurts. Rectitudo lucem adfert; obliquitas et circumductio offuscat. We should therefore speak what we can the nearest way, so as we keep our gait, not leap; for too short may as well be not let into the memory, as too long not kept in. Whatsoever loseth the grace and clearness, converts into a riddle: the obscurity is marked, but not the value. That perisheth, and is passed by, like the pearl in the fable. Our style should be like a skein of silk, to be carried and found by the right thread, not ravelled and perplexed; then all is a knot, a heap. There are words that do as much raise a style, as others can depress it. Superlation and over-muchness amplifies. It may be above faith, but never above a mean. It was ridiculous in Cestius, when he said of Alexander :

Fremit oceanus, quasi indignetur, quòd terras relinquas;

But propitiously from Virgil:

Credas innare revulsas

Cycladas.

He doth not say it was so, but seemed to be so. Although it be somewhat incredible, that is excused

before it be spoken. But there are hyperboles which will become one language, that will by no means admit another. As Eos esse P. R. exercitus, qui cælum possint perrumpere, who would say with us, but a madman? Therefore we must consider in every tongue what is used, what received. Quintilian warns us, that in no kind of translation, or metaphor, or allegory, we make a turn from what we began; as if we fetch the original of our metaphor from sea, and billows, we end not in flames and ashes it is a most foul inconsequence. Neither must we draw out our allegory too long, lest either we make ourselves obscure, or fall into affectation, which is childish. But why do men depart at all from the right and natural ways of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it fitter to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers. Or to avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a foot-path, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called εσχηματισμηνη, or figured language.

CXXXII.

Oratio imago animi.-Language most shews a man: Speak, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass

renders a man's form, or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man: and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound, structure, and harmony of it.

CXXXIII.

Structura et statura, sublimis, humilis, pumila. Some men are tall and big, so some language is high and great. Then the words are chosen, their sound ample, the composition full, the absolution plenteous, and poured out, all grave, sinewy, and strong. Some are little and dwarfs; so of speech it is humble and low, the words poor and flat, the members and periods thin and weak, without knitting or number.

CXXXIV.

Mediocris plana et placida.-The middle are of a just stature. There the language is plain and pleasing; even without stopping, round without swelling : all well-torned, composed, elegant, and accurate.

CXXXV.

Vitiosa oratio, vasta-tumens—enormis-affectata -abjecta.-The vicious language is vast, and gaping, swelling, and irregular: when it contends to be high, full of rock, mountain, and pointedness: as it affects to be low, it is abject, and creeps, full of bogs and holes. And according to their subject these styles vary, and lose their names: for that which is high and lofty, declaring excellent matter, becomes vast and tumorous, speaking of petty and inferior things: so that which was even and apt in a mean and plain subject, will appear most poor and humble in a high argument. Would you not laugh to meet a great counsellor of state in a flat cap, with his trunk hose, and a hobby-horse cloak, his gloves under his girdle, and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown, furred with sables? There is a certain latitude in these things, by which we find the degrees.

CXXXVI.

Figura.-The next thing to the stature, is the