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. 5 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. Obscuritas offundit tenebras. Whatsoever loseth the grace 10 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 15 knot, a heap. There are words that do as much raise a style as others can depress it. Superlation and overmuchness 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, quod terras relinquas. But propitiously from Virgil:

Cycladas.

Credas innare revulsas

20

He doth not say it was so, but seemed to be so. 25 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[opuli] R[omani] exercitus, qui cœlum possint perrumpere, who would say with us, but a 30 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

ΤΟ

15

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 5 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 footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called oxnuarioμévn, or figured language.

Oratio imago animi. — Language most shows 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 ; 20 and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.

Structura et statura. Some men are tall and big, so some language is high and great: sublimis. Then the 25 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, humilis, pumila; so of speech, it is humble and low, the words poor and flat, the members and periods thin and weak, without knitting 30 or number. 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 welltorned, composed, elegant, and accurate. Vitiosa oratio, vasta, tumens, enormis, affectata, abjecta. - The vicious 35 language is vast and gaping, swelling and irregular: when

:

DISCOVERIES.

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 5 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 councillor 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.

65

ΙΟ

The next thing to the stature is the figure, figura, and feature in language, that is, whether it be round and straight, 15 which consists of short and succinct periods, numerous and polished; or square and firm, which is to have equal and strong parts everywhere answerable, and weighed.

The third is the skin and coat, cutis sive cortex, which rests in the well-joining, cementing, and coagmentation of 20 words, compositio; whenas it is smooth, gentle, and sweet, like a table upon which you may run your finger without rubs, and your nail cannot find a joint; not horrid, rough, wrinkled, gaping, or chapped.

their

After these, the flesh, blood, and bones come in question. 25 We say it is a fleshy style, carnosa, when there is much periphrasis, and circuit of words; and when with more than enough, it grows fat and corpulent, adipata, redundans: arvina orationis, full of suet and tallow. It hath blood and juice when the words are proper and apt, sound sweet, and the phrase neat and picked-oratio uncta, et bene pasta. But where there is redundancy, both the blood and juice are faulty and vicious: - Redundat sanguine, qua multo plus dicit, quam necesse est. Juice in language is somewhat less than blood; for if the words 35

30

ΙΟ

be but becoming and signifying, and the sense gentle, there is juice; but where that wanteth, the language is thin, flagging, poor, starved, scarce covering the bone, jejuna, macilenta, strigosa, and shews like stones in a sack. 5 Some men, to avoid redundancy, run into that; and while they strive to have no ill blood or juice, they lose their good. There be some styles, again, that have not less blood, but less flesh and corpulence. These are bony and sinewy, ossea et nervosa; Ossa habent, et nervos.

Nota domini S[anc]t[i] Albani de doctrin[a] intemper[antia]. It was well noted by the late Lord S[ain]t Albans, that the study of words is the first distemper of learning; vain matter the second; and a third distemper is deceit, or the likeness of truth, imposture held up by 15 credulity. All these are the cobwebs of learning, and to let them grow in us is either sluttish or foolish. Nothing is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator, as the schools have done Aristotle. The damage is infinite knowledge receives by it; for to many things a man 20 should owe but a temporary belief, and a suspension of his own judgment, not an absolute resignation of himself, or a perpetual captivity. Let Aristotle and others. have their dues; but if we can make farther discoveries of truth and fitness than they, why are we envied? Let 25 us beware, while we strive to add, we do not diminish or deface; we may improve, but not augment. By discrediting falsehood, truth grows in request. We must not go about, like men anguished and perplexed for vicious affectation of praise, but calmly study the separa30 tion of opinions, find the errors have intervened, awake antiquity, call former times into question; but make no parties with the present, nor follow any fierce undertakers, mingle no matter of doubtful credit with the simplicity of truth; but gently stir the mould about the root of the 35 question, and avoid all digladiations, facility of credit, or

superstitious simplicity, seek the consonancy and concatenation of truth; stoop only to point of necessity, and what leads to convenience. Then make exact animadversion where style hath degenerated, where flourished and thrived in choiceness of phrase, round and clean compo- 5 sition of sentence, sweet falling of the clause, varying an illustration by tropes and figures, weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, and depth of judgment. This is monte potiri, to get the hill; for no perfect discovery can be made upon a flat or a 10 level.

De optimo scriptore. - Now that I have informed you in the knowing of these things, let me lead you by the hand a little farther, in the direction of the use, and make you an able writer by practice. The conceits of the mind are 15 pictures of things, and the tongue is the interpreter of those pictures. The order of God's creatures in themselves is not only admirable and glorious, but eloquent: then he who could apprehend the consequence of things in their truth, and utter his apprehensions as truly, were the best 20 writer or speaker. Therefore Cicero said much, when he said, Dicere recte nemo potest, nisi qui prudenter intelligit. The shame of speaking unskilfully were small if the tongue only thereby were disgraced; but as the image of a king in his seal ill-represented is not so much a blemish to the 25 wax, or the signet that sealed it, as to the prince it representeth, so disordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. Neither can his mind be thought to be in tune, whose 30 words do jar; nor his reason in frame whose sentence is preposterous; nor his elocution clear and perfect, whose utterance breaks itself into fragments and uncertainties. Were it not a dishonor to a mighty prince, to have the majesty of his embassage spoiled by a careless 35