Mercury, who is the president of language, is called deorum hominumque interpres. In all speech, words and sense are as the body and the soul. The sense is as the life and soul of language, without which all words are 5 dead. Sense is wrought out of experience, the knowledge of human life and actions, or of the liberal arts, which the Greeks called 'EуKukλоTaidetav. Words are the people's, yet there is a choice of them to be made; for verborum delectus origo est eloquentiæ. They are to be 10 chose according to the persons we make speak, or the things we speak of. Some are of the camp, some of the council-board, some of the shop, some of the sheepcot, some of the pulpit, some of the bar, etc. And herein is seen their elegance and propriety, when we use them fitly 15 and draw them forth to their just strength and nature by way of translation or metaphor. But in this translation we must only serve necessity (nam temere nihil transfertur a prudenti) or commodity, which is a kind of necessity: that is, when we either absolutely want a word to express 20 by, and that is necessity; or when we have not so fit a word, and that is commodity; as when we avoid loss by it, and escape obsceneness, and gain in the grace and property which helps significance. Metaphors far-fet hinder to be understood; and affected, lose their grace. 25 Or when the person fetcheth his translations from a wrong place as if a privy councillor should at the table take his metaphor from a dicing-house, or ordinary, or a vintner's vault; or a justice of peace draw his similitudes from the mathematics; or a divine from a bawdy-house, or taverns ; 30 or a gentleman of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, or the Midland, should fetch all the illustrations to his country neighbors from shipping, and tell them of the main-sheet and the bowline. Metaphors are thus many times deformed, as in him that said, Castratam morte 35 Africani rempublicam; and another, Stercus curiæ Glau

ciam, and Cana nive conspuit Alpes. All attempts that are new in this kind, are dangerous, and somewhat hard, before they be softened with use. A man coins not a new word without some peril and less fruit; for if it happen to be received, the praise is but moderate; if refused, the s 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.

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Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the public stamp makes the current money. But we must to 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, 15 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 gracelike newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest 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, 2 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 color, as we gather flowers to straw 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 delights, yet 35

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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 5 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 15 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 endeavor, 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.

Tacitus, The Laconic, Suetonius, Seneca, and Fabianus. The brief style is that which expresseth much in little; the concise style, which expresseth not enough 25 but leaves somewhat to be understood; the abrupt style, which hath many breaches, and doth not seem to end but fall. The congruent and harmonious fitting of parts in a sentence hath almost the fastening and force of knitting and connection; as in stones well squared, 30 which will rise strong a great way without mortar.

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 35 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. 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. 1 Obscuritas offundit tenebras. Whatsoever loseth the grace to 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

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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 Populi] 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

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 éoxnuarioμévn, or figured language.

ΙΟ

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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 struct ture, and harmony of it.

Structura et s
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