...flatulent statement when he sees it. How about this for economy of statement and solidity of counsel ? "The chief virtue of a style is perspicuity, and nothing so vicious in it as to need an interpreter." Or this : "Our composition must be more accurate in the beginning and end than in the middle, and in...

...flatulent statement when he sees it. How about this for economy of statement and solidity of counsel ? "The chief virtue of a style is perspicuity, and nothing so vicious in it as to need an interpreter." Or this : "Our composition must be more accurate in the beginning and end than in the middle, and in...

...flatulent statement when he sees it. How about this for economy of statement and solidity of counsel ? "The chief virtue of a style is perspicuity, and nothing so vicious in it as to need an interpreter." Or this : "Our composition must be more accurate in the beginning and end than in the middle, and in...

...the Elizabethan poets, is "customary." "Custom," he explains (again making direct use of Quintilian), "is the most certain mistress of language, as the public stamp makes the current money."22 The coinage analogy suggests that by "custom" he would be understood to mean not only "common...

...claim that archaisms 'lend a kind of majesty to style', Jonson stresses the importance of 'custom': Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as...perspicuity, and nothing so vicious in it, as to need an interpreter.10 It could be objected that the glossary to The Shepheardes Calender illustrates the need...

...most certain mistress of language, as the puhlic stamp makes the current money, But we must not he too frequent with the mint, every day coining. Nor fetch words from the extreme and unnost ages, since the chief virme of a style is perspicuity, and nothing so vicious in it as to need...

...ancestors of that nicety of statement in English poetry, clearly supports the stable currency of words: "Custom is the most certain mistress of language,...be too frequent with the mint, every day coining" (Discoveries lines 2386—89). Across a few centuries, and after Valery, Philip Larkin writes in "Modesties":...

...translated from Quintilian -Jonson adds his own exhortation against the frequent coinage of new words - 'But we must not be too frequent with the mint, every day coyning' - and Quintilian's against persistent recourse to archaisms - 'Nor fetch words from the extreme...

...have found it a serious accusation: though it is true that as a " classical" critic who held that " Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the public stamp makes the current money", Jonson begins with assumptions inimical to a just appreciation of Hopkins. Unless the reader is prepared...