No More Learning

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 strew 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! _Quae per salebras_, _altaque saxa cadunt_. {114a}
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 of 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.

_De Stylo_. --_Tracitus_. --_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. 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, which will rise strong a great way without
mortar.

_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_. {116a}) 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.