No More Learning

There
the language is plain and pleasing; even without stopping, round without
swelling: all well-turned, composed, elegant, and accurate.

_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
councillor of State in a flat cap, with his trunk hose, and a hobbyhorse
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.

_Figura_. --The next thing to the stature, is the figure and feature in
language--that is, whether it be round and straight, 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.

_Cutis sive cortex_. _Compositio_. --The third is the skin and coat, which
rests in the well-joining, cementing, and coagmentation of words; 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: after these, the flesh, blood, and
bones come in question.

_Carnosa_--_adipata_--_redundans_. --We say it is a fleshy style, when there
is much periphrasis, and circuit of words; and when with more than
enough, it grows fat and corpulent: _arvina orationis_, full of suet and
tallow. It hath blood and juice when the words are proper and apt, their
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_, _quia multo plus dicit_, _quam
necesse est_.
Juice in language is somewhat less than blood; for if the
words 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, and shows like stones in a sack.

_Jejuna_, _macilenta_, _strigosa_. --_Ossea_, _et nervosa_. --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; _Ossa habent_, _et nervos_.

_Notae domini Sti. Albani de doctrin.
intemper_. --_Dictator_. --_Aristoteles_. --It was well noted by the late Lord
St. 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 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 should owe but a temporary belief, and
suspension of his own judgment, not an absolute resignation of himself,
or a perpetual captivity.