pronounce it is difficult: tropes and figures are the ornaments, so little to the purpose, that it is as if a woman, when painting herself, instead of putting the rouge on her cheeks, should apply it to her nose, forehead and ears. Transpositions may be allowed, and there are common examples, but they must be appropriate. Boscan, Garcilaso, and Herrera use them. Look at the elegance, softness, and beauty of the divine Herrera, worthy of imitation and admiration! for, it is not to enrich a language, to reject its natural idiom, and adopt instead phrases borrowed from a foreign tongue; but, now, they write in the style of the curate who asked his servant for the "anserine reed," telling her that "the Ethiopian licour was wanting in the cornelian vase." These people do not attend to clearness or dignity of style, but to the novelty of these exquisite modes of expression, in which there is neither truth nor propriety, nor enlargement of the powers of language; but an odious invention that renders it barbarous, imitated from one who might have been an object of just admiration to us all."[108] In addition to these grave and reasonable arguments, Lope attacked the culto style with ridicule, better suited to explode the would-be invention of the unintelligible. In several plays he alludes to it with good humoured raillery. In one of them, a cavalier desirous of making use of the talents of a poet to write for him, asks-- _Cav._ A plain or polished bard?[109] _Poet._ Refined my style. _Cav._ My secrets then remain with me to write. _Poet._ Your secrets? Why? _Cav._ For, with refinement penned. Their meaning sure no soul shall comprehend.[110] In another play, a lady describing her rival, ridicules her as, "She who writes in that high polished style, That language so charmingly Greek, Which never was heard in Castile, And her mother ne'er taught her to speak."[111] In addition to these quotations, there are many more chance arrows let fly at the absurdity, in his volume of burlesque poetry, written under the name of Tomé de Burguillos, in the shape of parodies on this style. We select one which however ridiculous it reads, is a very moderate representation of the bombast Gongora brought into fashion. "TO A COMB, THE POET NOT KNOWING WHETHER IT WAS OF BOX OR IVORY. "Sail through the red waves of the sea of love, O, bark of Barcelona, and between The billows of those ringlets proudly move, And now be hidden there, and now be seen! What golden surges, Love, who lurks beneath, Weaves with the windings of that splendid hair! Be grateful for thy bliss, and leave him there, In joyance unmolested by thy teeth. O tusk of elephant, or limb of box, Gently unravel thou her tangled locks, Gently the windings of those curls unfold, Like the sun's rays, in parallels arrange them, And through the labyrinth shape thy paths of gold, Ere yet to silver envious time shall change them."[112]