After suggesting a number of ways in which the tone of society in
Scotland might be raised and sweetened--one of which is the
establishment of "a free schoole and standing library in every
parish"[219]--Sir Thomas proceeds to argue in a very sensible and
convincing manner for complete union between Scotland and England. The
subject is introduced by lengthy quotations from speeches by Bacon,
delivered by him in Parliament as far back as the year 1608, in which
the advantages of such an arrangement are set forth.
The style of our author is seen at its worst in the peroration to _The
Jewel_, in which he apologizes for the comparative simplicity, if not
baldness, by which, in the opinion of some, it might be thought to be
characterised. "I could truly," he says, "have enlarged this discourse
with a choicer variety of phrase, and made it overflow the field of the
reader's understanding, with an inundation of greater eloquence; and
that one way, tropologetically, by metonymical, ironical, metaphorical,
and synecdochical instruments of elocution, in all their several kinds,
artificially affected, according to the nature of the subject, with
emphatical expressions in things of great concernment, with
catachrestical in matters of meaner moment; attended on each side
respectively with an epiplectick and exegetick modification; with
hyperbolical, either epitatically or hypocoristically, as the purpose
required to be elated or extenuated, with qualifying metaphors, and
accompanied by apostrophes; and lastly, with allegories of all sorts,
whether apologal, affabulatory, parabolary, ænigmatick, or paræmial. And
on the other part, schematologetically adorning the proposed theam with
the most especial and chief flowers of the garden of rhetorick, and
omitting no figure either of diction or sentence, that might contribute
to the ear's enchantment, or perswasion of the hearer. I could have
introduced, in case of obscurity, synonymal, exargastick, and
palilogetick elucidations; for sweetness of phrase, antimetathetick
commutations of epithets; for the vehement excitation of a matter,
exclamation in the front, and epiphonemas in the reer. I could have
used, for the promptlier stirring up of passion, apostrophal and
prosopopœiel diversions; and, for the appeasing and settling of them,
some epanorthotick revocations, and aposiopetick restraines. I could
have inserted dialogismes, displaying their interrogatory part with
communicatively pysmatick and sustentative flourishes; or proleptically,
with the refutative schemes of anticipation and subjection, and that
part which concerns the responsory, with the figures of permission and
concession. Speeches extending a matter beyond what it is, auxetically,
digressively, transitiously, by ratiocination, ætiology, circumlocution,
and other wayes, I could have made use of; as likewise with words
diminishing the worth of a thing, tapinotically, periphrastically, by
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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