I am not able with any wordes sufficiently to expresse your Maiesties regall vertues, your kingly merites also towardes vs your people and realme are so exceeding many, as your prayses therefore are infinite, your honour aud renowne euerlasting: And yet all this if we shall measure it by the rule of exact veritie, is but an vntruth, yet a more cleanely commendation then was maister Speakers. Neuerthelesse as I said before if we fall a praysing, specially of our mistresses vertue, bewtie, or other good parts, we be allowed now and then to ouer-reach a little by way of comparison as he that said thus in prayse of his Lady. _Giue place ye louers here before, That spent your boasts and braggs in vaine: My Ladies bewtie passeth more, The best of your I dare well fayne: Then doth the sunne the candle light, Or brightest day the darkest night._ And as a certaine noble Gentlewoman lamenting at the vnkindnesse of her louer said very pretily in this figure. _But since it will no better be, My teares shall neuer blin: To moist the earth in such degree, That I may drowne therein: That by my death all men may say, Lo weemen are as true as they._ [Sidenote: _Periphrasis_, or the Figure of ambage.] Then haue ye the figure _Periphrasis_, holding somewhat of the disembler, by reason of a secret intent not appearing by the words, as when we go about the bush, and will not in one or a few words expresse that thing which we desire to haue knowen, but do chose rather to do it by many words, as we our selues wrote of our Soueraigne Lady thus: _Whom Princes serue, and Realmes obay, And greatest of Bryton kings begot: She came abroade euen yesterday, When such as saw her, knew her not._ And the rest that followeth, meaning her Maiesties person, which we would seeme to hide leauing her name vnspoken to the intent the reader should gesse at it: neuerthelesse vpon the matter did so manifestly disclose it, as any simple iudgement might easily perceiue by whom it was ment, that is by Lady _Elizabeth, Queene of England and daughter to king Henry the eight_, and therein resteth the dissimulation. It is one of the gallantest figures among the poetes so it be vsed discretely and in his right kinde, but many of these makers that be not halfe their craftes maisters, do very often abuse it and also many waies. For if the thing or person they go about to describe by circumstance, be by the writers improuidence otherwise bewrayed, it looseth the grace of a figure, as he that said: _The tenth of March when Aries receiued, Dan Phoebus raies into his horned hed._