English poetry -- History and criticism; Poetry -- Early works to 1800
So if by way of fiction we will seem to speake in another mans person, as
if king _Henry_ the eight were aliue, and should say of the towne of
Bulleyn, what we by warretime hazard of our person hardly obteined, our
young sonne without any peril at all, for little mony deliuered vp againe.
Or if we should faine king _Edward_ the thirde, vnderstanding how his
successour Queene _Marie_ had lost the towne of Calays by negligence,
should say: That which the sword wanne, the distaffe hath lost. This
manner of speech is by the figure _Dialogismus_, or the right reasoner.
[Sidenote: _Gnome_, or the Director.]
In waightie causes and for great purposes, wise perswaders vse graue &
weighty speaches, specially in matter of aduise or counsel, for which
purpose there is a maner of speach to alleage textes or authorities of
wittie sentence, such as smatch morall doctrine and teach wisedome and
good behauiour, by the Greeke originall we call him the _directour_, by
the Latin he is called _sententia_: we may call him the _sage sayer_,
thus.
[Sidenote: _Sententia_, or the Sage sayer.]
_Nature bids vs as a louing mother,
To loue our selues first and next to loue another.
The Prince that couets all to know and see,
Had neede full milde and patient to bee.
Nothing stickes faster by us as appeares,
Then that which we learne in our tender yeares._
And that which our foueraigne Lady wrate in defiance of fortune.
_Neuer thinke you fortune can beare the sway,
Where vertues force, can cause her to obay._
Heede must be taken that such rules or sentences be choisly
made and not often vsed least excesse breed lothsomnesse.
[Sidenote: _Sinathrismus_, or the Heaping figure.]
Arte and good pollicie moues vs many times to be earnest in our speach,
and then we lay on such load and so go to it by heapes as if we would
winne the game by multitude of words & speaches, not all of one but of
diuers matter and sence, for which cause the Latines called it _Congeries_
and we the _heaping figure_, as he that said
_To muse in minde how faire, how wise, how good,
How braue, how free, how curteous and how true,
My Lady is doth but inflame my blood._
Or thus.
_I deeme, I dreame, I do, I tast, I touch,
Nothing at all but smells of perfit blisse_.
And thus by maister _Edward Diar_, vehement swift & passionatly.
_But if my faith my hope, my loue my true intent,
My libertie, my seruice vowed, my time and all be spent,
In vaine, &c._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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