English poetry -- History and criticism; Poetry -- Early works to 1800
This word _egar_ is as much to say as to wander or stray out of the way,
which in our English is not receiued, nor these wordes _calabrois,
thebanois_, but rather _calabrian, theba_ [_filanding sisters_] for the
spinning sisters: this man deserues to be endited of pety _larceny_ for
pilfring other mens deuices from them & conuerting them to his owne vfe
for in deede as I would with euery inuentour which is the very Poet to
receaue the prayses of his inuention, so would I not haue a translatour be
ashamed to be acknowen of this translation.
[Sidenote: _Cacosintheton_, or the Misplacer.]
Another of your intollerable vices is ill disposiiton or placing of your
words in a clause or sentence: as when you will place your adiectiue after
your substantiue, thus: _Mayde faire, widow riche, priest holy_, and such
like, which though the Latines did admit, yet our English did not, as one
that said ridiculously.
_In my yeares lustie, many a deed doughtie did I._
All these remembred faults be intollerable and euer vndecent.
[Sidenote: _Cacemphaton_, or figure of foule speech.]
Now haue ye other vicious manners of speech, but sometimes and in some
cases tollerable, and chiefly to the intent to mooue laughter, and to make
sport, or to giue it some prety strange grace, and is when we vse such
wordes as may be drawen to a foule and vnshamefast sence, as one that
would say to a young woman, _I pray you let me iape with you_, which
indeed is no more but let me sport with you. Yea and though it were not
altogether so directly spoken the very sounding of the word were not
commendable, as he that in the presence of Ladies would vse this common
Prouerbe,
_Iape with me but hurt me not,
Bourde with me but shame me not._
For it may be taken in another peruerser sence by that sorte of persons
that heare it, in whose eares no such matter ought almost to be called in
memory, this vice is called by the Greekes _Cacemphaton_, we call it the
vnshamefast or figure of foule speech, which our courtly maker shall in
any case shunne, least of a Poet he become a Buffon or rayling companion,
the Latines called him _Scurra_. There is also another sort of ilfauoured
speech subiect to this vice, but resting more in the manner of the
ilshapen sound and accent, than for the matter it selfe, which may easily
be auoyded in choosing your wordes those that bee of the pleasantest
orthography, and not to rune too many like sounding words together.
[Sidenote: _Tautologia_, or the figure of selfe saying.]
Ye haue another manner of composing your metre nothing commendable,
specially if it be too much vsed, and is when our maker takes too much
delight to fill his verse with wordes beginning all with a letter, as an
English rimer that said:
_The deadly droppes of darke disdaine,
Do daily drench my due desartes._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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