He begins by drawing our attention to the fact, that words are not the
only representatives of things, and he says 'this is not an
inconsiderable thing, _for while we are treating of the coin of
intellectual_ matters, _it is_ pertinent to observe, that as money may
be made of other materials besides gold and silver, so other marks of
things may be invented besides words and letters.' And by way of
illustrating the advantages of such a means of tradition, under
certain disadvantages of position, he adduces as much in point, the
case of Periander, who being consulted how to preserve a tyranny
_newly usurped_, bid the messenger _attend_ and _report what he saw
him do_, and went into his garden and _topped all the highest
flowers_; signifying that it consisted in the cutting off and keeping
low of the nobility and grandees. And thus other apparently trivial,
purely purposeless and sportive actions, might have a traditionary
character of no small consequence, if the messenger were only given to
understand beforehand, that the acts thus performed were axiomatical,
pointing to rules of practice, that the forms were representative
forms, whose '_real_' exhibition of the particular natures in
question, was much more vivid and effective, much more memorable as
well as _safe_, than any abstract statement of that philosophic truth,
which is the truth of direction, could be.
As to the '_accidents_ of words, which are measure, sound, and
elevation of accent, and the sweetness and harshness of them,' even
here the new science suggests a new rule, which is not without a
remarkable relation to _that 'particular method of tradition_,' which
the author tells us in another place, some parts of his new science
required. 'This subject,' he says, 'involves some curious observations
in rhetoric, but chiefly POESY, as we consider it in respect of the
verse, and _not of the argument_; wherein, though men in learned
tongues do tie themselves to _the ancient measures_, yet in modern
languages it seemeth to me as free to make _new measures of verses as
of dances_.' The spirit of the new philosophy had a chance to speak
out there for once, without intending, of course, to transcend that
particular limit just laid down, namely, the measure of _verses_, and
with that literal limitation, to the form of the verse, the remark is
sufficiently suggestive; for he brings out from it at the next step,
in the way of formula, the new principle, the new Shaksperian
principle of rhetoric: _In these things_ the sense is better judge
than the art. And of the servile expressing antiquity in an unlike and
an unfit subject, it is well said:--'_Quod tempore antiquum videtur,
id incongruitate est maxime novum_.''
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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