antiquity, and the other carefully discoursing matters of gravity and importance. For, if my memory fail not, Tully in that book, wherein he endeavoureth to set forth the pattern of a perfect orator, saith that ofttimes an ancient word maketh the style seem grave, and as it were reverend, no otherwise than we honour and reverence gray hairs for a certain religious regard, which we have of old age. Yet neither every where must old words be stuffed in, nor the common dialect and manner of speaking so corrupted thereby, that, as in old buildings, it seem disorderly and ruinous. But all as in most exquisite pictures they use to blaze and pourtray not only the dainty lineaments of beauty, but also round about it to shadow the rude thickets and craggy clifts, that, by the baseness of such parts, more excellency may accrue to the principal: for oftentimes we find ourselves, I know not how, singularly delighted with the shew of such natural rudeness, and take great pleasure in that disorderly order. Even so do those rough and harsh terms enlumine, and make more clearly to appear, the brightness of brave and glorious words. So oftentimes a discord in music maketh a comely concordance: so great delight took the worthy poet Alceus to behold a blemish in the joint of a well-shaped body. But, if any will rashly blame such his purpose in choice of old and unwonted words, him may I more justly blame and condemn, or of witless headiness in judging, or of heedless hardiness in condemning: for, not marking the compass of his bent, he will judge of the length of his cast: for in my opinion it is one especial praise of many, which are due to this Poet, that he hath laboured to restore, as to their rightful heritage, such good and natural English words, as have been long time out of use, and almost clean disherited. Which is the only cause, that our mother tongue, which truly of itself is both full enough for prose, and stately enough for verse, hath long time been counted most bare and barren of both. Which default when as some endeavoured to salve and recure, they patched up the holes with pieces and rags of other languages, borrowing here of the French, there of the Italian, every where of the Latin; not weighing how ill those tongues accord with themselves, but much worse with ours: So now they have made our English tongue a gallimaufrey, or hodgepodge of all other speeches. Other some not so well seen in the English tongue, as perhaps in other languages, if they happen to hear an old word, albeit very natural and significant, cry out straightway, that we speak no English, but gibberish, or rather such as in old time Evander's mother spake: whose first shame is, that they are not ashamed, in their own mother tongue, to be counted strangers and aliens. The second shame no less than the first, that what so they understand not, they straightway deem to be senseless, and not at all to be understood.