use, concerning diet, health, and conversation, than Cato, Theognis, or all the Greeks and Latins can show us in that kind of teaching? and that in so few words, both for delight to the ear and the hold of memory, as they are to be embraced of all modest readers that study to know and not to deprave.

Methinks it is a strange imperfection that men should thus overrun the estimation of good things with so violent a censure, as though it must please none else because it likes not them: whereas Oportet arbitratores esse non contradictores eos qui verum indicaturi sunt, saith Aristotle, though he could not observe it himself. And mild charity tells us :

Non ego paucis

Offendar maculis quas aut incuria fudit
Aut humana parum cavit natura.

For all men have their errors, and we must take the best of their powers, and leave the rest as not appertaining unto us.

Ill customs are to be left.' I grant it; but I see not how that can be taken for an ill custom which nature hath thus ratified, all nations received, time so long confirmed, the effects such as it performs those offices of motion for which it is employed; delighting the ear, stirring the heart, and satisfying the judgement in such sort as I doubt whether ever single numbers will do in our climate, if they show no more work of wonder than yet we see. And if ever they prove to become anything, it must be by the approbation of many ages that must give them their strength for any operation, as before the world will feel where the pulse, life, and energy lies; which now we are sure where to

have in our rhymes, whose known frame hath those due stays for the mind, those encounters of touch, as makes the motion certain, though the variety be infinite.

Nor will the general sort for whom we write (the wise being above books) taste these laboured measures but as an orderly prose when we have all done. For this kind acquaintance and continual familiarity ever had betwixt our ear and this cadence is grown to so intimate a friendship, as it will now hardly ever be brought to miss it. For be the verse never so good, never so full, it seems not to satisfy nor breed that delight, as when it is met and combined with a like sounding accent which seems as the jointure without which it hangs loose, and cannot subsist, but runs wildly on, like a tedious fancy without a close. Suffer then the world to enjoy that which it knows, and what it likes seeing that whatsoever force of words doth move, delight, and sway the affections of men, in what Scythian sort soever it be disposed or uttered, that is true number, measure, eloquence, and the perfection of speech: which I said hath as many shapes as there be tongues or nations in the world, nor can with all the tyrannical rules of idle rhetoric be governed otherwise than custom and present observation will allow. And being now the trim and fashion of the times, to suit a man otherwise cannot but give a touch of singularity; for when he hath all done, he hath but found other clothes to the same body, and peradventure not so fitting as the former. But could our adversary hereby set up the music of our times to a higher note of judgement and discretion, or could these new laws of words better our im

perfections, it were a happy attempt; but when hereby we shall but as it were change prison, and put off these fetters to receive others, what have we gained? As good still to use rhyme and a little reason as neither rhyme nor reason; for, no doubt, as idle wits will write in that kind, as do now in this, -imitation will after, though it break her neck. Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim. And this multitude of idle writers can be no disgrace to the good; for the same fortune in one proportion or other is proper in a like season to all states in their turn; and the same unmeasurable confluence of scribblers happened when measures were most in use among the Romans, as we find by this reprehension:

Mutavit mentem populus levis, et calet uno
Scribendi studio; pueri[que] patresque severi
Fronde comas vincti cenant et carmina dictant.

So that their plenty seems to have bred the same waste and contempt as ours doth now, though it had not power to disvalue what was worthy of posterity, nor keep back the reputation of excellences destined to continue for many ages. For seeing it is matter that satisfies the judicial, appear it in what habit it will, all these pretended proportions of words, howsoever placed, can be but words, and peradventure serve but to embroil our understanding; whilst seeking to please our ear, we enthral our judgement; to delight an exterior sense, we smooth up a weak confused sense, affecting sound to be unsound, and all to seem Servum pecus, only to imitate Greeks and Latins, whose felicity in this kind might be something to themselves, to whom their own

idioma was natural; but to us it can yield no other commodity than a sound. We admire them not for their smooth-gliding words, nor their measures, but for their inventions; which treasure if it were to be found in Welsh and Irish, we should hold those languages in the same estimation; and they may thank their sword that made their tongues so famous and universal as they are. For to say truth, their verse is many times but a confused deliverer of their excellent conceits, whose scattered limbs we are fain to look out and join together, to discern the image of what they represent unto us. And even the Latins, who profess not to be so licentious as the Greeks, show us many times examples, but of strange cruelty in torturing and dismembering of words in the midst, or disjoining such as naturally should be married and march together, by setting them as far asunder as they can possibly stand: that sometimes, unless the kind reader out of his own good nature will stay them up by their measure, they will fall down into flat prose, and sometimes are no other indeed in their natural sound and then again, when you find them disobedient to their own laws, you must hold it to be licentia poetica, and so dispensable. The striving to show their changeable measures in the variety of their odes have been very painful no doubt unto them, and forced them thus to disturb the quiet stream of their words, which by a natural succession otherwise desire to follow in their due course.

But such affliction doth laboursome curiosity still lay upon our best delights (which ever must be made strange and variable), as if Art were ordained to afflict Nature, and that we could not

go but in fetters. Every science, every profession, must be so wrapped up in unnecessary intrications, as if it were not to fashion but to confound the understanding: which makes me much to distrust man, and fear that our presumption goes beyond our ability, and our curiosity is more than our judgement; labouring ever to seem to be more than we are, or laying greater burdens upon our minds than they are well able to bear, because we would not appear like other men.

And indeed I have wished that there were not that multiplicity of rhymes as is used by many in sonnets, which yet we see in some so happily to succeed, and hath been so far from hindering their inventions, as it hath begot conceit beyond expectation, and comparable to the best inventions of the world for sure in an eminent spirit, whom Nature hath fitted for that mystery, Rhyme is no impediment to his conceit, but rather gives him wings to mount, and carries him, not out of his course, but as it were beyond his power to a far happier flight. All excellences being sold us at the hard price of labour, it follows, where we bestow most thereof we buy the best success : and Rhyme, being far more laborious than loose measures (whatsoever is objected), must needs, meeting with wit and industry, breed greater and worthier effects in our language. So that, if our labours have wrought out a manumission from bondage, and that we go at liberty, notwithstanding these ties, we are no longer the slaves of Rhyme, but we make it a most excellent instrument to serve us. Nor is this certain limit observed in sonnets any tyrannical bounding of the conceit, but rather reducing it in girum and a just form,