[Sidenote:  Amphibologia, or the Ambiguous.]
Then haue ye one other vicious speach with which we will finish this Chapter, and is when we speake or write doubtfully and that the sence may be taken two wayes, such ambiguous termes they call Amphibologia, we call it the ambiguous, or figure of sence incertaine, as if one should say Thomas Tayler saw William Tyler dronke, it is indifferent to thinke either th’one or th’other dronke.  Thus said a gentleman in our vulgar pretily notwithstanding because he did it not ignoratnly, but for the nonce.
  I sat by my Lady soundly sleeping,
  My mistresse lay by me bitterly weeping.

No man can tell by this, whether the mistresse or the man, slept or wept:  these doubtfull speaches were vsed much in the old times by their false Prophets as appeareth by the Oracles of Delphos and and of the Sybille prophecies deuised by the religious persons of those dayes to abuse the superstitious people, and to encumber their busie braynes with vaine hope or vaine feare.

Lucretius the merry Greeke reciteth a great number of them, deuised by a coosening companion one Alexander, to get himselfe the name and reputation of the God Aesculapius, and in effect all our old Brittish and Saxon prophesies be of the same sort, that turne them on which side ye will, the matter of them may be verified, neuerthelesse carryeth generally such force in the heades of fonde people, that by the comfort of those blind prophecies many insurrections and rebellions have bene stirred vp in this Realme, as that of Iacke Straw & Iacke Cade in Richard the seconds time, and in our time by a seditious fellow in Norffolke calling himself Captaine Ket and others in other places of the Realme lead altogether by certaine propheticall rymes, which might be construed two or three wayes as well as to that one whereunto the rebelles applied it:  our maker shall therefore auoyde all such ambiguous speaches vnlesse it be when he doth it for the nonce and for some purpose.

  CHAP.  XXIII.

What it is that generally makes our speach well pleasing & commeniable and of that which the Latines call Decorum.

In all things to vse decencie, is it onely that giueth euery thing his good grace & without which nothing in mans speach could seeme good or gracious, in so much as many times it makes a bewtifull figure fall into deformitie, and on th’other side a vicious speach seeme pleasaunt and bewtifull:  this decencie is therfore the line & leuell for al good makers to do their busines by.  But herein resteth the difficultie to know what this good grace is, & wherein it confitted, for peraduenture it be easier to conceaue then to expresse, we wil therfore examine it to the bottome & say:  that euery thing which pleaseth the mind or sences, & the mind by the sences as by means instrumentall, doth it for some amiable point