of Iustice, as meere illusions to the minde, and wresters of vpright iudgement, saying that to allow such manner of forraine & coulored talke to make the iudges affectioned, were all one as if the carpenter before he began to square his timber would make his squire crooked:  in so much as the straite and vpright mind of a Iudge is the very rule of iustice till it be peruerted by affection.  This no doubt is true and was by them grauely considered:  but in this case because our maker or Poet is appointed not for a iudge but rather for a pleader, and that of pleasant & louely causes and nothing perillous, such as be those for the triall of life, limme, or liuelyhood; and before iudges neither sower nor seuere, but in the care of princely dames, yong ladies, gentlewomen and courtiers, beyng all for the most part either meeke of nature, or of pleasant humour, and that all his abuses tende but to dispose the hearers to mirth and sollace by pleasant conueyance and efficacy of speach, they are not in truth to be accompted vices but for vertues in the poetical science very commendable.  On the other side, such trespasses in speach (whereof there be many) as geue dolour and disliking to the eare & minde, by any foule indecencie or disproportion of sound, situation, or sence, they be called and not without cause the vicious parts or rather heresies of language:  wherefore the matter resteth much in the definition and acceptance of this word [decorum] for whatsoeuer is so, cannot iustly be misliked.  In which respect it may come to passe that what the Grammarian setteth downe for a viciositee in speach may become a vertue and no vice, contrariwise his commended figure may fall into a reprochfull fault:  the best and most assured remedy whereof is, generally to follow the saying of Bias:  ne quid nimis.  So as in keeping measure, and not exceeding nor shewing any defect in the vse of his figures, he cannot lightly do amisse, if he haue besides (as that must needes be) a speciall regard to all circumstances of the person, place, time, cause and purpose he hath in hand, which being well obserued it easily auoideth all the recited inconueniences, and maketh now and then very vice goe for a formall virtue in the excrcise of this Arte.

  CHAP.  VIII.

Sixe pointes set downe by our learned forefathers for a generall regiment of all good vtterance be it by mouth or by writing.

Bvt before there had bene yet any precise obseruation made of figuratiue speeches, the first learned artificers of language considered that the bewtie and good grace of vtterance rested in no many pointes:  and whatsoeuer transgressed those lymits, they counted it for vitious; and thereupon did set downe a manner of regiment in all speech generally to be obserued, consisting in sixe pointes.  First they said that there ought to be kept a decent proportion in our writings and speach, which they termed Analogia. Secondly, that it ought to be voluble vpon the tongue, and tunable