the midst the stream bears us.  And this is attained by custom, more than care of diligence.  We must express readily and fully, not profusely.  There is difference between a liberal and prodigal hand.  As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it, is of no less praise, when the argument doth ask it.  Either of them hath their fitness in the place.  A good man always profits by his endeavour, by his help, yea, when he is absent; nay, when he is dead, by his example and memory.  So good authors in their style:  a strict and succinct style is that where you can take away nothing without loss, and that loss to be manifest.

De Stylo.—­Tracitus.—­The Laconic.—­Suetonius.—­Seneca and Fabianus.—­The brief style is that which expresseth much in little; the concise style, which expresseth not enough, but leaves somewhat to be understood; the abrupt style, which hath many breaches, and doth not seem to end, but fall.  The congruent and harmonious fitting of parts in a sentence hath almost the fastening and force of knitting and connection; as in stones well squared, which will rise strong a great way without mortar.

Periodi.—­Obscuritas offundit tenebras.—­Superlatio.—­Periods are beautiful when they are not too long; for so they have their strength too, as in a pike or javelin.  As we must take the care that our words and sense be clear, so if the obscurity happen through the hearer’s or reader’s want of understanding, I am not to answer for them, no more than for their not listening or marking; I must neither find them ears nor mind.  But a man cannot put a word so in sense but something about it will illustrate it, if the writer understand himself; for order helps much to perspicuity, as confusion hurts. (Rectitudo lucem adfert; obliquitas et circumductio offuscat. {116a}) We should therefore speak what we can the nearest way, so as we keep our gait, not leap; for too short may as well be not let into the memory, as too long not kept in.  Whatsoever loseth the grace and clearness, converts into a riddle; the obscurity is marked, but not the value.  That perisheth, and is passed by, like the pearl in the fable.  Our style should be like a skein of silk, to be carried and found by the right thread, not ravelled and perplexed; then all is a knot, a heap.  There are words that do as much raise a style as others can depress it.  Superlation and over-muchness amplifies; it may be above faith, but never above a mean.  It was ridiculous in Cestius, when he said of Alexander: 

“Fremit oceanus, quasi indignetur, quod terras relinquas.” {117a}

But propitiously from Virgil: 

“Credas innare revulsas
Cycladas.” {117b}