He doth not say it was so, but seemed to be so.  Although it be somewhat incredible, that is excused before it be spoken.  But there are hyperboles which will become one language, that will by no means admit another.  As Eos esse P. R. exercitus, qui caelum possint perrumpere, {118a} who would say with us, but a madman?  Therefore we must consider in every tongue what is used, what received.  Quintilian warns us, that in no kind of translation, or metaphor, or allegory, we make a turn from what we began; as if we fetch the original of our metaphor from sea and billows, we end not in flames and ashes:  it is a most foul inconsequence.  Neither must we draw out our allegory too long, lest either we make ourselves obscure, or fall into affectation, which is childish.  But why do men depart at all from the right and natural ways of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it fitter, to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers.  Or to avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields.  And all this is called [Greek text] or figured language.

Oratio imago animi.—­Language most shows a man:  Speak, that I may see thee.  It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind.  No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.  Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.

Structura et statura, sublimis, humilis, pumila.—­Some men are tall and big, so some language is high and great.  Then the words are chosen, their sound ample, the composition full, the absolution plenteous, and poured out, all grave, sinewy, and strong.  Some are little and dwarfs; so of speech, it is humble and low, the words poor and flat, the members and periods thin and weak, without knitting or number.

Mediocris plana et placida.—­The middle are of a just stature.  There the language is plain and pleasing; even without stopping, round without swelling:  all well-turned, composed, elegant, and accurate.

Vitiosa oratio, vasta—­tumens—­enormis—­affectata—­abjecta.—­The vicious language is vast and gaping, swelling and irregular:  when it contends to be high, full of rock, mountain, and pointedness; as it affects to be low, it is abject, and creeps, full of bogs and holes.  And according to their subject these styles vary, and lose their names:  for that which is high and lofty, declaring excellent matter, becomes vast and tumorous, speaking of petty and inferior things; so that which was even and apt in a mean and plain subject, will appear most poor and humble in a high argument.  Would you not laugh to meet a great councillor of State in a flat cap, with his trunk hose, and a hobbyhorse cloak, his gloves under his girdle, and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown, furred with sables?  There is a certain latitude in these things, by which we find the degrees.