[Sidenote: Prosopopeia, or the Counterfait in personation.] But if ye wil faine any person with such features, qualities & conditions, or if ye wil attribute any humane quality, as reason or speech to dombe creatures or other insensible things, & do study (as one may say) to giue them a humane person, it is not Prosopographia, but Prosopopeia, because it is by way of fiction, & no prettier examples can be giuen to you thereof, than in the Romant of the rose translated out of French by Chaucer, describing the persons of auarice, enuie, old age, and many others, whereby much moralities is taught.
[Sidenote: Cronographia, or the Counterfait time.] So if we describe the time or season of the yeare, as winter, summer, haruest, day, midnight, noone, euening, or such like: we call such description the counterfait time. Cronographia examples are euery where to be found.
[Sidenote: Topographia, or the Counterfait place.] And if this description be of any true place, citie, castell, hill, valley or sea, & such like: we call it the counterfait place Topographia, or if ye fayne places vntrue, as heauen, hell, paradise, the house of fame, the pallace of the sunne, the denne of sheepe, and such like which ye shall see in Poetes: so did Chaucer very well describe the country of Saluces in Italie, which ye may see, in his report of the Lady Grysyll.
[Sidenote: Pragmatographia, or the Counterfait action.] But if such description be made to represent the handling of any busines with the circumstances belonging therevnto as the manner of a battell, a feast, a marriage, a buriall or any other matter that heth in feat and actiutie: we call it then the counterfeit action [Pragmatographia.]
In this figure the Lord Nicholas Vaux a noble gentleman, and much
delighted in vulgar making, & a man otherwise of no great learning but
hauing herein a maruelous facillitie, made a dittie representing the
battayle and assault of Cupide, so excellently well, as for the gallant
and propre application of his fiction in euery part, I cannot choose but
set downe the greatest part of his ditty, for in truth it can not be
amended.
When Cupid scaled first the fort,
Wherein my hart lay wounded sore,
The battrie was of such a sort,
That I must yeeld or die therefore.
There saw I loue vpon the wall,
How he his banner did display,
Alarme alarme he gan to call,
And had his souldiers keepe aray.
The armes the which that Cupid bare,
We pearced harts with teares besprent:
In siluer and sable to declare
The stedfast loue he alwaies meant.
There might you see his band all drest
In colours like to white and blacke,
With pouder and with pellets prest,
To bring them forth to spoile and sacke,
Good will the master of the shot,
Stood in the Rampire braue and proude,
For expence of pouder he spared not,
Assault assault to crie aloude.
There might you heare the Canons rore,
Eche peece discharging a louers looke, &c.
[Sidenote: Omiosis, or Resemblance.] As well to a good maker and Poet as to an excellent perswader in prose, the figure of Similitude is very necessary by which we not onely bewtifie our tale, but also very much inforce & inlarge it. I say inforce because no one thing more preuaileth with all ordinary iudgements than perswasion by similitude. Now because there are sundry sorts of them, which also do worke after diuerse fashions in the hearers of conceits, I will set them foorth by a triple diuision, exempting the generall Similitude as their common Auncestour, and I will cal him by the name of Resemblance without any addition, from which I deriue three other sorts: and giue euery one his particular name, as Resemblance by Pourtrait or Imagery, which the Greeks call Icon, Resemblance morall or misticall, which they call Parabola, & Resemblance by example, which they call Paradigma, and first we will speake of the general resemblance, or bare similitude, which may be thus spoken. But as the watrie showres delay the raging wind, So doeth good hope cleane put away dispaire out of my mind.
And in this other likening the forlorne louer to a striken deer.
Then as the striken deere, withdrawes himselfe alone,
So do I seeke some secret place, where I may make my mone.
And in this of ours where we liken glory to a shadow.
As the shadow (his nature beying such,)
Followeth the body, whether it will or no,
So doeth glory, refuse it nere so much,
Wait on vertue, be it in weale or wo.
And euen as the shadow in his kind,
What time it beares the carkas company,
Goth oft before, and often comes behind:
So doth renowne, that raiseth us so hye,
Come to vs quicke, sometime not till we dye.
But the glory, that growth not ouer fast,
Is euer great, and likeliest long to last.
Againe in a ditty to a mistresse of ours, where we likened the cure of
Loue to Achilles launce.
The launce so bright, that made Telephus wound,
The same rusty, salued the sore againe,
So may my meede (Madame) of you redownd,
Whose rigour was first suthour of my paine.
The Tuskan poet vseth this Resemblance, inuring as well by
Dissimilitude as Similitude, likening himselfe (by Implication) to
the flie, and neither to the eagle nor to the owle: very well Englished by
Sir Thomas Wiat after his fashion and by myselfe thus:
There be some fowles of sight so prowd and starke,
As can behold the sunne, and neuer shrinke,
Some so feeble, as they are faine to winke,
Or neuer come abroad till it be darke:
Others there be so simple, as they thinke,
Because it shines, so sport them in the fire,
And feele vnware, the wrong of the desire,
Fluttring amidst the flame that doth them burne,
Of this last ranke (alas) am I aright,
For in my ladies lookes to stand or turne
I haue no power, ne find place to retire,
Where any darke may shade me from her sight
But to her beames so bright whilst I aspire,
I perish by the bane of my delight.