Scarcely had corruption from this source ceased to violate the purity and propriety of our language, when the fashion of interlarding composition with a perpetual series of Latin quotations commenced; a custom which continued until the close of the reign of James, and gave to the style of this period a complexion the most heterogeneous and absurd, being, in fact, composed of two languages, half Latin and half English. Of this barbarous and pedantic habit, the works of Bishop Andrews afford the most flagrant instance; an example which, we have reason to regret, was followed too closely by Robert Burton, who, when he trusts to his native tongue, has written in a style at once simple and impressive.
These affectations, arising from the use of inkhorn terms, of antithesis, alliteration, arbitrary orthography, and the perpetual intermixture of Latin phraseology, have been deservedly and powerfully ridiculed by Sir Philip Sidney and Shakspeare; by the former under the character of Rombus, a village schoolmaster, in a masque presented to Her Majesty in Wansted Garden, and by the latter in the person of Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost. The satire of Sir Philip is supported with humour; Her Majesty is supposed to have parted, by her presence, a violent contest between two shepherds for the affection of the Lady of the May, on which event Rombus comes forward with a learned oration.
"Now the thunder-thumping Jove transfused his dotes into your excellent formositie, which have with your resplendent beames thus segregated the enmity of these rurall animals; I am Potentissima Domina, a Schoole-master, that is to say, a Pedagogue, one not a little versed in the disciplinating of the juvenall frie, wherin (to my laud I say it) I use such geometrical proportions, as neither wanted mansuetude nor correction, for so it is described.
"Parcare subjectos, et debellire superbos."
"Yet hath not the pulchritude of my vertues protected me from the contaminating hands of these Plebeians; for coming solummodo, to have parted their sanguinolent fray, they yeelded me no more
reverence, than if I had been some Pecorius Asinus. I, even I, that am, who am I? Dixi verbus sapiento satum est. But what said that Troian Æneas, when he sojourned in the surging sulkes of the sandiferous seas, Hæc olim memonasse juvebit. Well, well, ad propositos revertebo, the puritie of the verity is that a certaine Pulchra puella profecto, elected and constituted by the integrated determination of all this topographicall region as the soveraigne Ladie of this Dame Maies month, hath beene quodammodo hunted, as you would say, pursued by two, a brace, a couple, a cast of young men, to whom the crafty coward Cupid had inquam delivered his dire-dolorous dart;" here the May-Lady interfering calls him a tedious fool, and dismisses him; upon which in anger he exclaims,—
"O Tempori, O Moribus! in profession a childe, in dignitie a woman, in yeares a Ladie, in cæteris a maide, should thus turpifie the reputation of my doctrine, with the superscription of a foole, O Tempori, O Moribus!"[445:A]
The Schoolmaster of Shakspeare appears, from the researches of Warburton and Dr. Farmer, to have been intended as a satire upon John Florio, whose First Fruits, or Dialogues in Italian and English, were published in 1578, his Second in 1591, and his "Worlde of Wordes" in 1598. He was ludicrously pedantic, dogmatic, and assuming, and gave the first affront to the dramatic poets of his day, by affirming that "the plaies that they plaie in England, are neither right comedies, nor right tragedies; but representations of histories without any decorum."[445:B] The character of Holofernes, however, while it caricatures the peculiar folly and ostentation of Florio, holds up to ridicule, at the same time, the general pedantry and literary affectations of the age; and amongst these very particularly the absurd innovations which Lilly had introduced. Sir Nathaniel, praising the specimen of alliteration which Holofernes exhibits in his "extemporal epitaph," calls it "a rare talent;" upon which the
schoolmaster comments on the compliment in a manner which pretty accurately describes the fantastic genius of the author of Euphues:—"This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater; and deliver'd upon the mellowing of occasion;" and subsequently in a strain of good sense not very common from the mouth of this imperious pedant, he still more definitely points out the foppery of Lilly both in style and pronunciation,—"He is too picked," he remarks, "too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.—He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such insociable and point devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce, debt; d, e, b, t; not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, vocatur nebour; neigh, abbreviated, ne: This is abhominable, (which he would call abominable,) it insinuateth me of insanie; Ne intelligis domine? to make frantick, lunatick."[446:A]
Yet, notwithstanding these various attempts, all tending to corrupt the purity of our language, and originating from the pedantic taste of the age, and from a love of novelty and over-refinement, English style more rapidly improved during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, than has been the case in any previous, or subsequent period of our annals. To establish this assertion, we have only to appeal to the great writers of this era, and among these, it will be sufficient to mention the names of Ralegh, Hooker, Bacon and Daniel, masters of a style, at once vigorous, perspicuous, and often richly modulated. If to this brief catalogue, though adequate to our purpose, we add the prose of Ascham, Sidney, Southwell, Knolles, Hakewell, and Peacham, still omitting many authors of much merit, it may justly be affirmed, that no specimens of excellence in dignified and serious