enizens never think they
move with due lustre, until they have adopted a form of expression, as
well as a system of manners, different from that which is proper to
mankind at large. In Elizabeth's reign, the court language was formed on
the plan of one Lillie, a pedantic courtier, who wrote a book, entitled
"Euphues and his England, or the Anatomy of Wit;"[3] which quality he
makes to consist in the indulgence of every monstrous and overstrained
conceit, that can be engendered by a strong memory and a heated brain,
applied to the absurd purpose of hatching unnatural conceits.[4] It
appears, that this fantastical person had a considerable share in
determining the false taste of his age, which soon became so general,
that the tares which sprung from it are to be found even among the
choicest of the wheat. Shakespeare himself affords us too many instances
of this fashionable heresy in wit; and he, who could create new worlds
out of his own imagination descended to low, and often ill-timed puns
and quibbles. This was not an evil to be cured by the accession of our
Scottish James, whose qualifications as a punster were at least equal to
his boasted _king-craft._[5] The false taste, which had been
gaining ground even in the reign of Elizabeth, now overflowed the whole
kingdom with the impetuosity of a land-flood. These outrages upon
language were committed without regard to time and place. They were held
good arguments at the bar, though Bacon sat on the woolsack; and
eloquence irresistible by the most hardened sinner, when King or Corbet
were in the pulpit.[6] Where grave and learned professions set the
example, the poets, it will readily be believed, ran headlong into an
error, for which they could plead such respectable example. The
affectation "of the word" and "of the letter," for alliteration was
almost as fashionable as punning, seemed, in some degree, to bring back
English composition to the barbarous rules of the ancient Anglo-Saxons,
the merit of whose poems consisted, not in the ideas, but in the quaint
arrangement of the words, and the regular recurrence of some favourite
sound or letter.

This peculiar taste for twisting and playing upon words, instead of
applying them to their natural and proper use, was combined with the
similar extravagance of those whom Dr. Johnson has entitled Metaphysical
Poets. This class of authors used the same violence towards images and
ideas which had formerly been applied to words; i