the meane and
low, as we haue said speaking of concord and measure. But generally the
high stile is disgraced and made foolish and ridiculous by all wordes
affected, counterfait, and puffed vp, as it were a windball carrying more
countenance then matter, and can not be better resembled then to these
midsommer pageants in London, where to make the people wonder are set
forth great and vglie Gyants marching as if they were aliue, and armed at
all points, but within they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow,
which the shrewd boyes vnderpeering, do guilefully discouer and turne to a
great derision: also all darke and vnaccustomed wordes, or rusticall and
homely, and sentences that hold too much of the mery & light, or infamous
& vnshamefast are to be accounted of the same sort, for such speaches
become not Princes, nor great estates, nor them that write of their doings
to vtter or report and intermingle with the graue and weightie matters.

_CHAP. VII._

_Of Figures and figuratuie speaches_.

As figures be the instruments of ornament in euery language, so be they
also in a sorte abuses or rather trespasses in speach, because they passe
the ordinary limits of common vtterance, and be occupied of purpose to
deceiue the eare and also the minde, drawing it from plainnesse and
simplicitie to a certaine doublenesse, whereby our talke is the more
guilefull & abusing, for what els is your _Metaphor_ but an inuersion of
sence by transport; your _allegorie_ by a duplicitie of meaning or
dissimulation vnder couert and darke intendments: one while speaking
obscurely and in riddle called _AEnigma_: another while by common prouerbe
or Adage called _Paremia_: then by merry skoffe called _Ironia_: then by
bitter tawnt called _Sarcasmus_: then by periphrase or circumlocution when
all might be said in a word or two: then by incredible comparison giuing
credit, as by your _Hyperbole_, and many other waies seeking to inueigle
and appassionate the mind: which thing made the graue iudges _Areopagites_
(as I find written) to forbid all manner of figuratiue speaches to be vsed
before them in their consistorie of Iustice, as meere illusions to the
minde, and wresters of vpright iudgement, saying that to allow such manner
of forraine & coulored talke to make the iudges affectioned, were all one
as if the carpenter before he began to square his timber would make his
squire crooked: in so much as the straite and vpright mind of a Iudge