a young gentlewoman, who was
in her chamber making her selfe vnready. Mistresse will ye geue me leaue
to vnlace your peticote, meaning (perchance) the other thing that might
follow such vnlacing. In the olde time, whosoeuer was allowed to vndoe his
Ladies girdle, he might lie with her all night: wherfore the taking of a
womans maydenhead away, was said to vndoo her girdle. _Virgineam dissoluit
zonan_, saith the Poet, conceiuing out of a thing precedent, a thing
subsequent. This may suffice for the knowledge of this figure [_quicke
conceit._]

_CHAP. XIX._

_Of Figures sententious, otherwise called Rhetoricall_.

Now if our presupposall be true that the Poet is of all other the most
auncient Orator, as he that by good & pleasant perswasions first reduced
the wilde and beastly people into publicke societies and ciuilitie of
life, insinuating vnto them, vnder fictions with sweete and coloured
speeches, many wholesome lessons and doctrines, then no doubt there is
nothing so fitte for him, as to be furnished with all the figures that be
_Rhetoricall_, and such as do most beautifie language with eloquence &
sententiousnes. Therefore since we haue already allowed to our maker his
_auricular_ figures, and also his _sensable_, by which all the words and
clauses of his meeters are made as well tunable to the eare, as stirring
to the minde, we are now by order to bestow vpon him those other figures
which may execute both offices, and all at once to beautifie and geue
sence and sententiousnes to the whole language at large. So as if we
should intreate our maker to play also the Orator, and whether it be to
pleade, or to praise, or to aduise, that in all three cases he may vtter,
and also perswade both copiously and vehemently.

And your figures rhethoricall, besides their remembered ordinarie vertues,
that is, sententiousnes, & copious amplification, or enlargement of
language, doe also conteine a certaine sweet and melodious manner of
speech, in which respect, they may, after a sort, be said _auricular_:
because the eare is no lesse rauished with their currant tune, than the
mind is with their sententiousnes. For the eare is properly but an
instrument of conueyance for the minde, to apprehend the sence by the
sound. And our speech is made melodious or harmonicall, not onely by
strayned tunes, as those of _Musick_, but also by choise of smoothe words:
and thus, or thus, marshalling them in their comeliest construction