cept that the
artist-like pride in difficulty overcome has inspired him with an
unwarrantable fondness for verses arranged in eggs, roundels, lozenges,
triquets, and other ingenious figures, of which he has given diagrams
further illustrated by finished specimens of his own construction.

Great efforts had been made about this period by a literary party, of
which Stainhurst the translator of Virgil, Sidney and Gabriel Hervey
were the leaders, to introduce the Greek and Roman measures into
English verse, and Puttenham has judged it necessary to compose a
chapter thus intituled: "How, if all manner of sudden innovations were
not very scandalous, specially in the laws of any language or art, the
use of Greek and Latin feet might be brought into our vulgar poesy, and
with good grace enough." But it is evident on the whole, that he bore no
good will to this pedantic novelty.

In treating of "Ornament," our author enumerates, explains and
exemplifies all the rhetorical figures of the Greeks; adding, for the
benefit of courtiers and ladies, to whom his work is principally
addressed, translations of their names; several of which would require
to be retranslated for the benefit of the modern reader, as for example
the three following, all figures of derision:--"The fleering
frump;"--"The broad flout;"--"The privy nip." At the present day,
however, the work of Puttenham is most of all to be valued for the
remarks on language and on manners, and the contemporary anecdotes with
which it abounds, and of which some examples may be quoted. After
observing that "as it hath been always reputed a great fault to use
figurative speeches foolishly and indiscreetly, so it is esteemed no
less an imperfection in man's utterance, to have none use of figure at
all, specially in our writing and speeches public, making them but as
our ordinary talk, than which nothing can be more unsavory and far from
all civility:--'I remember,' says he, 'in the first year of queen Mary's
reign a knight of Yorkshire was chosen speaker of the parliament, a
good gentleman and wise, in the affairs of his shire, and not unlearned
in the laws of the realm; but as well for lack of some of his teeth as
for want of language, nothing well spoken, which at that time and
business was most behoveful for him to have been: this man, after he had
made his oration to the queen; which ye know is of course to be done at
the first assembly of both houses; a bencher of the Temple,