, _method_, _methodical_, _placation_,
_function_, _assubtiling_, _refining_, _compendious_, _prolix_,
_figurative_, _inveigle_, a term borrowed of our common lawyers:
_impression_, also a new term, but well expressing the matter, and more
than our English word:" _penetrate_, _penetrable_, _indignity_ in the
sense of unworthiness, and a few more[110]. The whole enumeration is
curious, and strikingly exhibits the state of language at this epoch,
when the rapid advancement of letters and of all the arts of social life
was creating a daily want of new terms, which writers in all classes and
individuals in every walk of life regarded themselves as authorized to
supply at their own discretion, in any manner and from any sources most
accessible to them, whether pure or corrupt, ancient or modern. The
pedants of the universities, and the travelled coxcombs of the court,
had each a neological jargon of their own, unintelligible to each other
and to the people at large; on the other hand, there were a few persons
of grave professions and austere characters, who, like Cato the Censor
during a similar period of accelerated progress in the Roman state,
prided themselves on preserving in all its unsophisticated simplicity,
or primitive rudeness, the tongue of their forefathers. The judicious
Puttenham, uniting the accuracy of scholastic learning with the
enlargement of mind acquired by long intercourse among foreign nations,
and with the polish of a courtier, places himself between the contending
parties, and with a manly disdain of every species of affectation, but
especially that of rusticity and barbarism, avails himself, without
scruple as without excess, of the copiousness of other languages to
supply the remaining deficiencies of his own.

[Note 110: Art of English Poesy, book iii.]

Several chapters of the book "of Ornament" are devoted to the discussion
of the decent, or seemly, in words and actions, and prove the author to
have been a nice observer of manners as well as a refined critic of
style. He severely censures a certain translator of Virgil, who said
"that AEneas was fain to _trudge_ out of Troy; which term better became
to be spoken of a beggar, or of a rogue, or of a lackey:" and another
who called the same hero "by fate a _fugitive_;" and who inquires "What
moved Juno to _tug_ so great a captain;" a word "the most indecent in
this case that could have been devised, since it is derived from the
cart, and signifies