Page:The Defence of Poesie - Sidney (1595).djvu/74

 of their figures and phrases, as by attentiue translation, as it were, deuoure them whole, and make them wholly theirs. For now they cast Suger and spice vppon euerie dish that is serued to the table: like those Indians, not content to weare eare-rings at the fit and naturall place of the eares, but they will thrust Iewels through their nose and lippes, because they will be sure to be fine. Tully when he was to driue out Catiline, as it were with a thunderbolt of eloquence, often vseth the figure of repitition, as Viuit & vincit, imo insenatum, Venit imo, insenatum venit, &c. Indeede enflamed, with a well grounded rage, hee would haue his words (as it were) double out of his mouth, and so do that artificially, which we see men in choller doo naturally. And we hauing noted the grace of those words, hale them in sometimes to a familiar Epistle, when it were too much choller to be chollericke. How well store of Similiter Cadenses, doth sound with the grauitie of the Pulpit, I woulde but inuoke Demosthenes soule to tell: who with a rare daintinesse vseth them. Truly they haue made mee thinke of the Sophister, that with too much subtiltie would proue two Egges three, and though he might bee counted a Sophister, had none for his labour. So these men bringing in such a kinde of eloquence, well may they obtaine an opinion of a seeming finenesse, but perswade few, which should be the ende of their finenesse. Now for similitudes in certain Printed discourses, I thinke all Herberists, all stories of beasts, foules, and fishes, are rifled vp, that they may come in multitudes to wait vpon any