Going one day to Orleans, I met in that plain on this side Clery, two pedants who were travelling towards Bordeaux, about fifty paces distant from one another; and, a good way further behind them, I discovered a troop of horse, with a gentleman at the head of them, who was the late Monsieur le Comte de la Rochefoucauld. One of my people inquired of the foremost of these masters of arts, who that gentleman was that came after him; he, having not seen the train that followed after, and thinking his companion was meant, pleasantly answered, "He is not a gentleman; he is a grammarian; and I am a logician." Now we who, quite contrary, do not here pretend to breed a grammarian or a logician, but a gentleman, let us leave them to abuse their leisure; our business lies elsewhere. Let but our pupil be well furnished with things, words will follow but too fast; he will pull them after him if they do not voluntarily follow. I have observed some to make excuses, that they cannot express themselves, and pretend to have their fancies full of a great many very fine things, which yet, for want of eloquence, they cannot utter; 'tis a mere shift, and nothing else. Will you know what I think of it? I think they are nothing but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they know not what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not yet themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observe how they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soon conclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about conception, and that they are but licking their formless embryo. For my part, I hold, and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly and clear imagination, he will express it well enough in one kind of tongue or another, and, if he be dumb, by signs--"Verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur;"
["Once a thing is conceived in the mind, the words to express it soon present themselves." ("The words will not reluctantly follow the thing preconceived.")--Horace, De Arte Poetica. v. 311]
And as another as poetically says in his prose:
"Quum res animum occupavere, verbs ambiunt,"
["When things are once in the mind, the words offer themselves readily." ("When things have taken possession of the mind, the words trip.")--Seneca, Controvers., iii. proem.] and this other.
"Ipsae res verbs rapiunt."
["The things themselves force the words to express them."--Cicero, De Finib., iii. 5.]
He knows nothing of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, no more than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these will give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and peradventure shall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art in France. He knows no rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader; neither does he care to know it.
Indeed all this fine decoration of painting is easily effaced by the lustre of a ****** and blunt truth; these fine flourishes serve only to amuse the vulgar, of themselves incapable of more solid and nutritive diet, as Aper very evidently demonstrates in Tacitus." The ambassadors of Samos, prepared with a long and elegant oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite him to a war against the tyrant Polycrates; who, after he had heard their harangue with great gravity and patience, gave them this answer: "As to the exordium, I remember it not, nor consequently the middle of your speech; and for what concerns your conclusion, I will not do what you desire:" --[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedaemonians.]-- a very pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack of learned orators most sweetly gravelled. And what did the other man say?
The Athenians were to choose one of two architects for a very great building they had designed; of these, the first, a pert affected fellow, offered his service in a long premeditated discourse upon the subject of the work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the people in his favour; but the other in three words: "O Athenians, what this man says, I will do." --[Plutarch, Instructions to Statesmen, c. 4.]--When Cicero was in the height and heat of an eloquent harangue, many were struck with admiration; but Cato only laughed, saying, "We have a pleasant (mirth-******) consul." Let it go before, or come after, a good sentence or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither suit well with what went before, nor has much coherence with what follows after, it is good in itself. I am none of those who think that good rhyme makes a good poem. Let him make short long, and long short if he will, 'tis no great matter; if there be invention, and that the wit and judgment have well performed their offices, I will say, here's a good poet, but an ill rhymer.
"Emunctae naris, durus componere versus."
["Of delicate humour, but of rugged versification."--Horace, Sat, iv. 8.]
Let a man, says Horace, divest his work of all method and measure, "Tempora certa modosque, et, quod prius ordine verbum est, Posterius facias, praeponens ultima primis Invenias etiam disjecti membra poetae."
["Take away certain rhythms and measures, and make the word which was first in order come later, putting that which should be last first, you will still find the scattered remains of the poet."--Horace, Sat., i. 4, 58.] he will never the more lose himself for that; the very pieces will be fine by themselves. Menander's answer had this meaning, who being reproved by a friend, the time drawing on at which he had promised a comedy, that he had not yet fallen in hand with it; "It is made, and ready," said he, "all but the verses." --[Plutarch, Whether the Athenians more excelled in Arms or in Letters.]-- Having contrived the subject, and disposed the scenes in his fancy, he took little care for the rest.
Since Ronsard and Du Bellay have given reputation to our French poesy, every little dabbler, for aught I see, swells his words as high, and makes his cadences very near as harmonious as they: