mistress to be absent two days, and, encouraging himself to go through with it, said, Tandem ego non ilia caream, si sit opus[1], vel totum triduum?—Parmeno, to mock the softness of his master, lifting up his hands and eyes, cries out, as it were in admiration, Hui! universum triduum! n the elegancy of which universum, though it cannot be rendered in our language, yet leaves an impression on our souls: but this happens seldom in him; in Plautus oftener, who is infinitely too bold in his metaphors and coining words, out of which many times his wit is nothing; which questionless was one reason why Horace falls upon him so severely in those verses:
Sed proavi nostri Plautinos et numeros et
Laudavere sales, nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stolidè n.
For Horace himself was cautious to obtrude a new word on his readers, and makes custom and common use the best measure of receiving it into our writings:
Multa renascentur quæ nunc [jam] cecidere, cadentque
Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,
Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi n.
The not observing this rule is that which the world has blamed in our satyrist, Cleveland[2]: to express a thing hard and unnaturally, is his new way of elocution. 'Tis true, no poet but may sometimes use a catachresis n: Virgil does it —
Mistaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho— n
