altogether their mothers language. And I dare sweare this, if some of
their mothers were alive, thei were not able to tell what thei saie; and
yet these fine English clerkes will saie thei speake in their mother
tongue--if a man should charge them for counterfeityng the kinges
Englishe.... The unlearned or foolish phantasicalle that smelles but of
learnyng (suche fellowes as have seen learned men in their daies) will so
Latin their tongues that the simple can not but wonder at their talke, and
thinke surely thei speake by some revelation. I know them that thinke
Rhetorique to stand wholie upon darke woordes; and he that can catche an
ynke horne terme by the taile him thei coumpt to bee a fine Englisheman
and a good Rhetorician.'

In turning to Wilson's own style, we are reminded of Butler's sarcasm--

'All a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.'

He is not, indeed, deficient, as the excerpt given shows, in dignity and
weightiness, but neither there nor elsewhere has he any of the finer
qualities of style, his rhythm being harsh and unmusical, his diction
cumbrous and diffuse.

The excerpt which comes next in this miscellany is by the author of that
treatise which is, with the exceptions, perhaps, of George Puttenham's
_Art of English Poesie_ and Ben Jonson's _Discoveries_, the most precious
contribution to criticism made in the Elizabethan age; but, indeed, the
_Defence of Poesie_ stands alone: alone in originality, alone in
inspiring eloquence. The letter we print is taken from Arthur Collins's
_Sydney Papers_, vol. i. pp. 283-5, and was written by Sir Philip Sidney
to his brother Robert, afterwards (August 1618) second Earl of Leicester,