gaining ground even in the reign of Elizabeth, now overflowed the whole
kingdom with the impetuosity of a land-flood. These outrages upon
language were committed without regard to time and place. They were held
good arguments at the bar, though Bacon sat on the woolsack; and
eloquence irresistible by the most hardened sinner, when King or Corbet
were in the pulpit.[6] Where grave and learned professions set the
example, the poets, it will readily be believed, ran headlong into an
error, for which they could plead such respectable example. The
affectation "of the word" and "of the letter," for alliteration was
almost as fashionable as punning, seemed, in some degree, to bring back
English composition to the barbarous rules of the ancient Anglo-Saxons,
the merit of whose poems consisted, not in the ideas, but in the quaint
arrangement of the words, and the regular recurrence of some favourite
sound or letter.

This peculiar taste for twisting and playing upon words, instead of
applying them to their natural and proper use, was combined with the
similar extravagance of those whom Dr. Johnson has entitled Metaphysical
Poets. This class of authors used the same violence towards images and
ideas which had formerly been applied to words; in truth, the two styles
were often combined and, even when separate, had a kindred alliance with
each other. It is the business of the punster to discover and yoke
together two words, which, while they have some resemblance in sound,
the more exact the better, convey a totally different signification. The
metaphysical poet, on the other hand, piqued himself in discovering
hidden resemblances between ideas apparently the most dissimilar, and in
combining by some violent and compelled association, illustrations and
allusions utterly foreign from each other. Thus did the metaphysical
poet resemble the quibbler exercising precisely the same tyranny over
ideas, which the latter practised upon sounds only.