But what? methinks I deserve to be pounded, for straying from poetry
to oratory: but both have such an affinity in this wordish
consideration, that I think this digression will make my meaning receive
the fuller understanding: which is not to take upon me to teach poets
how they should do, but only finding myself sick among the rest, to
show some one or two spots of the common infection, grown among the
most part of writers: that, acknowledging ourselves somewhat awry, we
may bend to the right use both of matter and manner; whereto our
language giveth us great occasion, being indeed capable of any excellent
exercising of it. I know, some will say it is a mingled language. And
why not so much the better, taking the best of both the other?
[Footnote: Both the Teutonic and the Romance elements.] Another will
say it wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that praise, that it wanteth
not grammar; for grammar it might have, but it needs it not; being so
easy of itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases,
genders, moods, and tenses, which I think was a piece of the Tower of
Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to school to learn his
mother-tongue.
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