I have heard the very children in the streets, and the little boys close about the fire, refresh themselves strangely but with the repetition of a few of such far-fetched and odd sounding expressions.  TULLY, therefore, and CAESAR, the two greatest masters of Roman eloquence, were very wary and sparing of that sort of Rhetoric.  We may read many a page in their works before we meet with any of those bears; and if you do light upon one or so, it shall not make your hair stand right up! or put you into a fit of convulsions! but it shall be so soft, significant, and familiar, as if it were made for the very purpose.

But as for the common sort of people that are addicted to this sort of expression in their discourses; away presently to both the Indies! rake heaven and earth! down to the bottom of the sea! then tumble over all Arts and Sciences! ransack all shops and warehouses! spare neither camp nor city, but that they will have them!  So fond are such deceived ones of these same gay words, that they count all discourses empty, dull, and cloudy; unless bespangled with these glitterings.  Nay, so injudicious and impudent together will they sometimes be, that the Almighty Himself is often in danger of being dishonoured by these indiscreet and horrid Metaphor-mongers.  And when they thus blaspheme the God of Heaven by such unhallowed expressions; to make amends, they will put you in an “As it were” forsooth! or “As I may so say,” that is, they will make bold to speak what they please concerning GOD Himself, rather than omit what they judge, though never so falsely, to be witty.  And then they come in hobbling with their lame submission, and with their “reverence be it spoken”:  as if it were not much better to leave out what they foresee is likely to be interpreted for blasphemy, or at least great extravagancy; than to utter that, for which their own reason and conscience tell them, they are bound to lay in beforehand an excuse.

To which may be further subjoined, that Metaphors, though very apt and allowable, are intelligible but to some sorts of men, of this or that kind of life, of this or that profession.

For example, perhaps one Gentleman’s metaphorical knack of preaching comes of the sea; and then we shall hear of nothing but “starboard” and “larboard,” of “stems,” “sterns,” and “forecastles,” and such salt-water language:  so that one had need take a voyage to Smyrna or Aleppo, and very warily attend to all the sailors’ terms, before I shall in the least understand my teacher.  Now, though such a sermon may possibly do some good in a coast town; yet upward into the country, in an inland parish, it will do no more than Syriac or Arabic.