There was a tobacco-man that wrapped Spanish tobacco in a paper of verses which Benlowes had written against the Pope, which, by a natural antipathy that his wit has to anything that’s Catholic, spoiled the tobacco, for it presently turned mundungus.  This author will take an English word, and, like the Frenchman that swallowed water and spit it out wine, with a little heaving and straining would turn it immediately into Latin, as plunderat ilie domos, mille hocopokiana, and a thousand such.

There was a young practitioner in poetry that found there was no good to be done without a mistress; for he that writes of love before he hath tried it doth but travel by the map, and he that makes love without a dame does like a gamester that plays for nothing.  He thought it convenient, therefore, first to furnish himself with a name for his mistress beforehand, that he might not be to seek when his merit or good fortune should bestow her upon him; for every poet is his mistress’s godfather, and gives her a new name, like a nun that takes orders.  He was very curious to fit himself with a handsome word of a tunable sound, but could light upon none that some poet or other had not made use of before.  He was therefore forced to fall to coining, and was several months before he could light on one that pleased him perfectly.  But after he had overcome that difficulty he found a greater remaining, to get a lady to own him.  He accosted some of all sorts, and gave them to understand, both in prose and verse, how incomparably happy it was in his power to make his mistress, but could never convert any of them.  At length he was fain to make his laundress supply that place as a proxy until his good fortune or somebody of better quality would be more kind to him, which after a while he neither hoped nor cared for; for how mean soever her condition was before, when he had once pretended to her she was sure to be a nymph and a goddess.  For what greater honour can a woman be capable of than to be translated into precious stones and stars?  No herald in the world can go higher.  Besides, he found no man can use that freedom of hyperbole in the character of a person commonly known (as great ladies are) which we can in describing one so obscure and unknown that nobody can disprove him.  For he that writes but one sonnet upon any of the public persons shall be sure to have his reader at every third word cry out, “What an ass is this to call Spanish paper and ceruse lilies and roses, or claps influences; to say the Graces are her waiting-women, when they are known to be no better than her bawds; that day breaks from her eyes when she looks asquint; or that her breath perfumes the Arabian winds when she puffs tobacco!”

It is no mean art to improve a language, and find out words that are not only removed from common use, but rich in consonants, the nerves and sinews of speech; to raise a soft and feeble language like ours to the pitch of High-Dutch, as he did that writ—­