They would be
reprehended while they are looked on. And this vice, one that is
authority with the rest, loving, delivers over to them to be
imitated; so that ofttimes the faults which be fell into the others
seek for. This is the danger, when vice becomes a precedent.
Not. 5.--Others there are that have no composition at all; but a
kind of tuning and rhyming fall in what they write. It runs and
slides, and only makes a sound. Women's poets they are called, as
you have women's tailors.
"They write a verse as smooth, as soft as cream,
In which there is no torrent, nor scarce stream."
You may sound these wits and find the depth of them with your middle
finger. They are cream-bowl or but puddle-deep.
Not. 6.--Some that turn over all books, and are equally searching in
all papers; that write out of what they presently find or meet,
without choice. By which means it happens that what they have
discredited and impugned in one week, they have before or after
extolled the same in another. Such are all the essayists, even
their master Montaigne. These, in all they write, confess still
what books they have read last, and therein their own folly so much,
that they bring it to the stake raw and undigested; not that the
place did need it neither, but that they thought themselves
furnished and would vent it
Not.
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