On the other side, without being injurious to the memory
of our English Pindar, I will presume to say that his metaphors are
sometimes too violent, and his language is not always pure. But at
the same time I must excuse him, for through the iniquity of the
times he was forced to travel at an age when, instead of learning
foreign languages, he should have studied the beauties of his mother
tongue, which, like all other speeches, is to be cultivated early,
or we shall never write it with any kind of elegance. Thus by
gaining abroad he lost at home, like the painter in the "Arcadia,"
who, going to see a skirmish, had his arms lopped off, and returned,
says Sir Philip Sidney, well instructed how to draw a battle, but
without a hand to perform his work.
There is another thing in which I have presumed to deviate from him
and Spenser. They both make hemistichs, or half-verses, breaking
off in the middle of a line. I confess there are not many such in
the "Faerie Queen," and even those few might be occasioned by his
unhappy choice of so long a stanza.
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