SILLEPSIS, OR THE DOUBLE SUPPLY.

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Beat. Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome: therefore I will depart unkissed.

Much Ado about Nothing, Act v. Sc. 2.

Par. He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.

Troilus and Cressida, Act iii. Sc. 1.

Clo. I am out o' friends, madam; and I hope to have friends for my wife's sake.

Count. Such friends are thine enemies, knave.

Clo. You're shallow, madam, in great friends; for the knaves come to do that, for me which I am aweary of. He that ears my land spares my team and gives me leave to in the crop; if I be his cuckold, he's my drudge he that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend: ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. Sc. 3.

I think that Shakespeare in these passages refers to the clyming figure, where one word proceeds double to the first that was spoken. (See Part I. p. 12.)

Ulysses. O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,

Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenitive and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows; each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:

Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides,

power,

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,

Follows the choking.

And this neglection of degree it is

That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd
By him one step below, he by the next,
That next by him beneath; so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation.

Troilus and Cressida, Act i. Sc. 3.

And Ulysses may also refer to this figure, for after saying that degree is the ladder to all high designs, and making one word proceed double to the first that was spoken, and go as it were by strides or paces, he uses the adverb

CLYMAX, OR THE MARCHING FIGURE. 43

doubly and the verb climb, and speaks of every step being exampled by the first pace; and Rosalind, in 'As You Like It,' act v. scene 2, after using the clyming figure (see Part I. p. 12), says in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage which they will climb. Moreover Puttenham, in describing this figure, says it 'may be called the marching figure, for after the first step all the rest proceed by double the space, and so in our speech one word proceeds double to the first that was spoken, and goeth, as it were, by strides or paces. It may as well be called the clyming figure, for clymax is as much as to say as a ladder.'

Enter ARMADO and MOTH.

Arm. Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows melancholy?

Moth. A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.

Arm. Why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp.

Moth. No, no; O Lord, sir, no.

Arm. How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal ?

Moth. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough senior.

Arm. Why tough senior? why tough senior?

Moth. Why tender juvenal? why tender juvenal ?

Arm. I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender.

Moth. And I, tough senior, as an appertinent title to your old time, which we may name tough.

Arm, Pretty and apt.

Moth. How mean you, sir? I pretty, and my saying apt? or I apt, and my saying pretty?

Arm.

Thou pretty, because little.

Moth. Little pretty, because little. Wherefore apt? Arm. And therefore apt, because quick.

Love's Labour's Lost, Act i. Sc. 2.

When ye will speake giving every person or thing besides his proper name a qualitie by way of addition whether it be of good or of bad, it is a figurative speach of audible alteration, so is it also of sence as to say:

Fierce Achilles, wise Nestor wilie Ulysses,
Diana the chast and thou lovely Venus:
With thy blind boy that almost never misses,
But hits our hartes when he levels at us.

Or thus commending the Isle of great Brittaine:

Albion, hugest of Westerne Ilands all,
Soyle of sweete ayre and of good store:
God send we see thy glory never fall,

But rather dayly to grow more and more.

Or as we sang of our Soveraigne Lady, giving her these attributes besides her proper name:

Elizabeth regent of the great Brittaine Ile,
Honour of all regents and of Queenes.

EPITHETON, OR THE QUALIFIER.

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But if we speake thus not expressing her proper name Elizabeth, videl.:

The English Diana, the great Britton mayde; then is it not by Epitheton, or figure of attribution, but by the figures Antonomasia, or Periphrasis.—The Arte of English Poesie, Lib. iii. Chap. 16.

Your Epitheton or qualifier, whereof we spake before, placing him among the figures auricular, now because he serves also to alter and enforce the sence, we will say some what more of him in this place, and do conclude that he must be apt and proper for the thing he is added · unto, and not disagreeable or repugnant, as one that said: darke disdaine, and miserable pride, very absurdly, for disdaine or disdained things cannot be said darke, but rather bright and cleere, because they be beholden and much looked upon, and pride is rather envied than pitied or miserable, unlesse it be in Christian charitie, which helpeth not the terme in this case. Some of our vulgar writers take great pleasure in giving Epithets, and de it almost to every word which may receive them, and should not be so, yea though they were never so propre and apt, for sometimes wordes suffered to go single, do give greater sence and grace than words qualified by attributions do.-The Arte of English Poesie, Lib. iii. Chap. 16.

Armado calls Moth 'my tender juvenal,' 'giving him a quality by way of addition;' and the reader will see that Shakespeare, in this passage, also uses the words epitheton and apt, which Puttenham uses in naming and describing this figure.