A farrago of several pieces being a supplement to his poems, characters, heroick pourtraits, letters, and other discourses formerly published by him / newly written by Richard Flecknoe.

POSTSCRIPT OF THE STILE OR PHRASE.

FOR the Stile or Phrase, which is only the habit a Language is cloathed in; Ours follows much the Italian fashion; (Those learned men that had the ordering of our Language in former times, being most conversant with that Nation it seems) where note, that as there are two s••rts of Languages, your dead ones, or those which are past farther growth, (as the Hebrew, Greek, and Latine) and your living ones, or such who grow every day, as all our European ones so in every grow∣ing Language, there are two sorts of stiles, the Eru••ite, and the stile of the Time, or ••f the Mode; of which the first never chan∣ges,

because (e. g.) 'tis cast in the La∣tine mould, which alwayes remains the same; whilst that of the Time changes per∣petually, as the fashion of our Habit does; whence, whosoever would write for Last∣ingness, should write in the Erudite stiles; as Pictures we see drawn in Ancient At∣tire, remain alwayes fashionable and be∣coming; whilst those drawn in modern-habit (which changes every day) soon become obsolete and ridiculous. Besides, the Phrase or Stile (being as we have said) the habit of a Language, as the Apparel is of the Body, there is a certain becoming∣ness, and natural propriety in either; which in the Excess or Defect, is equally vitious; a certain mean betwixt the Switzers Puffs, or Bumbast, and Irish Trouse, neither too strait, nor too wide for the expression of our minds which who∣soever has, is abundantly Eloquent.