enry
More). It is not otherwise in regard of phrases. "Through thick and
thin", occurring in Spenser, "cheek by jowl" in Dubartas{164}, do not
now belong to serious poetry. In the glorious ballad of _Chevy Chase_, a
noble warrior whose legs are hewn off, is described as being "in doleful
dumps"; just as, in Holland's _Livy_, the Romans are set forth as being
"in the dumps" as a consequence of their disastrous defeat at Cannae. In
Golding's _Ovid_, one fears that he will "go to pot". In one of the
beautiful letters of John Careless, preserved in Foxe's _Martyrs_, a
persecutor, who expects a recantation from him, is described as "in the
wrong box". And in the sermons of Barrow, who certainly intended to
write an elevated style, and did not seek familiar, still less vulgar,
expressions, we constantly meet such terms as 'to rate', 'to snub', 'to
gull', 'to pudder', 'dumpish', and the like; which we may confidently
affirm were not vulgar when he used them.

Then too the advance of refinement causes words to be forgone, which are
felt to speak too plainly. It is not here merely that one age has more
delicate ears than another; and that matters are freely spoken of at one
time which at another are withdrawn from conversation. This is
something; but besides this, and even if this delicacy were at a
standstill, there would still be a continual process going on, by which
the words, which for a certain while have been employed to designate
coarse or disagreeable facts or things, would be disallowed, or at all
events relinquished to the lower class of society, and others adopted in
their place. The former by long use being felt to have come into too
direct and close relation with that which they designate, to summon it
up too distinctly before the mind's eye, they are thereupon exchanged
for others, which, at first at least, indicate more lightly and
allusively the offensive thing, rather hint and suggest than paint and
describe it: although by and by these new will also in their turn be
discarded, and for exactly the same reasons which brought about the
dismissal of those which they themselves superseded. It lies in the
necessity of things that I must leave this part of my subject, very
curious as it is, without illustration{165}. But no one, even
moderately acquainted with the early literature of the Reformation, can
be ignorant of words freely used in it, which now are not merely coarse
and as such under ban, but which no one wo