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08998_Field_TCGG T763.txt
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1996-04-10
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The levelling of inflection and of wordplay became part of the
program of applied knowledge in the seventeenth century.
* If there had never been a seventeenth century it could
have been predicted that the continuing print-inspired
movement towards visual word order meant elimination of the
principle of verbal decorum, the ending of word play, and the
insistence on homogeneity of utterance. Long before Bishop
Sprat had worked out this implication of print for the Royal
Society, Robert Cawdry states it plainly. In 1604 he argues that
wit (which implied erudition at that time) consisted not in
strange words but
in wholsom matter and apt declaring on a man’s mind. . .
we must of necessitie banish all affected Rhetorique and
use altogether one manner of language. Those therefore