A _Laconique_ Try’d and Sentenc’d.
It was the Ill hap of a Learned _Laconique_, to make use of _Three
Words_, when _Two_ would have done his Business: The Matter was so Foul,
and the Fact so clearly Prov’d upon him, that being Cited before the
Senate, he was Heard and Condemned to Read over _Guicciardines War of
Pisa_ from End to End, without either Eating or Drinking till he had
gone through it. The Poor Man fell into so Desperate an Agony before
he could get over One Single Leaf on’t, that he threw himself upon his
Face, Imploring the Mercy of the Court, though ’twere but to change his
Punishment: They might send him to the _Gallies_, he said, or if it were
to _Flay him Alive_, or _Bury him betwixt Four Walls_, and he should
ever acknowledge it as an Act of Clemency; but for a Man of Brains and
Thought, to Trouble his Head with such a deal of Tedious Trash and
Pedantry, the Torment, he said, of _Perillus’s Brazen Bull_ was Nothing
to’t.
The MORAL.
_Time is Life, and Life is Precious; ’Tis short enough at Best; but
the more we Contract our Talk and our Business, the more we have on’t.
Wherefore it is Great Wisdom to Couch all we have to do, in as Narrow
a Compass as possible. The Killing of a Man with many Words, is only
Another sort of Murder, out of the Reach of the Law._