Is a juggler of words, that shows tricks with them, to make them appear
what they were not meant for and serve two senses at once, like one that
plays on two Jew's trumps. He is a fencer of language, that falsifies
his blow and hits where he did not aim. He has a foolish sleight of wit
that catches at words only and lets the sense go, like the young thief
in the farce that took a purse, but gave the owner his money back again.
He is so well versed in all cases of quibble, that he knows when there
will be a blot upon a word as soon as it is out. He packs his quibbles
like a stock of cards; let him but shuffle, and cut where you will, he
will be sure to have it. He dances on a rope of sand, does the
somersault, strappado, and half-strappado with words, plays at all
manner of games with clinches, carwickets, and quibbles, and talks
under-leg. His wit is left-handed, and therefore what others mean for
right he apprehends quite contrary. All his conceptions are produced by
equivocal generation, which makes them justly esteemed but maggots. He
rings the changes upon words, and is so expert that he can tell at first
sight how many variations any number of words will bear. He talks with a
trillo, and gives his words a double relish. He had rather have them
bear two senses in vain and impertinently than one to the purpose, and
never speaks without a leer-sense. He talks nothing but equivocation and
mental reservation, and mightily affects to give a word a double stroke,
like a tennis-ball against two walls at one blow, to defeat the
expectation of his antagonist. He commonly slurs every fourth or fifth
word, and seldom fails to throw doublets. There are two sorts of
quibbling, the one with words and the other with sense, like the
rhetorician's _figurae dictionis et figurae sententiae_--the first is
already cried down, and the other as yet prevails, and is the only
elegance of our modern poets, which easy judges call easiness; but
having nothing in it but easiness, and being never used by any lasting
wit, will in wiser times fall to nothing of itself.