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I found, on the contrary, that it was a very pretty little science, which does not affect to discover phenomena, but simply to guard men against rash generalization, and false deductions from true data; it taught me the untrained world is brimful of fallacies and verbal equivoques that ought not to puzzle a child, but, whenever they creep into an argument, do actually confound the learned and the simple alike, and all for want of a month's logic.
Tiberius, even upon subjects which needed no disguises, used words dark and cautious; perhaps from his diffident nature, perhaps from a habit of dissembling: at this juncture indeed, as he laboured wholly to hide his heart, his language was the more carefully wrapped up in equivoques and obscurity: but the Senators, who dreaded nothing so much as to seem to understand him, burst into tears, plaints, and vows; with extended arms they supplicated the Gods, invoked the image of Augustus, and embraced the knees of Tiberius.
He had tried his hand at an immense variety of profane verse, he had written ballades, chansons, pastourelles, vers equivoques, eclogues, laments, complaints, epitaphs, chants-royals, blasons, contreblasons, dizains, huitains, envois; he had been, Warton says, "the inventor of the rondeau and the restorer of the madrigal;" and yet, in spite of his well-known ingenuity and versatility, it occasioned much surprise and even amusement when it was known that the gay poet had written psalm-songs and proposed to substitute them for the love-songs of the French court.
I have read that in times past the surest and most veritable oracles were not those which either were delivered in writing or uttered by word of mouth in speaking. For many times, in their interpretation, right witty, learned, and ingenious men have been deceived through amphibologies, equivoques, and obscurity of words, no less than by the brevity of their sentences.
Que les plaisanteries ne soient point comme celles des bouffons, qui font rire par des representations extrauagantes, & des actions deshonnestes: si vous rencontrez ioliment, si vous donnez quelque bon-mot, en faisant rire les autres, empeschez-vous-en, le plus qu'il vous sera possible. Do not divert yourself with equivoques, either in important or in mean matters.
The king sat leaning back in the corner, with his eyes closed, in order not to see the horrid forms which from time to time approached the window of the carriage, to stare in with curious looks, or with mocking laughter and equivoques, to heap misery on the unfortunate family.
Plusieurs se sont efforcés de lui donner un nom harmonieux; mais ils ne l'ont pu sans occasionner des équivoques. Les mots Brèche Puddinstone Conglomérations, &c. désignent toujours des substances autres que cette espèce de pierre.
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