Note 236 — Chapter V · ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

This word, which is certainly a cousin of “balderdash,” is a good example of the slang and jargon so often mixed with their preciousness by the Elizabethans. Nash borrowed it from Harvey to use against him; and the eccentric Stanyhurst even employs it in his Virgil. Stanyhurst’s hexameters, by the way (vide Mr Arber’s Reprint in the English Scholars Library, No. 10, London, 1880), are, thanks partly to their astounding lingo, among the maddest things in English literature; but his prose prefatory matter, equally odd in phrase, has some method in its madness.