Wit and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: The Formal Basis of Elizabethan Prose Style 9780231899680

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGUSH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE NUMBER ìgg

W I T A N D R H E T O R I C IN T H E

RENAISSANCE

WIT AND R H E T O R I C IN T H E RENAISSANCE T H E F O R M A L BASIS OF E L I Z A B E T H A N PROSE S T Y L E BY

W I L L I A M G. C R A N E

NEW YORK : MORNINGSIDE

HEIGHTS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1

9 37

PRESS

COPYRIGHT COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

1937 PRESS, N E W

Foreign agents: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Humphrey London,

House, Bombay,

Road,

India; KWANC HSUEH PUBLISHING HOUSE, ¡40 Peking

Road,

China;

MARUZEN COMPANY, LTD., 6

Tori-Nichome,

Manufactured,

AND B. /. Building,

Amen

Nicol

Shanghai,

E.C. 4, England

YORK

Milford,

in the

Tokyo,

United

Nihonbashi,

Japan

States

of

America

CONTENTS I II

INTRODUCTION

ι

A GENERAL EXAMINATION OF W I T IN T H E S I X T E E N T H AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

III

T H E ENGLISH COMMONPLACE BOOKS

IV

LOGIC

V VI VII

. . .

SIX57

T H E THEORY OF IMITATION AND ITS RELATION T O AMPLIFICATION AND WIT . . . RHETORICS

OF T H E

IX X XI XII XIII

80

SIXTEENTH

CENTURY VIII

33 49

R H E T O R I C IN T H E SCHOOLS OF T H E T E E N T H CENTURY

ENGLISH

9

97

T H E MORAL DISCOURSE

113

BOOKS OF INSTRUCTION FOR T H E COURTIER

126

T H E ESSAY AND T H E C H A R A C T E R

132

T H E SENTIMENTAL MANCE

. . . .

NOVEL AND T H E

RO162

T H E N A R R A T I V E DISCOURSE

179

EPILOGUE

203

APPENDICES: PASSAGES CITED IN T H E T E X T .

207

BIBLIOGRAPHY

253

INDEX

277

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS HIS study owes a debt, first of all, to the founders and officials of the libraries in which it was pursued. I am especially grateful to the Bodleian, the British Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Bibliothèque Nationale. Helpful criticism was received from the members of the faculty of Columbia University, particularly from Professors Harry M. Ayres, the late Charles Sears Baldwin, Jefferson B. Fletcher, John L. Gerig, Emery E. Neff, Ralph L. Rusk, Samuel Lee Wolff, and Dr. Henry Wells. A suggestion made some years ago by Sir Herbert J. C. Grierson led toward the present subject. My friends Dr. Ernest C. Mossner and Mr. Frederick C. Shipley assisted with the revision of several chapters, and Mr. Pierre A. Banker gave me some help with the bibliography. To Professor Jefferson B. Fletcher of Columbia University and Professor E. N. S. Thompson of the State University of Iowa a deep and general obligation is felt. Their example in combining accurate scholarship with appreciation of the best which has been written has aided in making this investigation the source of valuable discipline and of much enjoyment. N E W YORK CITY

MAY J. 1937

WILLIAM G.

CRANE

I

INTRODUCTION

T

HE material presented in this volume grew out of an attempt to ascertain the meaning of the term "wit" as it was used with reference to literary skill in the age of Elizabeth. T h e point about which the study revolves is the close association, especially in the latter half of the sixteenth century, between wit and rhetoric. In that day, both rhetoric and wit depended heavily upon certain means of development and ornamentation. T h e process of expansion and embellishment by these devices may be called, as it was by some of the commentators of the time, "amplification." By whatever name it was known, it was the principal concern of the rhetorics which were prepared for the sixteenth-century schools; and it was much employed in mature life by literary men, such as George Pettie, John Lyly, and Robert Greene, who had been trained in the traditional manner. T h e popular Renaissance method of teaching composition and rhetoric by means of imitation was closely associated with amplification. This fact and certain special circumstances account for the connection, which is manifest in many sixteenth-century treatises, between wit and imitation. T h e emphasis placed upon the devices of amplification by schoolmasters and literary men of the sixteenth century and the close relationship which existed then between wit and rhetoric, throw much light upon what was written in English between 1550 and 1700. T h e study of Renaissance rhetoric, which has been rather neglected, opens many avenues of investigation into the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. T h e present study is confined to indicating the relation of wit to rhetoric and to presenting the more important rhetorical practices of the Renaissance. T h e application of rhetoric in a number of literary forms is also illustrated. Since general knowledge of some

2

INTRODUCTION

of these matters is meager, it has seemed best, at the risk of some repetition, to discuss them separately. The starting point of the present work was the poetry of John Donne. In order better to understand some of his poems, a close study of his life was made. This revealed that a number of wrong impressions regarding him had become current. Contrary to what has been stated by some of Donne's biographers, he took an active part in the meetings of the wits in London during the early years of the seventeenth century. Out of the study of Donne there developed a general survey of the relations of the members of the literary fraternity in London during the quarter century from 1590 to 1615. Attention was centered on those men whose writings were considered by their contemporaries to display wit. This group included two hundred writers of epigrams, satires, essays, characters, sonnets, occasional verses, and some other minor literary forms. Prominent among these men were Thomas Nashe, Joseph Hall, Thomas Lodge, Nicholas Breton, Charles Fitzgeoffrey, Sir John Harrington, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Sir John Davies, Sir William Corne-Waleys, John Davies of Hereford, John Hoskins, George Wither, and Thomas Coriat. As an introduction to an account of the literary fraternity in London between 1590 and 1615, a discussion of the term "wit" was undertaken. Some unexpected difficulties were at once encountered. It is not surprising that Abraham Cowley,1 Richard Flecknoe,2 and Leonard Welsted,3 among others who commented on the subject in the seventeenth century and later, found it almost impossible to define the word. In the end it was necessary to make a study of the meanings of the term from early times down to the eighteenth century. Explanations were discovered for some of the contradictions which have confused many discussions of wit. The matter of greatest significance which came to light in the 1

Abraham Cowley, "Ode: Of Wit," in his Miscellanies, 1656. Reprinted in The English Writings, edited by A. R . Waller, I, 16-18. • R i c h a r d Flecknoe, A Short Discourse of the English Stage, 1664. Reprinted in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, edited by Joel E. Spingarn, II, 94. ' Leonard Welsted, " A Dissertation Concerning the Perfection of the English Language, etc.," prefixed to Epistles, Odes, etc., 1724. Reprinted in Critical Essays of the Eighteenth Century: IJ00-25, edited by Willard H. Durham, p. 392.

INTRODUCTION

3

investigation of the meaning of the term "wit" was the abundant evidence of the close relation between wit and rhetoric from ancient times to the close of the seventeenth century and later. T h e same association was made in both classical Greek and Latin literature. Cicero, to whom all the rhetoricians of the Renaissance deferred, insisted upon it several times in his writings, especially in De oratore, where wit (ingenium) * is discussed in connection with his method of acquiring a full, ornate style by imitation of Demosthenes and other Greek masters. 5 T h e remarks on wit (ingenium) in De oratore, as Cicero took pains to suggest, parallel Plato's comments regarding ευφυΐα (wit) in The Republicβ and είιφνης (witty) in The Phaedrus.1 Cicero also knew the passage in The Laws8 where Plato notes that a person who is ευφυή* (well-endowed with natural advantages, witty) may, if evilly inclined, be of more harm to the state than an ignorant person. T h e first book of Cicero's De oratore was the starting point of the theory of imitation which occupied the attention of very many writers in the Renaissance. Nearly all followed Cicero's example and began their discussions with consideration of the value of ingenium to the student. They did not overlook the fact that De oratore, a series of dialogues on the ideal orator, was modeled on The Republic and The Phaedrus, and occasionally they introduced the Greek terms ευφυία and ευφυή·; into their comments. Both of these points are illustrated in Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster.9 The title itself of John Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt came from the Renaissance treatises dealing with the theory of imitation. T h e links connecting Euphues, its particular style, and the Renaissance discussions of imitation are easily established. Details of these relations are given in various chapters of this study. Although the compilers of rhetorical treatises in the Renaissance took their precepts from earlier works, they threw overwhelming emphasis on style. Most of the rhetorical theory of both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was derived from the 'Cicero, De oratore, particularly Bk. I. chs. ii. vi, xxi, and xxv-xxxiii. 'Ibid., Bk. I, ch. xxxiv et seq. "Plato, Republic, Bk. V I I , sec. 535. 1 Plato, Phaedrus, sees. 26c)d-27on. " Plato, Laws, sec. 9oR'>-e. ' R o g e r Ascham. The Scholemaster, 1570, Arber's reprint, pp. 38-40 and 122-24.

4

INTRODUCTION

treatises of Cicero and Quintilian. With the revival of the study of Greek in Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, some attention was also given to the works on rhetoric by Hermogenes and Aristotle. T h e Progymnasmata of the former had been known in the Middle Ages through Priscian's Latin version. In the sixteenth century the almost identical exercises of Aphthonius were preferred because of the illustrative themes which accompanied them. T h e predilections of the rhetoricians of the Renaissance in favor of style received encouragement from Cicero's directions regarding the process of imitation and also from the ample, ornate manner which he used himself and recommended. In his discussion of imitation as a means of learning to write, Cicero had in mind the cultivation of the full style in which he excelled. He was conscious of his superiority in this respect, and he drew attention to it frequently in his writings. For instance, he caused two speakers in De claribus oratoribus, Caesar and Brutus, to remark upon this quality in his own orations. Both in classical times and in the Renaissance copiousness and ornateness were associated with wit. In the latter period rhetoric itself was reduced mainly to tabulation of the means of amplifying and of adorning a composition. Among the devices for ornamentation and amplification presented in the school manuals were both those peculiar to Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and those characteristic of John Lyly's Euphues. Generally no clear-cut distinction was made between the devices which furnished ornament and those which aided development. T h e process of expanding a theme by the more important of these devices was usually known in the sixteenth century as "amplification," though other terms, such as, "copiousness," "dilation," "variety of matter," and "plenty of matter" were frequently used. Today "amplification" is the word that comes most readily to mind. But, as some commentators 10 have noted, in the sixteenth century the term had, in addition to this broad signification, two narrower applications. It was used to designate a special group of figures which were 10 See the observations on amplification in John Susenbrot's Epitome troporum ac schematum, Richard Sherry's A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes, and the commentary on Erasmus's De duplici copia verborum ac rerum by Velcurio (John Doelsch).

INTRODUCTION

5

markedly useful in the expansion of a subject, and it was also the name of a particular figure, consisting of exaggeration or diminution. T h e devices of amplification and ornamentation which constituted the chief part of rhetoric in the Renaissance were often regarded simply as figures under the heading "style" (elocutio). They may be divided into three main groups. Of greatest importance are the figures of thought, derived from the processes of logical investigation. Among figures of this type are: definition, distinction, division, etymology, cause, effect, antecedent, consequence, circumstances, comparison, similitude, contrary, example, and testimony of authority. Through the study of logic and rhetoric every student in the grammar schools of the sixteenth century learned the use of these means of expanding a composition; 11 there is hardly a writer of the sixteenth century whose work does not bear the mark of such discipline. T h e second group consists of those figures which obtain their effect by appeal to the emotions. A number of varieties of exclamation, interrogation, and vivid description are included in this class. Rhetorical devices of this kind are particularly abundant in the romances and the sentimental novels of the Renaissance, but they are not confined to these types of literature. Last of all come the two dozen tropes and more than one hundred figures of words and syntax, designated by at least three times that many names. T h e literature of the sixteenth century was considerably embellished by figures of this sort. They are, however, less worthy of careful study than the figures of the two preceding classes. Frequently they are merely accessory to figures of thought. Verbal similarity and antithesis, for example, are often incidental to comparison and contrast. Certain difficulties are encountered in dealing with the rhetoric of the Renaissance. T h e most important treatises have received little attention, possibly because they are in Latin. This neglect can hardly be laid to their inaccessibility. A more fundamental difficulty is the extreme confusion which has existed from the time of ancient Greece to the present, because of loose termin11 See Francis P. Donnelly, Persuasive Speech, 1931, for a recent presentation of the processes, or "topics," of investigation which serve for amplification.

INTRODUCTION

6

ology involving more than five hundred names of figures of rhetoric. T h e few devices, moreover, to which recent historians of literature have directed attention, such as homoioteleuton, paromoion, and polyptoton, are among the least important. In the Renaissance the meanings of words were shifting, perhaps, more than usual; hence careful scrutiny is necessary. Erasmus's caution that every definition is a misfortune will bear repeating. Few words mean exactly the same to any large number of individuals, and even one person may use a word in a number of different senses. Failure to examine closely what is designated by a tçrm may lead to erroneous conclusions. For some authorities "rhetoric" comprehended less than "eloquence" did for others. Abraham Faunce's The Arcadian Rhetorike, 1588, deals only with delivery and a few figures of speech, whereas Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence, 1577, contains much that pertains to divisions of rhetoric other than style. A t first it is confusing to discover in an epitome of tropes and figures much the same material as in a treatise which purports to deal with logic or to find the second part of Erasmus's De duplici copia verborum ac rerum compared with Cicero's Topica by the commentators of the sixteenth century. T h e most troublesome problem of all is the handling of concepts which were familiar to the Ancient World and to the Renaissance but which have since dropped out of current usage. Cicero's Topica, which has just been mentioned, furnishes an illustration. In this work Cicero reduced the processes of deductive analysis set forth in Aristotle's Τόποι to seventeen headings, which the Elizabethans called both "topics" and "places." Today few people have any conception of the principles of investigation set forth in Aristotle's Τόποι and Cicero's Topica, "Invention," usually rendered today as "investigation," is also a word that causes difficulty. Bacon has given a good explanation of its meaning in Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learn· ing.12 He begins by noting that the term actually connotes recollection and not the creation of anything. A study of the rhetorical practices which prevailed in the schools of Western Europe in the Renaissance discloses the basis u

Bk. II, ch. xiii, sec. 6. Cf. Appendix I.

INTRODUCTION

7

of a number of similarities which have been noted in the style of literary works of various ages. Erroneous conclusions are likely to result from a narrow investigation. It is foreseen that advocates of various theories will express surprise that more has not been made of the stylistic resemblances between certain Renaissance writings and the works which preceded them. Cicero, who has been dealt with here as an author of rhetorical treatises and as a model of style, has not, perhaps, been stressed so much as some cTitics might wish. Yet, it may be admitted that, all things considered, no other man's influence was so great. Less than might have been expected has been said of Isocrates, Seneca, the artes dictandi, medieval sermons, and Guevara. T o such parallel developments might be added another. It could be argued with some justification that the peculiarities of John Lyly's style were derived from the sentimental novels of the Renaissance. All of these similar developments were, however, contributory rather than basic forces. Underlying all of them are the rhetorical devices of ornamentation and amplification which were presented in the rhetorical manuals of the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Renaissance writers attempted to carry over into the vernacular tongues the stylistic devices treated in the Latin manuals of rhetoric. As the modern literatures of Europe developed, they reacted to some extent upon one another. Italy, as usual, was in the lead. T h e indebtedness of Boccaccio to Cicero and the influence of the former's manner upon later writers are matters that remain to be carefully investigated. Yet, it is evident, even to the casual observer, that Boccaccio's writings owed considerable to Cicero and that they, in turn, affected the style of many later works of the Renaissance. Aeneas Sylvius's De duobus amantibus, though in Latin, is in part an obvious imitation of Boccaccio's La Fiammetta. This Italian work owed much to Ovid's Heroides and Ars amatoria. The Spanish authors of sentimental novels took many suggestions from Boccaccio's writings. At times, they were even at pains to suggest comparison of their own works with his. Whatever the ultimate origin of Amadis de Gaula may be, a highly rhetorical quality is manifest in all its parts. In the sixteenth century Span-

8

INTRODUCTION

ish literature probably exerted some return influence on Italian works. At this time, also, ornate prose began to flourish in France. By 1566 all three of these Romance literatures were adding their weight to the emphasis which the rhetorical manuals in use in the English schools placed on stylistic embellishment. It would have been strange if ornate prose had not begun shortly to flourish in England. In Italy, Spain, France, and England, from the time of Boccaccio to the day of Shakespeare, the two qualities most sought after in expression were amplification and ornamentation. Throughout all of Western Europe the rhetoric taught in the schools encouraged these tendencies. The present work reviews briefly the frequently debated and much confused subject of wit in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is a relatively simple matter to determine the senses in which "wit" was understood in the early sixteenth century. But shortly before 1550 the word began to appear in contexts where careful analysis is required to determine its meanings. In the latter half of the century wit was particularly associated with rhetorical devices, such as proverbs, maxims, similes, examples, apophthegms, definitions, and set descriptions, as a number of collections of such matter explicitly testify. At the same time there is ample evidence that the school rhetorics depended heavily upon such materials for the amplification and embellishment of themes. Hence, the discussion of wit in this volume leads to analysis of the logic and rhetoric taught in the grammar schools of the sixteenth century. Following the treatment of these subjects, consideration is given to the use made of rhetorical devices by writers of moral discourses, books of courtesy, romances, sentimental novels, and narrative discourses. The essay, although allied to the moral discourse, hardly existed as a separate genre before 1600. For this reason discussion of it has been extended well into the seventeenth century. At the close of this work a few suggestions are offered regarding the conscious use of rhetorical devices in the composition of poetry.

II

A G E N E R A L E X A M I N A T I O N OF W I T IN SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

T

THE

HE most important part of this study falls in the reign of Elizabeth. T h e subject will be more easily grasped, however, if a few general remarks on wit and the meanings of the term current in Elizabethan times are followed by some discussion of the senses in which the word was commonly employed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Anglo-Saxon "wit" sometimes signified, as in Beowulf,1 the mind. In this meaning it served as a translation of the Latin mens. In the plural the Anglo-Saxon word connoted either the mental faculties in general or the five senses. Today we still use the expression "to lose one's wits." In Middle-English "wit" was occasionally employed as the equivalent of scientia. Sixteenth-century translators frequently turned Latin ingenium into English as "wit," 2 especially where the context dealt with rhetoric and the expression of thought. In this sense the word was often almost synonymous with "mental acumen." 8 At times it connoted more specifically a flow of ideas and words ample for the development of any topic at length, along with quick comprehension of thought and readiness in answering. These were the qualities which one of the characters in Lyly's Euphues and His England had in mind when he declared, "I never heard but three things which argued a fine wit, invention, conceiving, and answering." * "Invention" also received the principal stress in Gabriel Harvey's formal definition of wit, "an affluent Spirit, yeelding inuention to praise or Beowulf, 1. 589. ' Cf. Sir T h o m a s Elyot, Dictionary (Latin and English), 1538. * Cf. John Higgens, Huloets Dictionarie, newelye corrected, 157s. « The Complete Works of John Lyly, edited by R . Warwick Bond, II, 61.

1

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W I T IN T H E 1 6 T H A N D 1 7 T H

CENTURIES

dispraise, or anie wayes to discourse (with judgment) of euerie subiecte." 5 As would naturally be supposed, a number of the older meanings of "wit" remained current during the latter half of the sixteenth century. This study is concerned, however, almost entirely with what was considered wit in literature. In the pages which follow this application will be assumed. Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt, may be taken as a concrete point of reference, since it is the best-known work exemplifying what was regarded as wit in the sixteenth century. T h i s is particularly appropriate, since Euphues itself testifies to the relation between wit and rhetoric. Lyly's work does not, however, stand alone in the matter of style; it is the outgrowth of tendencies which produced a number of somewhat similar writings. Certain of these works afford even better examples than Euphues of some of the rhetorical devices characteristic of wit in the sixteenth century. A t one extreme of the many senses in which the term " w i t " has been understood it has signified complete mental proficiency, including balance. T h e same is true of Latin ingenium and Greek ΐΰφυία. Ένφυηφυή%) person with evil inclinations might do more harm than an ignorant person. In the latter half of Elizabeth's reign the names of Spenser and George Gascoigne were mentioned a number of times in connection with wit by such men as Sir Philip Sidney, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, and Thomas Lodge. Spenser's profuse and vivid imagery accounts in large part for the association of his writings with wit. Literary fashions were changing in the quarter century from 1590 to 1 6 1 5 with a rapidity that has never been equaled. In this period, the most remarkable in the history of English literature, new conceptions of wit achieved currency. About 1590 the word began to be associated with ability to write plays and gain a living by the pen. T h e near relation between wit and rhetoric which had marked the preceding years of Elizabeth's reign persisted to a considerable extent. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Love's Labour's Lost illustrate, better than one might at first expect, what constituted wit at the time they were written. Evidence of the close connection between wit and rhetoric is prominent in the writings of Greene, Lodge, and Breton, among others. Soon after the publication of Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, in 1 5 9 1 , the sonnet came into vogue, followed quickly

is

W I T IN T H E 1 6 T H AND 1 7 T H C E N T U R I E S

by the satire and the epigram. The emphasis which these forms placed on neatly turned thought tended to swing wit in the direction of play upon words. The influence of Seneca and some Italian writers, also, probably encouraged pointed and antithetical phrasing. As the end of the century approached an increasing premium was placed on clever repartee, especially in the drama. Ben Jonson used "wit" almost as a synonym of "ingenuity" in some of his plays. Yet the fluid state of the language in the closing years of the sixteenth century is illustrated by the fact that a protest against this use of the word was voiced in Every Man out of His Humour. Macilente remarked there, "I see his ignorance will not suffer him to slander her, which he had done most notably, if he had said 'wit' for 'ingenuity' as he meant it." 7 Just before the beginning of the new century the essay appeared, accompanied almost immediately by the problem, the paradox, and the character. Meanwhile much literature of a somewhat personal nature was written, particularly letters, commendatory poems, elegies, and dedicatory verses. The vogue for writing of this familiar nature flourished greatly in England between 1610 and 1615. A person with an intimate knowledge of the quarter century following 1590 can estimate with a fair degree of accuracy the date at which a work was conceived. Shakespeare's plays, from Love's Labour's Lost to The Tempest, reflect the changes, even in wit, which took place in the tone of literature from year to year. Usually Shakespeare lagged somewhat behind his contemporaries. In the quarter century following 1615 wit degenerated more and more toward association with anagrams, acrostics, quips, facetious tales, and the like. Use of the word was revived by translators of the time in connection with novelle, romances, and sentimental novels. With the Restoration, wit came, largely through the influence of continental critics, to stand at times as a synonym for good style in both prose and poetry. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wit received much attention from literary critics. A great deal of confusion has arisen from failure to consider the different meanings which were given to ' B e n Jonson, Every Man out of His Humour,

1600, Act III, scene 9, 11. 81-83.

W I T IN T H E 1 6 T H A N D 1 7 T H C E N T U R I E S

13

the word in various contexts. Some of the more widely separated uses of the term will be considered here. In view of the fact that "wit" was applied loosely to designate a great many things in the early part of the seventeenth century, Abraham Cowley can hardly be blamed for declining to attempt a definition of it. In his "Ode: Of W i t " he observed: A thousand different shapes it bears, Comely in thousand shapes appears.8 His remarks were confined principally to what wit is not,—tales, jests, florid talk, lifeless verses, adornment and gilding, puns, anagrams, acrostics, bawdy jokes, lines that almost crack the stage, tall metaphors, dry chips of short lung'd Seneca, odd similitudes. T h e items of this list deserve particular notice, because everything mentioned represents a degenerate form of wit particularly current in the early seventeenth century. Some of them will appear of more significance in the light of the close connection which this study brings out between wit and certain rhetorical devices. In the latter half of the seventeenth century a number of critics were particularly insistent that wit and judgment are necessarily related. A n example of the extreme care that is needed in dealing with the subject of wit may be taken from Thomas Hobbes's use of the term in several of his writings. In the introduction to Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century,9 Professor Spingarn has called attention to the fact that many critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries stressed comparison as the basis of wit and he has noted that they sometimes used the term synonymously with "fancy." These are pertinent statements; but Professor Spingarn's remarks on the association of "wit," "fancy," and "judgment" are misleading. He has pointed out that Hobbes noted the use among his contemporaries of "fancy" as a synonym for " w i t " and that, at times, he used it this way himself. With this in mind Professor Spingarn has proceeded to derive from certain statements of Hobbes the distinction, employed by Locke, Addison, and other critics of a later day, between wit as the discernment of resemblances in disparate objects and judgment as • Abraham Cowley, The English Writings, edited by A. R. Waller, I, 16. • Critical Essays 0/ the Seventeenth Century, edited by Joel E. Spingarn, I, xxix.

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CENTURIES

the perception of difference in objects apparently similar. Yet in the passages 10 cited Hobbes is clearly distinguishing judgment from fancy, not from wit. T h e last, he explicitly states, includes both of the other qualities. T h i s illustrates what has been said before, that an attempt to limit the meaning of "wit" too far only produces confusion. Discussion over the relation of wit to judgment seems to be common to nearly all ages; echoes of this are found in classical Greek and Latin, in Petrarch's Latin dialogues, in the vernacular languages of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and it continued on into the Age of Reason. John Dennis in his Reflections Critical and Satyrical upon a Late Rhapsody, Call'd an "Essay upon Criticism," 1711, took Pope to task severely for having separated wit from judgment. 1 1 Dennis's remarks are worth attention for various reasons. T h e description of wit which he has quoted from the Frenchman Father Dominique Bouhours, un solide qui brille, supports Professor Spingarn's statement that English critics who came after the Restoration drew much from French sources. Father Bouhours dealt with wit (bel esprit) at considerable length in La Manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages d'esprit, 1687, and in Les Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugene, 1671. T h e ultimate source of part of Father Bouhours's discussion is Aristotle, to whom he frequently made acknowledgment. Among other things he noted Aristotle's observation in The Rhetoric12 that wit depends largely upon comparison. T h e critics of the seventeenth century attached much importance to comparison as the basis of wit. T h i s commonplace of criticism, it has just been noted, was derived from Aristotle. Thomas Hobbes reiterated it, after having come directly in contact with it while he was making his b r i e f 1 3 of Aristotle's Rhetoric. He also knew some of the discussions of wit by continental critics which stressed this point. Comparison is, without doubt, the chief element of wit; and upon close scrutiny it will Cf. A p p e n d i x II, 1. Critical Essays of the Eighteenth Century, edited by W i l l a r d p. 229. " A r i s t o t l e , Rhetoric, Bk. I l l , ch. χ, sec. 5 to ch. xi, sec. 6. " T h o m a s Hobbes, Λ Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique, 1637. 10 11

H.

Durham,

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15

be found to cover more than is at first evident. For example, many proverbs were originally vivid metaphors. But comparison is not the whole story. Interpreted as broadly as possible, it will never cover all that has generally been accepted as wit. Vividness or actuality is also given by Aristotle as a means of attaining it. Surprise, vividness, lucidity, illuminating analysis, a pointed question, or a well-turned answer may display wit without involving comparison. In actual practice, readers and writers of the seventeenth century regarded a number of things other than comparison as wit. Some of the critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, far from confining wit to comparison, broadened its meaning to the extent that, at times, it became a synonym for good style in both prose and poetry. Continental criticism played a part here, too. Mention has been made of John Dennis's comment on Father Bouhours's description of wit as un solide qui brille. T h e discussions of wit by some other Englishman of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries contain remarks which closely parallel those in the passage from which Dennis quoted. From Father Bouhours's statements 1 4 it is obvious that he drew heavily upon Italian and Spanish critics. He took occasion several times to deny the name of wit to the writings of Seneca and his imitators. In La Manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages d'esprit, he lauded proverbs highly as a means of contributing wit to a discourse, and he made a pertinent distinction between proverbs and "sentences." 1 5 A long passage in Sir William Davenant's Discourse upon "Gondibert," 165ο, 1 " deals with wit as proficiency in poetical style. He describes it as "the laborious and lucky rèsultances of thought, having towards its excellence, as we say of the strokes of painting, as well a happiness as care." Again, in the same context, he states, "Wit is not only the luck and labour, but also the dexterity of thought, rounding the world, like the Sun, with unimaginable motion, and bringing swiftly home to the memory universali surveys." It may be observed in passing that memory, " Cf. A p p e n d i x II, 2. M Critical Essays of the Seventeenth

» Cf. A p p e n d i x II, 3. Century,

II, 20 ff.

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which was one of the five divisions of ancient rhetoric, has been persistently associated with wit from early times. Davenant also points out some of the things which he does not consider wit — music of words, conceits, epigrams, agnominations, tinkling of words, and the carping of old men. Even broader than Davenant's conception of wit is the definition which Dryden reiterated on several occasions in connection with poetry: "propriety of thoughts and words." 17 This, according to his own admission in the Preface to Sylvae: or the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies, 1685,18 was derived from a consideration of Virgil's style. He went into detail on the matter in the Preface to Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders MDC LXVI, 1667," where he distinguished wit in the larger sense of "propriety of language" from its narrower and stricter meaning, "sharpness of conceit." T h e subject was broached again in An Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age, 1672.20 Robert Boyle prefaced his Occasional Reflections, 1665, with " A Discourse Touching Occasional Meditations," in which the improvement of the wit by means of reflective thinking is a principal concern. There, in a somewhat rambling manner, he stated: That nimble and acceptable Faculty of the Mind, whereby some Men have a readiness, and subtilty, in conceiving things, and a quickness, and neatness, in expressing them, all which the custom of speaking comprehends under the name of Wit, which pleasing, and (if well manag'd) useful Quality, the exercise I am discoursing of, may three or four several ways promote.21 Boyle was probably trying to frame his definition so as to include all that had generally been accepted as wit from the time of Aristotle down to his own day. For this, the boundaries of the word could hardly be drawn closer. T h e meaning may be somewhat narrowed for particular ages. Yet care must be taken not to apply any limited sense too stringently. Boyle immediately followed his broad definition of wit with a discussion of some of the means of attaining it. This deals particularly with several of the rhetorical devices which had been Essays of John Dryden, edited by W. P. Ker, I, 190 and «70. u Ibid., 1, 14-15. " Ibid., I, »56. "Ibid., Χ, 171-74. " R o b e r t Boyle, Occasional Reflections, 17

p. 37.

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17

closely associated with wit in the years before he wrote. T e n pages are devoted to praise of comparisons as a source of wit. 22 T h e n , with mention of examples Boyle realized that he had embarked on too extensive a digression and suddenly put the matter aside with these words: But the particular Method of deriving Instruction from the Subjects we consider, will be more fit to be particularly insisted on, when we shall have more time, or some other opportunity, to treat of the manner of making Occasional Meditations, and shew, how they may be fetch'd from Example, Analogy, Dissimilitude, Ratiocination, and other Topics, which we must not now take any further notice of.23 Boyle's analytic mind, his practice of investigating the history of a subject, and his interest in logic and rhetoric may account for the stress he has placed on these devices or "topics." Thomas Shadwell in his remarks 24 introductory to The Sullen Lovers, 1668, and The Humorists, 1671, defended Ben Jonson against the insinuations made by Dryden and Flecknoe that the Elizabethan dramatist's wit was frugal. In both prefaces Shadwell employed the word "invention" in a way that indicates he had something of the sixteenth-century idea of wit in mind. He wrote, among other things, in the foreword to The Humorists, "Besides W i t in the Writer, I think, without any Authority for it, may be said to be the invention of remote and pleasant thoughts of what kind soever." This definition is appropriate for the seventeenth century, the time of which Shadwell was writing. Without the emphasis which the adjectives "remote" and "pleasant" give to certain tendencies, it would fit the sixteenth century very well. It is close to the definition of wit by Gabriel Harvey which has been quoted. From the critical discussions of wit in the seventeenth and eighteenth, centuries it is something of a relief to turn to investigation of the subject in the sixteenth century. T h e theories of critics with which one has to deal in the earlier period are few and generally so far from the mark that they are of little hindrance. T h e study of wit in the sixteenth century leads to the " Cf. Appendix II, 4. M Robert Boyle, Occasional Reflections, p. 48. * Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, II, 150 and 158-60.

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schools of the Renaissance, about which little is known. Information regarding the manner in which schoolboys of that day studied logic and rhetoric is meager. T h e best source of our knowledge regarding these matters is the textbooks which were used. Nearly all were, of course, in Latin. Even when it cannot be determined what text was used in a particular school, conclusions may be based on the elements which are common to the treatises on the subject. Of particular interest to the matter in hand are the interrelations of logic, rhetoric, wit, and moral philosophy in the sixteenth century. Some slight connection may be discerned between wit and the writings of John Skelton, John Heywood, and Sir Thomas More in the first half of the sixteenth century. The main reason for attributing wit to Skelton was his satiric bent. With respect to Heywood, the association may be accounted for by his epigrams, his constant use of proverbs, and his interludes in which wit was a subject of discussion. Yet the quality of his epigrams is low; most of his proverbs came from Erasmus's works by way of such men as Richard Taverner; and little worth comment on the topic of wit is to be gleaned from the entertainments which he wrote for the court of Henry V I I I . Some justification may be found for the reputation which Sir Thomas More had, both in his own day and later, for his wit. Merry tales and jests occur frequently in his works; he translated portions of three of Lucian's dialogues into Latin prose; he turned some epigrams from Greek into Latin and composed a few of his own; occasionally he introduced similes, proverbs, and examples consciously into his writings, as the marginal notes testify; and, finally, some of the sayings credited to him reveal a sharp intellect. T h e dialogues of Lucian were translated to match similar portions by Erasmus; the epigrams resulted from a friendly competition with William Lyly, the grammarian. More achieved a graceful beginning to A Dialogue concerning Heresies, 1529, by citation of the proverb "One busynes begetteth and bryngeth forth another." The most sprightly of his dialogues is Of Comfort against Tribulation. Comments 25 in the margins and " Cf. Appendix II, 5.

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19

in the text call attention to similes, proverbs, examples, merry tales, and other rhetorical devices which were associated with wit in the sixteenth century. More's reputation in this respect was greatly furthered by Erasmus's Moriae encomium, 1511, and by the same author's "Epistolary Life of More" addressed to Ulrich von Hutten. 26 Soon after the middle of the sixteenth century references to his wit multiplied. These may be largely accounted for by the translation of the Utopia by Raphe Robynson, in 1551, and the appearance of a complete edition of More's works, 1555-57. Occasional comments on his wit occur in the late years of the sixteenth century. One odd circumstance is the attribution to More of the only bit of verse in Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth, Part I, 1597. In his Apology, 1533, More defended himself against the charge, brought by his opponents in the religious controversy of the day, that too frequently he had introduced merry tales into his writings. " T h e y reprove that I bring in among the most earnest matters, fansies and sports, & mery tales. For as Horace sayeth, a man may sometimes saye full soth in game." 27 His jests, it must be admitted, were often ineffective. Throughout the sixteenth century writers continued to characterize his wit as acrid and scoffing. In dedicating the Moriae encomium to him, Erasmus defended this satirical penchant of More's wit and called attention to the treatment of jests in Quintilian's Institutio oratoria 28 and in the Ad Herennium, a rhetorical treatise long attributed to Cicero. He may not have known the extended discussion of the matter in the second book of Cicero's De oratore, following the remarks on wit, imitation, and amplification. Cicero's treatise was the chief source of Quintilian's comments. Much of what Cicero had written on the subject of jests was included by Castiglione in the second book of his Libro del cortegiano, whence Thomas Wilson transferred a part of it to his Arte of Rhetorique, 1553,:29 under the heading "amplification." * Erasmus Roterodamus clarissimo equiti Vlricho Hutteno S.D., 1519. 17 Sir T h o m a s More, Works, 1555-57, p. 927. a Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, Bk. VI, ch. iii. " T h o m a s Wilson. The Arte of Rhetorique, 1553. Reprint of the edition of 1585 by T h e Clarendon Press, 1909, pp. 134-55. T h e passages referred to in the edition of 1585 are, except for variations in spelling, the same as in the edition of 1553.

20

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T o what Castiglione had written on Socrates's scoffing wit, Wilson added a remark on More. 30 Jests are frequently referred to as "witty" in the translation of II libro del cortegiano which Sir Thomas Hoby published in 1561. T o the discussion of doubleentendres, which Hoby specifically described as witty, he affixed a note calling attention to More's proficiency in this type of word play. 31 Any attempt to deny the name of wit to merry jests, or even to effective puns, must deal with evidence to the contrary extending over at least two thousand years. In the sixteenth century, however, they constituted only minor elements of wit. More's wit, his facetiousness, and the eloquence of his style are praised in the letters which Peter Giles, Guillaume Budé, and Erasmus wrote in commendation of the Utopia. More's disclaimer of the rhetorical proficiency of his work in his letter to Giles 32 is, of course, ironical. T h e prefatory epistle 33 which Giles added to the volume makes this evident, if it was not sufficiently clear before. It is worth noting that specific and repeated references are made in this letter to the three divisions of rhetoric which remained of most importance in the Renaissance, "invention," "disposition," and "eloquence." More has much to say of logic and rhetoric in his works, and occasionally his dialogues consist of the affected use of logical terms in arguing sophistically, called "chop-logic." Erasmus and Giles furnished the first edition of the Utopia, which was printed at Louvain in 1516, with some marginal annotations.34 Frequently these called attention to apophthegms, proverbs, examples, and similes in the text. In the sixteenth century such devices came to be regarded as the most important means of displaying wit. Raphe Robynson carried over all of the marginal " T h o m a s Wilson, The Arte of Rhétorique,

p . 147.

" " Y e t is the Englishe as plentiful of these jestes as any other tong, wherein Syr Tilomas More excelled in our time." In the original edition this marginal note is printed beside the paragraph beginning, " T h e kinde therefore of wittie sayinges . . ." Cf. Everyman edition, p. 149. "Cf. Appendix II, 6. •""Peter Giles to Jerome Busleiden," translated by R a p h e Robynson in the second edition of the English version of the Utopia, 1556. - Cf. A p p e n d i x II, 7.

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21

notes of the Latin and added some of his own in the second printing of his translation, in 1556. As the title page of this edition indicates, 35 Robynson was greatly impressed by the wit of the Utopia. Some of the comments of More's contemporaries on his wit have been noticed; Robynson bears still more heavily upon this point. In the decade before this translation appeared, the use of the word " w i t " as applied to literary expression had increased greatly among English writers. T h e growing popularity of the word may have inclined Robynson to use it prominently and frequently in commendation of the work he had translated. T h e term " w i t " occurs frequently in the translation, and many of the marginal comments make reference to it.38 More's eloquence is praised both in the dedicatory epistle of Robynson's first edition and in the address to the reader of the second issue. Into each of these comments the translator has introduced the term " w i t " profusely. T w o passages, at least, are worthy of special notice. T h e first37 of these was suggested by the letter More addressed to Peter Giles. Robynson not only repeated the three divisions of rhetoric mentioned by More, but in addition he connected " w i t " particularly with "invention." T h e stress placed on "holsome lessons" there is a prominent characteristic of English translators and writers in the first three quarters of the sixteenth century. It is a principal element in Lyly's Euphues. In the second passage, which is of less importance, Robynson associated wit with a simile which he quoted from Terence. Perhaps it would be well to touch upon another matter before leaving Sir Thomas More. Some discussions of the style of Lyly's Euphues have given much attention to such matters as alliterative patterns and translacing of words, that is, repetition of root syllables. Devices of this sort are common, not only in the writings of Lyly, but also in the works of many authors who preceded him. T h e y fall into the lowest classification of a vast number of rhetorical figures which have been associated with wit at various "A Frutefull Pleasaunt, and Wittie Worke, of the Best State of a Publicque Weale, and of the Newe Yle, Called Utopia . . . newly perused and corrected and also with divers notes in the margent augmented, 1556. " Cf. A p p e n d i x II, 8.

" Cf. A p p e n d i x II, 9.

28

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times. T o make use of a simile, their relation to wit, taking the word as representing an ideal sought for in literary circles about 1575, is much the same as the part played by the percussion instruments in a full symphony orchestra. It may be granted that almost any one can hammer a drum, after a fashion; maestri are rare. Here it may be pointed out that the use of such figures as patterns of alliteration and rhyme are not confined to the writings of the latter half of the sixteenth century. More's Apology, 1533, which has been made readily accessible by the reprint of The Early English Text Society, would hardly be thought to be a likely place in which to find these. Yet it is not necessary to search far in that work. 38 Some of the publications of William Caxton exhibit the same peculiarities. Lord Rivers's foreword to the first book printed in England with a date, The Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres, 1477, is highly rhetorical and employs alliteration. In spite of Sir Thomas More's reputation, his direct influence upon English literature was slight. T h e principal forces which affected the development of wit in England before 1550 were: the logic and rhetoric practiced in the schools, a host of collections of sententious matter used for amplifying and adorning themes, and certain works translated into English. Of much force in shaping English wit were a number of compilations—pertaining largely to moral philosophy—of adages, similes, maxims, apophthegms, and the like. One of these was The Dictes and Sayengis. Many collections of this sort were prepared especially for use by students in the grammar schools. For a number of years Erasmus resided in England, where he was the intimate friend of Sir Thomas More and John Colet. His Adagia, Similia, and Apophthegmata were among the most favored sources of material for the amplification and ornamentation of students' themes. From the publication of the Adagia, in 1500, to well after the translation of the Similia by Francis Meres as the basis of Palladis Tamia: The Second Part of Wits Commonwealth, in 1598, Erasmus's writings exerted a strong influence on the course M Cf. The Apologye of Syr Thomas More, E a r l y English T e x t Society, Original Series, No. 180, 1930 (for 1929), p. 11, 11. 30-37 a n d p . 42, 1. 3 3 - p . 43, 1. u .

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23

of English wit. T h e process of amplifying moral discourses by means of sententious materials selected from collections of commonplaces is illustrated in a number of the writings of Sir Thomas Elyot. The Boke Named The Gouernour and The Image of Gouerance, compiled of the actes and sentences notable of the moste noble Emperour Alexander Seuerus may be cited as examples. His Bankette of Sapience is itself a book of commonplaces. In the present study separate treatment is given to the subjects of logic and of rhetoric, and translations of works into English are considered in the discussions of the various types of literature to which they belong, such as the moral discourse, the sentimental novel, and the narrative discourse. T h e remainder of the present chapter will deal, first, with certain collections of sententious materials, particularly several publications of William Caxton which were made up largely of moral sentences, and, then, with a number of Latin thesauri, especially the Adagia, Similia, and Apophthegmata of Erasmus. Here, too, may be considered Sir Thomas Elyot's compilation, The Bankette of Sapience. T h e greater part of the books printed by William Caxton have an expressed or an implied moral purpose. The Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres is a book of moral philosophy. Caxton had, however, produced some small tracts at Westminster before The Dictes appeared. Among the earlier pamphlets may have been the Disticha de moribus, falsely attributed to Dionysius Cato, with Benedict Burgh's English commentary in rhyme royal accompanying each distich. Caxton did not content himself with three editions of Burgh's version; in 1483 he published his own translation of a French prose commentary made up of precepts analogous to the Latin text and of illustrative examples. T h e two books which have been mentioned from among the many published by Caxton containing sententious material, have sufficient bearing upon the development of English wit to justify discussion of them individually. The Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres is thought to have been compiled in Latin about 1350. T h e ultimate source of a large part of it was Diogenes Laertes's The Lives and Sayiîigs of the Philosophers. Earl Rivers stated that he had turned the

24

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work into English from the French translation which Guillaume de Tignonville, Provost of the University of Paris, had made in 1410. But Earl Rivers's version corresponds closely in many places with that made by Stephen Scrope in 1451. 3 9 The book consists of about a thousand pithy sayings, proverbs, apophthegms, and some quick answers. A number of similes occur, some from natural history; and occasionally examples and anecdotes are included. T h e work contains a short, rhetorical preface by Earl Rivers, a facetious epilogue by Caxton, and, following this, some disparaging remarks by Socrates on women which, Caxton says, Earl Rivers had not included in the body of the work. The particular connection of The Dictes and Sayetigis of the Philosophies with English wit will be pointed out later in this study. This will be done in considering William Baldwin's A Treatise of Morali Phylosophie, 1547, which is largely derived from it, and in discussing Wits Commonwealth, Pt. I, 1597, which is based chiefly on Baldwin's work. T h e Disticha de moribus which went under the name of Dionysius Cato was not composed until sometime in the third or the fourth century. It consists of precepts made up of what was then ancient wisdom and ascribed to Cato in order to enhance their moral weight. From the fifth century to the nineteenth century this book was one of the most widely used in the schools of the western world. Isidore of Seville, Alcuin, Abelard, and John of Salisbury, among others, mention it as an established manual and praise it. It is mentioned three times, at least, by Chaucer, once in " T h e Merchant's Tale," 40 where he quotes Cato's precepts on bearing a scolding wife with prudence, in the "Nun's Priest's Tale," 4 1 and, again, in " T h e Miller's Tale," 42 where he indicates the carpenter's complete lack of education by the fact that he has never read in Cato that a man should marry his own likeness. In the preface to his translation of the French prose commentary, mentioned before, Caxton praises the book in these words: " Harleian "Chaucer, "Chaucer, a Chaucer,

manuscript 2266, in the British Museum. " T h e Merchant's T a l e , " 1. 132. " T h e Nun's Priest's Tale," 1. 1 5 1 . " T h e Miller's T a l e , " 1. 41.

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«5

And among all other the noble Cato, author and maker of this book, which he hath left for to remain ever to all people to learn in and to know how every man ought to rule and govern in this life, as well as for the life temporal as for the life spiritual. And as in my judgment it is the best book for to be taught to young children in school, and also to people of every age, it is full convenient if it be well understood. T h e n he relates an anecdote of Poggio, the Florentine, secretary to Popes Eugene and Nicolas, who, when he was asked which he considered the best book of all his well-filled library, replied, "Cato glossed." At least a dozen editions of the Latin were published in England before 1640, and almost as many English translations appeared. T h e book remained popular throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An English version in couplets by "an anonymous gentleman" was published by Benjamin Franklin in 1735. T h e use of the book came usually in the second form, after the schoolboy had mastered his Sententiae pueriles and the simple instructions in Latin regarding his conduct in school. Translations were made by a number of well-known schoolmasters, such as Charles Hoole, Richard Taverner, and John Brinsley. Hoole states that the book is intended for children of five or six years; but usually the pupils were somewhat older. It is little wonder, even so, that occasionally complaints are found to the effect that children memorized these weighty moral precepts without comprehending them. More might be written of the amount of sententious moralizing in the books published by Caxton. Here there is no intention of implying that interest in material of this sort was new in England at the time Caxton set up his press at Westminster. A glance at the works of Lydgate would easily convince one to the contrary; and his direct influence on English wit can be discerned at times. One might go back further than Lydgate, even to King Alfred's translation of Boëthius. But the direct consequences of some of Caxton's publications to sixteenth-century wit have made these books a convenient starting point. Of the books published in English during the first three decades of the sixteenth century scarcely half a dozen are of interest to the student of literature. In England it was a time of prepara-

26

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tion, of schooling. T h e best minds of the country were eagerly engaged in learning the ancient tongues and in absorbing the knowledge contained in Greek and Latin literature. Yet the English presses were not idle. A great number of school books were printed in England in the first third of the sixteenth century, and many others were imported. It was at this time that Robert Whittington began the publication of his aids to the study of Latin, which give him the distinction of having his name on more different title pages than did any other Englishman of the sixteenth century. T h e books which had the most influence in England at the time were printed abroad and were in Latin. Among those connected with the growth of English wit were: Laurentius Valla's Elegantiae; Polydore Vergil's Prouerbiorum libellus; Polyanthea of Nannus Mirabellius Dominicus; many books in Latin on rhetoric and logic; and chief of all, the works of Erasmus, particularly his Adagia, Similia, De duplici copia verborum et rerum, Colloquia familiaria, and Moriae encomium. With these books should be mentioned his Apophthegmata, which appeared for the first time in 1 5 3 1 . T h e influence of Erasmus in England during the early sixteenth century may be estimated to some extent by the account book of an Oxford bookseller, John Dome, during the year 1520. This has been printed in Collectanea I, Volume V of The Oxford Historical Society Publications, and a good résumé of its contents has been given by the Reverend T . M. Lindsay in Volume III of The Cambridge History of English Literature. There it is pointed out that one volume of every nine is the work of Erasmus and that this ratio would be considerably increased by eliminating almanacs and the Latin grammars of Whittington and his opponent Horman. At this time, too, Erasmus was in much greater favor at Cambridge than at Oxford. An unusually large number of copies of his works were printed at one time, yet the various editions ran into the hundreds. At least eighty impressions of the Adagia were made before 1600. Also a number of epitomes appeared, of which there exist more than forty different impressions. Their popularity may be accounted for by the weight of the Adagia in its final form. T h e 1542 edition fills nearly 1,200

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27

large folio pages. Erasmus's commentaries on some of the adages, as for example, Dulce bellum inexpertis, were reprinted separately many times. T h e Similia, Moriae encomium, and Apophthegmata each appeared in more than fifty editions during the sixteenth century; the De copia, De civilitate, and Colloquia reached more than one hundred impressions each. Of the last an average of more than one edition a year had been printed up to 1878, exclusive of one hundred and fifty printings of selected colloquies. Fresh and vigorous as were the writings and compilations of Erasmus, they came near enough to the conventional matter of the grammar schools to fit into the accepted routine. Some of his publications deserve special notice, since they were particularly associated with both the wit and the rhetoric prevalent in sixteenth-century England. T h e first edition of the Adagia, 1500, was dedicated to William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who had been Erasmus's pupil in Paris. It consists of less than one hundred and fifty octavo pages, containing about eight hundred proverbial expressions and sentences, many of them from Diogenes Laertes's Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers. Erasmus's preface to the Adagia is an extended encomium of adages as ornaments of speech. 43 Everyone knows, he says, that such devices as epigrams, metaphors, parables, examples, illustrations, similes, and images are the chief riches and refinements of expression. T h e volume is similar to the Prouerbiorum libellus of Polydore Vergil, which had appeared in 1498. W h e n Erasmus was charged with having copied this book, he replied that he had not known it. In 1508 he completely reworked his collection, expanding it to 3,260 proverbs with extended commentaries, which are often short discourses. T o this practically new work he gave the title Adagiorum chiliades, that is to say, thousands of adages. Still further additions were made later. In its final state the work fills 1,071 folio pages of text and is furnished with two separate indices, one of six thousand, the other of five thousand items. T h e number of adages actually discussed is 4,151; but many other proverbs are " Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami per Percy S. Allen, "Epistle 126," I, 290-91.

denuo

recognilum

et

auctem

s8

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quoted in the commentaries. If an adage is from the Greek, the original is given, as well as a Latin version. In its final form the Adagia constitutes one of the most complete treasuries of sententious materials to be found in the Renaissance. Some selections, translated from it by Richard Taverner, will be noted. A sentence from Ascham's Scholemaster 44 may be appropriately quoted here, as well for its attestation to Erasmus's esteem in England as for its bearing on the subject in hand. Erasmus, giuyng him selfe to read ouer all Authors Greke and Latin, seemeth to haue prescribed to him selfe this order of readyng: that is, to note out by the way, three special pointes: All Adagies, all similitudes, and all wittie sayinges of most notable personages: And so, by one labour, he left to posteritie, three notable books, and namelie . . . his Chiliades, Apophthegmata, and Similia. T h e Parabolae sive similia, usually known as the Similia, was first published in 1513, as an appendix to the De duplici copia verborum ac rerum, which Erasmus had written for John Colet's newly-founded school at St. Paul's. T h e similes are principally from Plutarch, Aristotle, Pliny, and Seneca, with a few from Theophrastus and Lucan. Evidence of its use in the schools is occasionally found. T h e indebtedness of Lyly, Greene, and Nashe to it has been pointed out by their most recent editors. A thorough study of the borrowings made by Elizabethans from this collection would probably require a volume in itself. Erasmus refused to arrange his materials under topical headings in the Adagia, Apophthegmata, and Similia. Hence the voluminous indices which publishers affixed to his works. In 1532 Georgius Maior, a compiler of indices and epitomes at Magdeburg, grouped the similes under commonplace headings. 45 T w o other arrangements of the Similia appeared in 1557, one by Conradus Lycosthenes (Wolffhart) 4 8 and another by Petrus Apherdianus. 4 7 Lycosthenes had published a collection of apophthegms 4 8 in " A r b e r ' s reprint, p. 128. 45 Elegantiores aliquot parabolae "Parabolae,

sive similitudines

ex Erasmi

Erasmi

similibus

selectae,

. . . ord. alphab.

>557· "Loci communes ex simi'ibus et Apophthegmatibus Apherdianum, 1557. " Apophthegmatum sive responsorum memorabilium

a G. Maiore,

red. per C.

Erasmi loci

concinnai, communes,

1532.

Lycosthenem, per 1547.

Petr.

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sg

1547, selected partly from Erasmus's writings, which were printed in 1574 and frequently thereafter followed by the Similia in the same binding. The arrangement of the Similia by Lycosthenes was taken by Francis Meres as the basis of Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury; being the second part of Wits Commonwealth, 1598. The similes Meres added were from two sources, the Church Fathers and the Elizabethan wits, Lyly, Greene, and Nashe, among others. One of the sections of Palladis Tamia contains the wellknown "Comparatiue Discourse of our English Poets." Much of Meres's comment on the English writers came from the previous observations of Puttenham, Sidney, and Webbe. But the similes under the two headings "Poetrie" and "Poets" 4 9 immediately preceding the "Discourse" are, except for a few additions at the end, from Lycosthenes's arrangement of Erasmus's Similia. Like the work upon which it was based, Palladis Tamia was a favorite source of sententious comparisons for the ornamentation and amplification of themes. Its popularity in the schools lasted through the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century. Erasmus's Apophthegmata appeared first in six books, in 1531. 6 0 This was, as he declared, a free handling of the apophthegms which Plutarch had addressed to Trajan. In the fourth edition, which was reached in 1532, two books of memorable sayings of persons of the Ancient World were added from Diogenes Laertes's Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers. Though the Apophthegmata probably owed some of its popularity to its similarity to the Adagia, the two are entirely separate works. H. de Vocht has pointed out the indebtedness of Mery Tales and Quicke Answers and some other English jest books to Erasmus. He has also treated the influence upon Lyly of the Colloquia familiaria, the Similia, the Apophthegmata, the Moriae encomium, and the Adagia.61 The Colloquia familiaria, which was originally intended as a book of conversation for beginners in Latin, was amplified from time to time until it became a pleasing set of discourses on many sides of life. It was one of the most " C f . Appendix III, 5. Apophthegmatum, sive scite dictorum libri sex, Basle, 1531. 51 Henry de Vocht, De Invloed van Erasmus op de Engelsche Tooneelliteratuur der XVI' en XVII* Eeuwen, Eerste Deel, Shakespeare, Jest-Books, Lyly, Ghent, 1908. M

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popular books of the sixteenth century. Ninety-nine editions appeared in the first thirty years after its publication. Combining, as it does, sententious material woven into the form of polite discourse, it probably had a deeper influence upon Lyly than the parallel passages cited by de Vocht would indicate. It has already been noted that a number of Erasmus's similes were translated by William Baldwin at the end of his Treatise of Moral Philosophy, 1547. About eight years before this there appeared three small volumes of selections from the A dagia and the Apophthegmata. These were the work of Richard Taverner, a schoolmaster, who published a translation of the Bible in 1539. The Prouerbes or Adagies Gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus is in two separate books, both of which were published in 1539. It was intended for the general reading public and also for use in the schools. Though it has been somewhat neglected, it contains, in the commentary on the two hundred and seventeen adages selected from Erasmus, the most important collection of English proverbs up to that time. John Heywood was probably greatly indebted to it, and the Elizabethan wits used it much. T h e section headed "Proverbs" in Wits Commonwealth is taken largely from it. Taverner's method is to give Erasmus's Latin with an English translation, then to discuss the adage and to give similar English proverbs. Much ink that has been wasted in discussion of the bush which was supposed to have been used as an ale house sign would have been saved by a reading of the following: Vino vendibili suspensa hederá nihil opus Wyne that is saleable and good nedeth no bushe or garland of yuye to be hanged before. Lyke as men woll seke oute good wyne, though there be no sygne at all to directe and appoynte them where it is solde, for all good thynges nede no commendation of any outward badge or token. Good merchaundyse and also pure and substancial thynges of what kynd so euer they be do prayse them selues. The English proverbe is thus Good wyne nedeth no signe. The Flores aliquot sententiarum, 1540, consists simply of Latin precepts from Erasmus, principally his Apophthegmata, with parallel English versions. It is a small pamphlet of but a few pages. The Garden of Wysdome, 1539, is treated by bibliographers as an

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original work of Taverner. But it is composed of extracts drawn almost entirely from Erasmus's Apophthegmata. There are, it is true, two anecdotes concerning Henry VIII paralleling incidents related in Erasmus. In addition there are a few sayings which have not been located by referring to the index of the Apophthegmata. Taverner describes the book as, "witty, pleasaunt, and nette sayinges of renouned personages." In a letter prefixed to the second part he states that the first book has found favor "as well for the varietie of the matter, as for the sharpness of the sentence." These are two of the most important qualities of Elizabethan wit, variety of matter and pithiness. In 1542 Nicholas Udall, a well-known schoolmaster, published what is in bulk the most considerable translation of the century from Erasmus. T h i s consists of the preface to the Apophthegmata and books three and four of Erasmus's eight. T h e full title, capitalized as it appears on the title page, is as follows: Apophthegmes, that is to saie, prompte, quicke, wittie and sentencious sayinges, of certain Emperours, Kynges, Capitaines, Philosophres and Oratours, aswell Grekes as Romaines, both veraye pleasaunt and profitable to reade, partly for all maner of persones & especially Gentlemen. First gathered and compiled in Latine by the right famous clerke Maister Erasmus of Roterdame. And now translated into Englyshe by Nicholas Udall.—Excusum typis Richardi Grafton, 1542. Udall's foreword is little more than an expansion of the title. He stressed the moral value of the book, its sententious materials, and its special profit to noblemen. Several times in his prefatory letter 5 2 Erasmus had insisted upon the pithiness of apophthegms. Another point to which he gave much attention was the jesting element in them. But, since Cicero 5 3 and Quintilian 54 had failed to distinguish between the various kinds of sharp sayings, he excused himself from attempting it.55 The Bankette of Sapience, which Sir Thomas Elyot had compiled before 1539, is almost entirely from Nannus Mirabellius Dominicus's Polyanthea. Elyot usually selected dicta as they came under a single heading in Polyanthea. Occasionally those from " Cf. A p p e n d i x II, 10. Institutio oratoria, Bk. VI, ch. iii.

M

"De oratore, Bk. II, chs. lvi-lxx. Cf. Appendix II, 10.

M

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more than one topic were combined. T h e only additions which he made to the materials he found in Polyanthea are some observations from historical writers of his acquaintance, such as Livy, Tacitus, and Plutarch, and a few precepts on health from Galen and Hippocrates. All the quotations under the first heading in The Bankette of Sapience, "Abstinence," are taken from Polyanthea. The fourth quotation Elyot erroneously assigned to Seneca, but it is really from Boëthius's Consolations of Philosophy. In transcribing from Polyanthea Elyot supposed that the notation "Seneca ad Lucillum epla. V I I , " which follows this saying, belonged to it, whereas it applies to the next quotation, which he did not include. The value of neatly expressed moral precepts is noted in the dedicatory epistle of An Introduction to Wisdome, made by Ludouicus Vives and translated into Englishe by Rycharde Morysine, 1540. Speaking of sage writers, Morysine says, "They perceyued that moral preceptes pleasantly set out in feate colours of wyttie phantasies, both crepe faster into our bosomes, and also tarye there with muche more delectation and profite, than thev wolde, beyng playnly spoken." 56 Wit is mentioned a number of times in the body of the work. In one passage the keeping of a commonplace book is recommended. And if thou perceyue any thing taken of the wise sort, or to be spoken quyckely, gravely, lernedlye, wyttilye, comely, beare in mynde, that thou mayst, whan thou shalte have occasion; use the same. Thou shalt have alwayes at hand a paper boke, wherein thou shalte write such notable thynges, as thou redest thyself, or herest of other men worthy to be noted, be it other feate sentence, or word, mete for familiar speche, that thou maist haue in a redynes, whan tyme requireth.BT This comment serves to corroborate the testimony of the foregoing works and of those considered in the next chapter regarding the association of wit with collections of sententious materials. " An Introduction "Ibid., O] verso.

to Wisdome, Aiii recto.

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the most important part of this study falls in the A>- second half of the sixteenth century, an attempt has been LTHOUGH

made to clarify the subject by discussion of the meanings of "wit" current in the seventeenth century and in the first half of the sixteenth. In order to explain the relation between wit and rhetoric in the; Elizabethan age it is necessary to deal separately with still other matters. These topics include the practice of logic and rhetoric in the schools and the use of popular collections of sententious materials for the amplification and ornamentation of compositions. Also, consideration must be given to both the versions in foreign tongues and the English translations of various genres of literature which illustrate wit and rhetoric in combination. Since the chapter preceding this dealt with some collections of sententious materials in Latin and the compilations translated from them, the most direct transition is to the English commonplace books of the latter part of the sixteenth century. There is ample evidence connecting these volumes with both wit and rhetoric; yet a full explanation of these relations will have to wait upon the discussion (in Chapters IV and V) of the logic and rhetoric taught in the sixteenth-century schools. The school libraries of the Renaissance were made up largely of collections of proverbs, maxims, apophthegms, fables, examples, similes, descriptions, and selected quotations from such authors as Cicero, Plutarch, Aristotle, and Seneca. Throughout the sixteenth century and later, thesauri of this kind were closely associated with both wit and rhetoric. The contents of these volumes were often grouped under commonplace headings, like adversity, anger, envy, fear, God, honesty, justice, prudence, revenge, and truth. From such books the schoolboys of the Renaissance, applying the methods of composition which had been taught to them,

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drew materials for amplifying and embellishing their themes. T h e fact that the thesauri were regarded as belonging to the domain of moral philosophy did not hinder their relation with rhetoric. Bacon, 1 it may be recalled, agreed with Aristotle in placing rhetoric between moral and civil knowledge on one side and logic on the other. A particularly strong moral bias prevailed in sixteenth-century England. Moral philosophy is the largest single element in Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt. Although the volumes of sententious materials in the school libraries were generally in Latin, a number of popular collections of proverbs, maxims, apophthegms, similes, and examples appeared in English during the latter half of the sixteenth century. At the same time that both the Latin and the English books stressed their moral purpose they testified explicitly to the relation of their contents with wit and rhetoric. Elizabethan writers drew extensively from these sources. T h e first publication of William Baldwin, who was the prime mover in the composition of A Myrroure for Magistrates, was entitled A Treatise of Morali Phylosophie, 1547. T h e curious history of this book has yet to be related. It stands as a connecting link between The Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres, 1477, and the compendiums of wit at the end οξ the sixteenth century, particularly Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth, 1597, Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury, 1598, Wits Theatre, 1599, and Belvedére, or The Garden of the Muses, 1600. Thomas Nashe remarked in his epistle preceding Haue with You to Saffron-Walden, 1596, that Baldwin's "moral sentences . . . are now all snatcht up for Painters poesies." Baldwin's work is divided into four parts, of which the first, " T h e Lives and Witty Answers of the Philosophers," is the only one deserving the title of treatise, as he later pointed out himself. W i t is one of the principal subjects of discussion in the prefatory sections of all four divisions. T h e sources from which Baldwin compiled his publication may be considered briefly. T h e first of its four parts consists of a discussion of moral philosophy and the lives of the philosophers, •Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience ch. xviii, sec. 5.

and Advancement

of Learning,

1605, Bk. II,

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with their witty answers, in twenty sections. The material for this was taken largely from Diogenes Laertes's The Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers. In addition, Baldwin consulted the eighth book of Saint Augustine's De civitate dei in one of the editions containing the commentary of Juan Luis Vives. For the life of Hermes he was indebted to Marsilio Ficino's account and to The Dictes and Sayengis. T h e sources of the scanty lives of Isocrates, Plutarch, and Seneca, added at the end, have not been ascertained. Books II and III are headed, respectively, "Of Precepts and Counsels" and "Of Proverbs and Adages," though in reality there is little, if anything, to distinguish between them. 2 The basis of these parts seems to have been clusters of dicta which Baldwin found in The Dictes and Sayengis dealing with such topics as "Of God," "Of the Soul," "Of the World," and "Of Death." He assigned these sayings arbitrarily to various philosophers without regard to whom they were assigned in Caxton's publication. There is a possibility, of course, that the two works drew from some common source, but this would hardly account for the similarity of language between them. Erasmus's Adagia contributed a few proverbs, probably through the intermediary of the translations made by Richard Taverner. T h e starting point of Book IV, "Of Parables, Examples, and Semblables," was also The Dictes and Sayengis, although the bulk of this section, as Baldwin himself stated, was turned into English from Erasmus's Similia. In the latter half of the sixteenth century such materials as proverbs, apophthegms, similes, and examples came to be particularly associated with wit and rhetoric. A second edition of Baldwin's A Treatise of Moral Philosophy appeared in 1550, and a third five years later. Sometime between these two printings Thomas Palfreyman published under his own name, but with Baldwin's title, a rearrangement under more particularly descriptive commonplace headings of the precepts, proverbs, and similes in Baldwin's work, with a few additions. Palfreyman made no distinction, and in fact there is little, between those which Baldwin classed as sentences and those which »See A Treatise of Morali Phylosophie, B k . I, chs. iv-v and B k . ITI, ch. i for Baldwin's attempt to differentiate between precepts and proverbs.

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he classed as proverbs. Since Baldwin had professed in his original foreword that his purpose in compiling the volume was to encourage others to undertake similar labors, he could not greatly object to Palfreyman's action. But in the preface to the edition of 1555 he criticized the arrangement of the contents of Palfreyman's volume under narrow topical headings and objected to the omission of the first book, which, he rightly pointed out, was all that justified the title of treatise. On the first point Baldwin was certainly wrong; Palfreyman's organization is obviously superior. Between 1555 and 1557 the two men came to some agreement, and the work then appeared under Palfreyman's name with Baldwin's first part, " T h e Lives and Witty Answers of the Philosophers," prefixed to it. Before 1641 fifteen editions had been printed. It was recommended as a source from which students might cull witty sentences for the amplification of their themes both by John Brinsley in Ludus literarius; or The Grammar Schoole, 1612, 3 and by Charles Hoole in A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole, 1660. 4 T h e additions which Palfreyman made to A Treatise of Moral Philosophy are significant. He gathered his new material mainly from Lord Berners's translation of Guevara's Libro aureo de Marco Aurelio, from a volume of Latin sentences culled from Cicero's works by Petrus Lagnerius and from at least three works of Sir Thomas Elyot, The Gouernour, The Bankette of Sapience, and The Image of Gouernance; compiled of the actes and sentences of the most noble Emperour Alexander Seuerus. The Libro aureo was made up largely of sententious materials, which, according to Guevara's own statement in his prologue to the reader, he and his secretaries had labored years in collecting. T h e contents of both Lagnerius's volume and The Bankette of Sapience were grouped under commonplace headings. The Gouernour is a crude mosaic of borrowed passages, some of which, like nearly all of the sentences in The Bankette of Sapience, came from the Polyanthea of Nannus Mirabellius Dominicus. The Image of Gouernance is a work similar to the Libro aureo, and it • R e p r i n t by T h e Liverpool University Press, 1917, p. i 8 ï . ' R e p r i n t by T h e Liverpool University Press, 1913, p. 18«.

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may be inferred from Elyot's prefatory remarks, that he turned it into English in order to take advantage of the popularity of Lord Berners's translation of Guevara's book. In the sixteenth century the value of the Bible as a book of moral philosophy was not overlooked. In addition to the various complete translations, some of the books containing moral sentences, such as "Proverbs" and "Ecclesiastes" were printed separately. What is said to have been the first epitome of the Bible was published by Thomas Paynell in 1550. It is a copious but judicious selection of the most pointed texts. In 1578 A Treatise of Heauenly Philosophie, compiled by Thomas Palfreyman, appeared as a complement to A Treatise of Moral Philosophy. T h e similarity of the two volumes is apparent. A Treatise of Heauenly Philosophie, like its predecessor, closes with a section headed "Parables and Semblables." In the latter half of the sixteenth century several publications appeared in English taken from Italian collections of maxims, proverbs, witty sayings, anecdotes, similes, and historical examples. Chief among the books of this sort turned into English were several compilations, edited by Francesco Sansovino, from the works of Guicciardini. In 1573 James Sanforde published The Garden of Pleasure, an English version of Guicciardini's Detti et fatti. T h e second edition of Sanforde's translation, 1576, bore the title Houres of Recreation, or After Dinners: which may be aptly called the garden of pleasure, contayning most pleasant tales, worthy deeds and wittie sayings of princes and learned philosophers, with their morals. Not only does this transfer the name of some of the Italian editions of the volume into English, but it also testifies to the association of the contents with wit. T h e work consists largely of apophthegms similar to those in Erasmus's Apophthegmata, which was, indeed, Guicciardini's source for some of his. A few are from Pontanus and Cicero. Jests are notable because of their absence. Often the sayings are simply proverbs. After citing a number of adages the compiler remarks that since he has come to proverbs he will include some which Boccaccio used. These number thirty-four. At the end of the book about one hundred and fifty more proverbs are given

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both in Italian and English. Another collection which Sansovino edited was translated by Robert Hitchcock in 1590 as The Quintessence of Wit; being a corrant comfort of conceites, maximes, and poletick deuises, selected and gathered together by Francisio Sansouino. Wherein is set foorth sundrye excellent and wise sentences, worthie to be regarded and followed. In 1578 appeared Florio His Firste Fruités: whiche yeelde familiar speech, merie prouerbes, wittie sentences, and golden sayings, by J o h n Florio, who later translated Montaigne's Essays. W i t h Italian and English on alternate pages, the book was intended to assist those who wished to learn either language. It begins with a collection of phrases of the sort familiar to all travelers and ends with an explanation of Italian grammar and a supplementary note for those who wish to learn English. But Florio, intent upon giving his book a literary flavor, compiled it mainly from sententious materials. T h e r e is a chapter containing three hundred proverbs, one of "Pretty Demands" with their ready answers, and a number of sections made u p of short aphoristic discourses. T h e bulk of the discourses consist of heaped examples and testimony from the ancients. For much of this matter he acknowledges Guevara as his source, although the versions which he gives are in Italian and English. T h e most striking characteristic of style in the book is Florio's fondness for compendious and frequently antithetical phrasing. T h i s is evident both in his own writing and in the material he has selected from others. Nearly all of the passages from Guevara are sententious and pointedly antithetical. Florios Second Frutes, 1 5 9 1 , like its predecessor, is made u p of parallel speeches in Italian and English. Most fill only part of a line, and many are marked with asterisks to indicate that they are Italian proverbs. In the dedicatory epistle Florio gives a detailed account of the means used by hack writers of the day to get into print. In the address " T o the R e a d e r " 5 special attention is directed to the proverbs in the body of the work. A t the end a collection of six thousand and fifty Italian adages is appended, with the separate title Giardino di recreatione. T h i s contains in Italian all of the proverbs in 6

Cf. Appendix III, 1.

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Guicciardini's compilation and most of those strewn through Stefano Guazzo's La civile conversatione. Four collections of moral sayings which claimed association with wit in the latter half of the sixteenth century may be dismissed briefly. In 1569 Thomas Blage translated a collection 6 of short examples and fables from Aesop and nineteen other writers. This bore the running title "Wittie fayned sayings of men, beasts, and foules." The Proverbs of the Noble and Woorthy Souldier Sir James Lopez de Mendoza Marques of Santilla, with the Paraphrase of D. Peter Diaz of Toledo, which was turned into English by Barnaby Googe, in 1579, consists of one hundred moral precepts, accompanied by illustrative examples and an extensive commentary containing many similar dicta. T h e claims on the title page and in the preface 7 of The Welspring of Wittie Conceites, 1584, by William Phiston, or Fiston, are indicative of what was popular in England at the time of its appearance. T h e contents of the book are, however, very disappointing. Likewise, The Lord Margues Idlenes, 1586, by William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, falls far short of the "blurb" on the title page.8 Wit figures prominently in the publications which appeared under the name of Nicholas Breton from 1577 to 1626. Frequently it is mentioned in the title, the prefatory matter, and the text of a pamphlet. "Variety of invention" was, he realized, his forte, and he stressed it beyond all else in his comments. T h e second part of his first publication in prose, The Wil of Wit, Wits Will or Wils Wit, Chuse You Whether, 1580, is the author's dream of a visit to "the iland of Invention." In the "Address to the Reader" before Wits Trenchmour, 1597, emphasis is placed on "variety of inuention." Choice, Chance, and Change: or Conceites in Their Colours, 1606, can probably be assigned to Breton, from the fact that "wit," "variety," and "invention" are employed in it in much the same way that they are in the works which bear his name. Wit is lauded among the advantages of court life in The Court and the Country, 1618. Breton's favorite rhetorical device is the • T h o m a s Blage, A Schole of Wise Conceytes, wherein uiit, so the most have rmtch mirth, set forth in common alphabet, 1569. T Cf. Appendix III, Ï.

as every conceyte hath places by order of the · Cf. Appendix III, 3.

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citation of proverbs. From the opening page of his first publication to the close of his last, there is scarcely a page which is not adorned or strewn with them. Some of his books consist of nothing else, as for example, The Crossing of Proverbs, 1616, and Wits Private Wealth, 1612, a short imitation of Politeuphuia. Breton never lost an opportunity to introduce long sections of what purport to be proverbs into his pamphlets. When he ran out of genuine adages, he attempted to make some up himself. However ineffective these sayings are, there can be no doubt of his desire to adorn his writings with sententious material. At the close of the sixteenth century appeared a number of related collections of commonplaces, all of which are specifically associated with both rhetoric and wit. Of principal concern in this study are Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth, 1597, Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury; being the second, part of Wits Commonwealth, 1598, Wits Theatre of the Little World, 1599, and Belvedére, or The Garden of the Muses, 1600. The first is a book of between four and five thousand aphoristic citations, arranged under nearly one hundred and fifty commonplace headings, each of which begins with a formal définition. Most of the quotations are proverbs, maxims, and pithy moral sayings, but usually at the close of each topic a few examples and similes are given. The English book which served as a model for Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth, was Thomas Palfreyman's arrangement and amplification of William Baldwin's A Treatise of Moral Philosophy. Fifty of the sixty topic headings in the earlier collection are taken over and nearly all the quotations. "Of Iustice" in Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth draws from both "Of Iudges" and from "Of Iustice and Iniustice" in Palfreyman's volume. "Of Hate" contains a number of quotations from "Of Enuy;" and "Of Rage" draws from "Of Wrath." At times a single topic in A Treatise of Moral Philosophy furnished headings and part of the quotations for several sections in Politeuphuia, for example, "Of Precepts and Of Counsailes," which is of considerable length in Palfreyman's collection, affords nearly all the citations for "Of Precepts" in Politeuphuia and some quotations for "Of Counsell," "Of Sentences," and still other topics. Just half the similes given under

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"Of Similitudes" in the later book have been selected as they come in order from the concluding section of A Treatise of Moral Philosophy, and part of those interspersed come from elsewhere in the volume. Not quite half the quotations under " W i t " in Politeuphuia are drawn from the section " O f W i t and Discretion" in Palfreyman. T h e compiler of Politeuphuia took over only such sentences from A Treatise of Moral Philosophy as seemed to him most appropriate, and he added an immense number from various sources. There are roughly three times as many citations in Politeuphuia as in the earlier collection and some eighty or ninety new topics. T h e chief additional source which has been discovered is the English translation by Thomas Bowes, in 1586, of the first book of Pierre de la Primauday's L'Académie françoise. T h e larger part of the definitions at the beginning of each topic are from this volume. T h e French author, following a logical practice, took great pains to define the subjects which he treated in his discourses. In the English translation the definitions are pointed out in the margins, along with other rhetorical devices, such as similes and examples. T h e index also carefully indicates the definitions contained in the book. Both Politeuphuia and Belvedére drew a number of sentences from The French Academie. When the compiler of Politeuphuia could not locate a definition readily in Bowes's translation, he frequently made one up from the sentences in Palfreyman's book. T h e definition which opens Politeuphuia, " O f God," is made up of one short phrase referred to in the index of The French Academie and the second and third sentences from the first section of commonplaces in Palfreyman's collection, likewise headed " O f God." 9 Many of the sentences are ascribed to the Church Fathers. Some may have been drawn from St. Augustine's De civitate dei and Vives's commentary on that volume. Probably the greater number are drawn from some Latin compendium of the wisdom of the Fathers. Much material is borrowed from contemporary writers, such as Daniel, Lodge, Markham, Gosson, Lyly, Greene, and Sidney, with acknowledgment only to the last-named author. In 'Cf.

Appendix III, 4.

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his helpful book on Elizabethan proverb lore 1 0 Professor Morris P. Tilley has pointed out in Politeiiphnia fifteen quotations from Lyly, all but three of which are under the headings "Of Love," "Of Wit," and "Of Friendship." There are a considerable number more. T h e sources of two other quotations and a parallel to a third in "Of W i t " have been located in Lyly. One third of the quotations given under the heading "Of Proverbs" in Politeuphuia is from Richard Taverner's Prouerbes and Adagies Gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus. T h e nine proverbs at the end are taken in order from Taverner's volume, where they are numbered 10, 36, 38, 39, 7 1 , 73, 78, 119, and 152. These are followed by two adages from Erasmus in Latin. Some of the otheT proverbs may have come from John Florio's First Fruités. Many are found in the works of John Heywood, but frequently with slight differences of wording, which may indicate some intermediary source. Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury; being the second part of Wits Commonwealth, published by Francis Meres in 1598, is a volume half again as large as Politeuphuia and is made up entirely of similes. T h e greater number of these were translated from Conradus Lycosthenes's (Conrad Wolffhart's) arrangement, under commonplace headings of Erasmus's Similia. Meres's volume is augmented, particularly at the beginning, by a considerable number of similes from Luis de Granada's Guia de pecadores, and the same author's Libro de la oracion y meditación. Early in the year 1598 Meres published English translations which he made from Latin versions of these works. In Granados Devotion, which is the second part of the Libro de la oracion y meditación, marginal symbols prominently indicate the similes in the text. It is possible that, noting the immense popularity of Politeuphuia, Meres began the preparation of his book of similes as he was making these translations. This inference is supported by the fact that the topics in the first part of Palladis Tamia, which deal with religious matters, follow the order of treatment in Luis's De devotione. Luis himself was the compiler of several compendiums. 10 Morris P. Tilley, Elizabethan Proverb [.ore in Lyly's "Euphties" and in "Petite Pallace," with Parallels from Shakespeare, 1926, pp. 383-84.

Petite's

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43

One of these, Sylva locorum communium, omnibus divini verbi, contains many of the moral observations woven into the De devotione and the Ducis peccatorum. A more popular book of commonplaces by Luis was Collectanea moralis philosophiae, in tres tomos distributa, the first part from Seneca, the second from Plutarch, and the third from various philosophers. But there is no evidence that Meres used these volumes. Unlike the compiler of Politeuphuia, he did not particularly attempt to conceal his borrowings from English writers. In his list headed " T h e Authors both sacred and profane, out of which these similitudes are for the most part gathered," he mentions Maria Scotorum Regina, Chronicles of England, Doctor Playfere, H u g h Broughton, M. lohn Fox, M. lohn Lyly, M. lohn Harrington, lohn Capgraue, Lord de la Nonne, George Pettie, Robert Greene, Sir Philip Sidney, and William Warner. Other English names are appended to some of the similes, and many borrowings are unacknowledged. More than two hundred quotations from Lyly, most of which are unassigned, have been identified by Professor Morris P. Tilley. 1 1 One part of Meres's work is well known and has frequently been reprinted, that is, the section entitled " A Comparatiue Discourse of Our English Poets, with the Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poets." For this he drew much material from Puttenham, Webbe, and Sidney. But the topics, "Poetrie" and "Poets," which precede this discourse, are, with the exception of a few items at the end of each, made u p of similes translated directly from Lycosthenes's arrangement of Erasmus's Similia.12 In, the epistle " T o the Reader" at the beginning of Palladis Tamia, Francis Meres placed great stress on the connection of wit with sentences, similes, and examples, and he announced that a volume of examples was being prepared by another person. T h e latter work was published in 1599 with the title Wits Theatre of the Little World. It is drawn almost entirely from the stock collections of Latin exempla. In 1600 appeared Belvedére, or The Garden of the Muses, very similar in contents to Politeuphuia, except that all the quotations are in single pentameter lines or couplets and that the similes and examples under 11

Ibid.,

pp. 384-94.

13

Cf. A p p e n d i x III, 5.

44

T H E ENGLISH C O M M O N P L A C E BOOKS

each topic follow the sentences and have separate headings. It may be worth noticing, in passing, that generally the last two or three items under the caption "Examples likewise of the same" are not examples, but apophthegms of notable persons, such as, Quintilian, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca. Nearly all the genuine examples in Belvedere are also found in Wits Theatre. From eight hundred to one thousand of the sentences and some of the similes are in Politeuphuia. T h e citations are, of course, in verse in Belvedére and in prose in the other volumes. It does not necessarily follow that the quotations which are common to these volumes were versified for Belvedére. T h e compiler of Politeuphuia laid the contemporary English poets under heavy contribution, without acknowledgment, and turned their sententious lines into prose. It may be that the collection of the material for Belvedére was begun as early, if not earlier, than for the other volumes. Both in the discussions prefixed to the commonplace books and within the works themselves, much is said of the dependence of wit on sentences, similes, and examples. T h e following statement comes from the dedicatory epistle of Politeuphuia addressed by Nicholas] L[ing] to John Bodenham. My humble desire is, that you wold take into your kind protection this old and New burden of Wit: new in the form and title, though otherwise olde, and of great antiquitie, as being methodicall collection of the most choyce and select Admonitions 8c Sentences, compendiously drawn from infinite varietie, Divine, Historicall, Poeticall, Politicke, Moral, and Humane. Under the heading "Of Sentences" is given the definition, "Sentences are the pithy and sweet Flowers of wit, compiled in a ready and deliberate braine, and uttered in short and elegant Phrases." In the address " T o the Reader" at the beginning of Palladis Tamia, Francis Meres reiterated several times the importance which he attached to sentences, similes, and examples, in upholding wit. 13 The dedicatory epistle 1 4 of Wits Theatre addressed, like that of Politeuphuia} to John Bodenham by Nicholas L[ing], supports the emphasis placed in the other volumes of the group U

C/. Appendix III, 6.

" Cf. Appendix III, 7.

T H E E N G L I S H C O M M O N P L A C E BOOKS

45

upon the value of sentences, similes, and examples in sustaining wit. In Belvedére, or The Garden of the Muses, the quotations given under the topic headings are subdivided into sentences, similes, and examples, as the epistle " T o the Reader" 1 5 points out. At the same time that these collections testify to the popularity of sententious material, they also reveal that a great deal of such matter had already been absorbed into English literature, especially the poetry of the last twenty years of the sixteenth century. Although the only Englishmen among the authors listed in Politeuphuia are More and Sidney, the compiler drew much of his material from the writings in verse and prose of his compatriots. In 1600 also appeared Englands Parnassus and Englands Helicon, both made up of selections from recent English poets. Englands Parnassus, like all the volumes which have been mentioned before it, is a dictionary of quotations, though the excerpts are generally longer and the topics are arranged alphabetically. It may be that it and Wits Theatre are the work of Robert Allott. There exist one copy of Englands Parnassus and several of Wits Theatre in which the dedications are signed with his name. Politeuphuia and Wits Theatre were both first printed for Nicholas Ling, who had the principal share in the publication of Englands Parnassus with Cuthbert Burby and Th. Hayes. The dedication of Politeuphuia and the address to the reader are signed "N. L." and the epistle " T o the Reader, if Indifferent" in Englands Helicon is followed by these letters transposed. Politeuphuia, Wits Theatre, Belvedére, and Englands Helicon are all dedicated to John Bodenham. From these dedications it appears that he had, at least, a considerable part in the bringing forth of the first of these volumes, Politeuphuia, and the last two, Belvedére and Englands Helicon. A great part of our dependable information regarding the schools of sixteenth-century England comes from John Brinsley's Ludus literarius: or the Grammar Schoole, 1612. He directed frequent attention to the use students were to make of collections of sententious materials for amplifying and adorning their " Cf. Appendix III, 8.

46

THE ENGLISH COMMONPLACE

BOOKS

themes. Prominent among the books which he recommended were: Erasmus's Adagia, Lycosthenes's Apophthegmata, a volume of selected sentences from Cicero's works, Reusner's Symbola, Aesop's Fabulae, Cato's Disticha de moribus, and Cicero's De officiti. But in order that the students might gain better practice in writing their Latin compositions he suggested that they be sent to seek variety of matter in English commonplace books. In the course of his discussion of Latin works suitable for furnishing matter and substance he stated, "Many other I might name unto you, which have written of such morali matters; divers of them in English and some of them notable; as the French Academie, the morali part of its charactery, Moral Philosophy, Golden Grove, Wits Commonwealth, Civili Conversation, and others." 18 T h e books referred to are: Thomas Bowes's translation of the first book of Pierre de la Primauday's L'Académie françoise; Thomas Palfreyman's arrangement of William Baldwin's A Treatise of Moral Philosophy; William Vaughan's Golden Grove; Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth; and Stephano Guazzo's La civile conversatione, translated by George Pettie in 1581. The French Academie, Book I, was particularly useful to students because of its careful definitions, its abundant moral sentences, and its discussion of the vices and virtues. Vaughan's Golden Grove illustrated in a particularly rigid manner the application of certain elementary rhetorical processes in building up short themes. Both Politeuphuia and Palladis Tamia may have been included under the title Wits Commonwealth, since this was the name borne by the combined edition, which was published especially for school use in the seventeenth century. As late as 1722 Politeuphuia was printed with the legend "For the use of schools" on the title page. Throughout the many pages in which Brinsley discusses the writing of student themes he refers frequently to the use of Latin and English commonplace books to furnish "matter and substance." Evidence of this may be seen in Chapter V of this work, where particular attention is given to Brinsley's directions regarding the methods to be followed by students in building up their compositions. He also highly recommends the " J o h n Brinsley, Ludus literarias; or The Grammer T h e Liverpool University Press, 1917, p. 182.

Schoole,

1612. Reprint by

T H E E N G L I S H C O M M O N P L A C E BOOKS

47

practice among scholars of making their own commonplace books. This was an almost universal custom at the time. Some of the materials which Bacon collected as a youth and which he put to good use in his works have come down to us. Charles Hoole's A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole, published in 1660, but written twenty-three years earlier, is substantially in agreement with Brinsley's work regarding the methods of studying rhetoric. At the beginning of his book Hoole gives a list, valuable to anyone interested in sixteenth and seventeenth-century education, of the volumes recommended for use in each of the six forms. A large number of these are collections of sententious materials. In Hoole's directions to the fourth form, he describes the process of amplifying a fable. Let them strive (who can best) to turn the Fable into English prose and adorn and amplifie it with fit Epithetes, choice phrases, acute Sentences, wittie Apophthegmes, livelie similitudes, pat examples, and Proverbial Speeches; all agreeing to the matter of moralitie therein couched; all which they should divide into several Periods, and return into proper Latine, rightly placed according to the Rules of Rhetorical composition.17 Copious instructions 18 are given by Hoole for the collection of commonplaces and the use of them in themes by members of the fifth form. In the course of this he mentions a number of volumes from which materials may be compiled. "Witty sentences" are to be gathered from: "Golden Grove, Moral Philosophie, Spinx Philosophica, Wits Common-Wealth, Flores Doctorum, Tullies Sentences, Demosthenis Sententiae, Enchiridion Morale, Stobaeus, Ethica Ciceroniana, and Gruteri Florigelium." He mentions Wits Commonwealth several other times in the book. In one of these passages, he remarks, that, since students are required to translate the very difficult English of this book into Latin, he has prepared for publication, "An Alphabetical Index of every English word and phrase therein contained, with figures pointing to the Chapter and verse where it is used, and shewing what Latine or Greek expression is most popular to be made in that place." 19 Another source of information regarding the English grammar17 Charles Hoole, A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Reprint by T h e Liverpool University Press, 1913, p. 162. a Ibid., pp. 181-82. "Ibid., p. 163.

Schoole,

1660.

48

THE ENGLISH COMMONPLACE BOOKS

school education is Ralph Johnson's The Scholars Guide from the Accidence to the University, 1665. Like the treatises of Brinsley and Hoole it mentions many of the compilations used by students as sources of sententious material for the ornamentation and amplification of their themes.20 Of special interest are Johnson's instructions for amplification and imitation, his directions for writing essays and characters, and his general rules for the construction of themes. Particular examination of these points falls in the chapter dealing with rhetoric in the present work. T h e very difficulty of separating consideration of these compilations of sententious materials from discussion of the processes of rhetoric which utilized them is itself an indication of the close relationship which existed between wit and rhetoric. 20

Cf. Appendix V, 4.

IV LOGIC

T

HE trivium in the schools of the sixteenth century consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Of these subjects the last was the most highly regarded. Some training in logic generally preceded or accompanied the study of rhetoric. After a boy had acquired ability to use simple Latin and had mastered his Sententiae pueriles and Disticha de moribus, the latter of which was attributed to Dionysius Cato, he was introduced to logic and rhetoric through some elementary book such as Aphthomus's Progymnasmata. This combined the use of simple logical processes, such as cause, comparison, circumstances, and citation of authority, with practice in rhetorical development. According to most of the evidence regarding education in the sixteenth century, logic was studied before rhetoric. T h e treatises of dialectic most popular in the schools were Cicero's Topica and Rudolphus Agricola's De inventione dialéctica. In The Gouernour 1 Sir Thomas Elyot recommended that the youth of fourteen should study one of these works for half a year, to the exclusion of all else, before taking up the subject of rhetoric. William Kemp in The Education of Children in Learning, 1588,2 appears to echo Elyot's advice, in prescribing logic as a study for a child of thirteen before attention is given to rhetoric. Thomas Wilson's The Rule of Reason, 1551, which came to a large extent from Agricola's treatise on dialectic, was published two years earlier than The Arte of Rhetorique. Wilson probably considered the study of the first as a necessary introduction to the latter. At Warwick Grammar School in the sixteenth century logic followed grammar. In the letter on education addressed to Samuel Hartlib, which Milton published ' S i r T h o m a s Elyot, The Boke Named The Gouernour, 1531, Bk. I, ch. xi. ' W i l l i a m ] K[emp], The Education of Children in Learning, Folio g* verso. Cf. A p p e n d i x IV, 1.

50

LOGIC

in 1644, the remarks on logic and rhetoric near the close are merely repetition of stock comments in the treatises of the preceding century, even to comparison of logic with the closed fist and rhetoric with the open palm. 3 T h e simile had been used by the ancients in their treatises on oratory. Logic and rhetoric make use of the same processes of investigation. In the sixteenth-century treatises these means of analysis and development came under the head of "inventio," and they were known in English as "topics" or "places." Aristotle treated them at length in that part of The Organon known as The Topics, and he touched upon them in The Rhetoric, Book II, Chapters X X to X X I V . The Topics consists of eight books: I. Introductory; II. Absolute Accident; III. Comparative Accident; IV. Genus; V. Properties; VI and VII. Definition; and VIII. Application. In all he enumerates, according to some editors, as many as three hundred sources of general and particular arguments. Obviously these are too numerous and too loosely organized to serve orators and schoolboys as a manual of principles for the investigation of any subject. Cicero wrote his Topica in order to simplify the matter for his friend, the jurisconsult C. Trebatius, who had found Aristotle's Topics almost incomprehensible. Instead of concerning himself with the principles for discovering propositions of probable reasoning, Cicero reduced the whole treatise to seventeen classes of arguments. Whatever may be said of this arrangement from the standpoint of abstract logic, it must be admitted that it is a much more workable scheme for the orator. Even so, through the ages there continued to be complaints that Cicero's Topica was too complex to be easily kept in mind and readily applied. Themistius also attempted a simplification of Aristotle's Topics, arranged under twenty-two headings according to whether the arguments rise from a matter itself, are contingent to it or are incidental. All that is known of Themistius's treatment is contained in Boëthius's commentary on Cicero's Topica. T h e writings of Cicero and Boëthius were the main sources of knowledge of dialectical investigation in the Middle Ages, and the treatises ' Cf. Appendix IV, ».

LOGIC

51

of these men continued to be authoritative until well into the sixteenth century. Rudolphus Agricola's De inventione dialéctica, 1515, is mainly a reworking of the two. Investigation is as important a part of rhetoric as it is of logic. Aristotle considered it at some length in the second book of The Rhetoric. Cicero, Themistius, and Boëthius were interested in the subject chiefly from the standpoint of its application to pleading. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages, who were concerned mainly with syllogistic subtleties, tended, on the other hand, to slight dialectical investigation. In the fourteenth century William of Occam wished to banish Aristotle's Topics from The Organon. With the reaction of the Renaissance against scholasticism, logic itself became of less importance. That part which William of Occam had wished to banish became the branch which was most studied, because of its connection with rhetoric. It is hardly too much to say that dialectic was valued principally for the part it played in rhetorical investigation. The two most important treatises on logic written during the sixteenth century, Rudolphus Agricola's De inventione dialéctica libri tres, 1515, and Petrus Ramus's Dialecticae partitiones, 1543, both lend support to this view. A very brief outline of that part of rhetoric associated with dialectic and known as investigation (inventio) may be helpful at this point. An argument may be based on deduction, induction, or analogy. Deduction infers the truth of a particular instance from the general rule. Induction, the process of drawing a general conclusion from particular instances, is usually too cumbersome for use in addressing a popular audience. Analogy draws an inference from one instance to a similar instance. It may take the form of either an example or a simile. Deductive reasoning is of two sorts, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic arguments consist of any kind of testimony—evidence, witness, documents, the wisdom of the ancients, proverbs, and authority. Closely allied with these are the commonly accepted beliefs of moral philosophy and custom. Intrinsic arguments are themselves subdivided according to their nearness to the proposition. The first group consists of six arguments from the terms of

58

LOGIC

the proposition itself. Four of these, definition, genus, species, and parts, are from the meanings of the terms; two, derivation and conjugates, are from the words expressing the terms. T h e arguments of the second division are drawn from sources connected with the terms of the proposition. Cause and effect are productively connected; antecedent and consequence are necessarily connected; and circumstances, comprising innumerable details of time, place, things, and persons, are accidentally connected. T h e third group consists of arguments drawn from sources which bear resemblance to the terms of the proposition. Comparison, likeness between things of the same kind, may be from the lower to the higher, from the higher to the lower, or from like to like. Similitude is likeness between things different in kind. Contraries includes varieties of unlikeness—contradictories, opposites, and repugnant things. It is well to note that these principles of reasoning are not mutually exclusive. A given argument may be classed under various headings according to the way it is considered. Deduction, induction, and analogy all make use of examples; some authorities class examples among the intrinsic and some among the extrinsic arguments of deductive reasoning. T h e rhetorics of the sixteenth century often refer to such difficulties of classification. Sometimes, as in Erasmus's De copia verborum ac rerum, the topics of investigation were regarded simply as means of providing plenty of matter for a composition. T h a t was probably the usual attitude toward them of the schoolboy who had been assigned a theme to develop. Rudolphus Agricola (Roelof Huysman) went to Italy in the fifteenth century to complete his education. After his return to Germany he became a professor at Heidelberg. His De inventione dialéctica libri tres, deals not only with dialectical investigation but also with certain processes of rhetorical development which do not belong to the domain of logic, for example, the means of arousing the emotions. Several times in his treatise Agricola declares that rhetorical investigation and dialectical investigation are essentially the same. A number of chapters 4 deal simply with the means of furnishing writers plenty of matter foi ' R u d o l p h u s Agricola, De· inventione xxii.

dialéctica

libri tres, 1515, Bk. II, chs. xviii-

LOGIC

53

their compositions. Erasmus attempted, in a letter to Guillaume Budé, to justify the heterogeneous methods of amplification presented in the De duplici copia verborum oc rerum by pointing to what Agricola had done. A t the end of the first book of the De inventione dialéctica, a comparative table is given of the processes of dialectical investigation distinguished by Cicero, Themistius, and Agricola. These are what the Elizabethans called the "topics" or "places" of logic. In order to illustrate concretely what these represent the headings listed by Cicero and Agricola are given here along with an English version of the latter's table from the second book of T h o m a s Wilson's The Rule of Reason, »55»· HEADINGS LISTED B Y CICERO AND AGRICOLA

[The numbers in parentheses indicate the corresponding headings in the other list.] Cicero ι. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Totum (1.5) Partes (6) Notado (19) Coniugata (7) Genus (2) Forma (3) Simile (21) Differentia (24) Contraria (23) Adiuncta (8, 15,16, 18) Antecedentia Consequentia Repugnantia Efficiens (11) Effectuai (15) Comparatio (21) Iudicium (20)

Agricola ι. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Definitio (1) Genus (5) Species (6) Proprium Totum (1) Partes (2) Coniugata (4) Adiacentia (10) Actus Subiecta Efficiens (14) Finis Effecta (15) Destinata Locus (10) Tempus (10) Connexa Contingentia (10) Nomen (3) Pronuntiata (17) Comparata (7, 16) Similia Opposita (9) Differentia (8)

LOGIC

54

6

ENGLISH VERSION O F AGRICOLA'S T A B L E T h e diuision of the places, whiche are XXJIII in n u m b e r .

Particularlie in substaunce, as Some are inward placet, called Loci interni, and thei are

the

The The The verie ν T h e The The The

f W o o r d e s adioigned and partile incidente to the J T h e maner of doyng substaunce, as I. T h e thing conteined ' Some are causes, as

T h e efficiente cause T h e ende

Either knitte with any affiniiic, called Cognata, of the whiche some are those which spryng of the causes caled Euenta, as. Some are outward places, called Externi, that is not in the substance, or nature of the thynge, b u t without it and these are

Either applied to the thyng, not beeyng the cause thereof, b u t only giving a name thereunto, called Applicita, as.

Or els thei be accidentes, whereof there be Or els thei are repugnauces, as A

T h e effecte T h e T h i n g appointed for some ende

- T h e Place The Tyme Thynges annexed

' T h i n g e s chauncyng Sentences of the sage T h e n a m e of a thyng Thynges compared , Thynges like j Discordances \ Thynges differyng

n u m b e r of b o o k s o n l o g i c a p p e a r e d in E n g l i s h d u r i n g

sixteenth century, beginning with T h o m a s of

definición generali worde kinde propertie whole partes yoked woorde

1551.

Reason,

The

schools

and

Wilson's

universities

course, to use L a t i n m a n u a l s , p a r t i c u l a r l y A g r i c o l a ' s De

inventione

dialéctica.

Rule

continued,

Cicero's

Wilson

the

The

f o l l o w e d the

of and

Topica

latter

c l o s e l y in t h a t p a r t of his treatise d e a l i n g w i t h i n v e s t i g a t i o n . T h e p o p u l a r i t y of The

Rule

of Reason

is i n d i c a t e d b y t h e f a c t t h a t it

h a d passed t h r o u g h seven e d i t i o n s b y 1 5 8 8 . R a l p h L e v e r f o l l o w e d A r i s t o t l e i n t h e first t h r e e b o o k s of h i s Arte Termed

Witcraft,

Rightly

1 5 7 3 . B u t in the f o u r t h b o o k he a t t e m p t e d to

p r e s e n t s o m e p r i n c i p l e s of h i s o w n . T h e of the w o r k

of Reason,

is t h e i n t e n t i o n , a v o w e d

• T h o m a s Wilson, The Rule of Reason,

1551.

most striking

in " T h e

feature

Forespeach,"

to

LOGIC

55

express the terms of logic in English compounds, as for example, "backset" for "predicate," "aslike" for "equal," and "saywhat" for "definition." The Art of Logike, 1599, one of the many compilations of Thomas Blundeville, is the most extensive treatise on logic in English during the century. In general, it is based on Aristotle. T h e departures from ancient logic in the Dialecticae partitiones, 1543, of Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée) caused him to be acclaimed as the opponent of Aristotle. He reduced the processes of logical investigation to fewer than the number which Cicero had distinguished, and, furthermore, he grouped them under four main headings, causes, similarities, dissimilarities, and combinations of these. A n important corollary of Ramus's logic was the limitation of the scope of rhetoric which it implied. He and his friend Talaeus considered the latter to be restricted to tropes, a few figures of speech, and delivery. T h e y handed over all investigation, and even arrangement, to logic. T h e figures of thought, they pointed out, are all included in the processes of dialectical investigation. According to this view, the rhetorical devices of chief interest to this study, those most used for amplifying and adorning themes, fall under the heading "logic." Ramus's Dialecticae partitiones gained many adherents in England in the second half of the sixteenth century. T h i s was particularly true at Cambridge, where Gabriel Harvey was one of Ramus's proselytes and where as a student Abraham Fraunce made a translation 8 of the Dialecticae partitiones. A bibliography of the editions in English and Latin which appeared in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would run to considerable length. A n amplified Latin version was prepared for the press by John Milton near the end of his life. 7 T h e first known translation, that of Michael Scot, in 1574, states that it is "newly translated." 8 Both the English logic of 1584 attributed to Dudley Fenner and Abraham Fraunce's The Lawiers Logike, 1588, were • A b r a h a m Fraunce. The Lawiers Logike, 1588. 7 J o a n i s Milioni, Artis logicae plenior institutio, ad P. Ramus methodum concinnata, London, 1672. 8 The Logike . . . of P. Ramus Martyr, newly translated, and . . . corrected . . . per M. R. Makylmenaeum Scotum, 1574.

56

LOGIC

taken from Ramus's treatise. The most interesting part of Fraunce's volume is the examples. In his preface he explains that when he began the translation, at Cambridge seven years previously, he provided it with copious illustrations from Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender. Then during a two-year residence at Gray's Inn he revised it and added examples in the French law jargon of his day. At the end of the first book he included illustrations of the application of the places of investigation to the subjects Nobilitas and Amicitia. For the first of these he made acknowledgment to John Sturm. The second is based on Cicero's discourse, a passage of which is made to yield examples of twenty-five places of investigation. At the end oí Book II a logical analysis by Freigius, a professor at Basle, showing the application of Ramus's system of logic to Virgil's second eclogue, fills three type pages quarto size and runs over into the margins. T h e acceptance at Cambridge in the last quarter of the sixteenth century of Ramus's Dialecticae partitiones and its complement, Audomarus Talaeus's Institutiones oratoriae, familiarly known as the Rhetorica, resulted in an increased emphasis in certain literary circles upon the figures of speech which are not connected with logic. This came from handing over to dialectic nearly everything except a few tropes and some of the minor figures. As Ramus had divided his treatise into two parts, investigation and judgment, so Talaeus separated rhetoric into two sections, figures and delivery. Both the English Rhetoric, 1584, attributed to Dudley Fenner, and Abraham Fraunce's Arcadian Rhetorike, 1588, are based on Talaeus's Rhetorica. The part for which Fraunce claimed most credit and perhaps all that was original with him was the illustrative material from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Sidney, like Fraunce, was a Cambridge man and had known to some slight extent Gabriel Harvey, the Cambridge Don who in his public lectures on rhetoric had championed Ramus and Talaeus. The Arcadia is profusely ornamented with the tropes and figures treated by Talaeus, in contrast with Lyly's Euphues, which depends mainly upon the figures of thought derived from the processes of dialectical investigation.

ν RHETORIC

IN T H E

SIXTEENTH

SCHOOLS

OF

THE

CENTURY

O

F THE five traditional branches of rhetoric, investigation (inventio), arrangement (dispositio), style (elocutio), memory (memoria), and delivery (pronuntiatio), only the first three remained of importance in the Renaissance. With the removal of rhetoric from the forum to the classroom, the other two branches had long ceased to be of special consequence. Arrangement remained almost the same as it had been in Cicero's day. Investigation and style, the most important divisions, have always been the least fixed. T h e first, because it depends to a large extent upon logic, was often handed over directly to that study. Budé, Ramus, Talaeus, and others maintained that it belonged there. T h e tendency of style has always been to extend its province. At times it annexed the processes of dialectical and rhetorical investigation, since these are the sources of such stylistic ornaments as similes, contraries, proverbs, and examples. Style came to be almost synonymous with rhetoric in the Renaissance. Consequently, treatises appeared which reduced nearly all that was considered of significance in rhetoric to tables of tropes and figures. For authors whose chief aims were ornamentation and amplification a knowledge of these devices was all that was needed. T h e first branch of rhetoric, investigation (inventio) comprises all the means of exploring a subject to discover material in support of it or in refutation of what is opposed. Three types of analysis are involved: the processes of dialectical investigation, which have been discussed in the preceding chapter; those circumstances, out of an untold number, which are applicable to matters of oratory; and certain lines of investigation peculiar to rhetoric. The number of the topics or places of logic have varied, as has been seen, according to the authorities who have dealt with them. Of most

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importance in connection with sixteenth-century rhetoric were definition, distinction, division, etymology, cause, effect, antecedent, consequence, similitude, dissimilitude, and testimony of authority. Usually grouped with these was inference from examples, which constitutes the process of induction. Under circumstances of special concern in oratory fall such considerations as who, what, where, when, to whom, how, and why, and also such particulars as nationality, ancestors, parents, education, and accomplishments depending on mind, body, and fortune. Some of the special headings of rhetorical investigation consist of analysis as to whether or not a matter is manifest, just, lawful, profitable, possible, credible, proper, necessary, pleasant, easy, honest, safe, and consistent. In the Renaissance, style (elocutio) was regarded as the most important division of rhetoric. Frequently this branch included nearly everything which was considered worth attention in the entire subject. Even the topics of dialectical investigation were reduced to figures of thought. Occasionally, some remarks might be offered regarding the three manners of expression, the plain, the lofty, and the intermediate, and a few words might be said with respect to composition. Yet such comments were the exception rather than the rule, and they were always principally concerned with the lofty style, which encouraged amplification and embellishment. At times the reduction of the subject of rhetoric was carried to the point where a catalogue of figures was regarded as constituting the whole of it. Anything more confusing would be hard to find. No two authorities agree in their classifications; no two concur in the terms they use. The names of the tropes and figures, if all the terms in Greek, Latin, and English are counted, amount to more than five hundred. Quintilian noted the chaos that had existed before his day regarding the designations of these rhetorical devices, and he refused to be drawn into a detailed treatment of them. By the sixteenth century, the problem had become still more complicated. The character may be cited as an example. Few literary historians have noted that this minor literary form received mention at all in the treatises of rhetoric. Yet information regarding it may be found under at least fifteen differ-

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ent headings, without counting those which John Sturm confounded in his De universa ratione elocutionis rhetoricae, 1576. Care must even be taken to prevent the word "figure" itself from being misunderstood. The Greeks distinguished tropes (τρόνοι), which involve alteration of the natural meaning of a word or sentence, from schemes (σχημτα), which include all other artful variations from common speech. In the Latin rhetorical treatises both tropes and schemes are sometimes regarded as figurae, and sometimes only the latter are included under this term. In the present work it was necessary in certain contexts to qualify the word "figure" by the adjective "rhetorical," in order to avoid the impression that an arithmetical symbol was intended. Yet this gives rise to the difficulty that in some of the sixteenth century treatises a special group of figures is distinguished from the rest by the qualification "rhetorical." A detailed analysis of all the tropes and figures named in the rhetorical treatises of the sixteenth century would require a large volume. Its value would be doubtful. Such a work could be written most easily in the half-Latin, half-Greek jargon of the renowned schoolmaster of Strasbourg, John Sturm. In his De universa ratione elocutionis rhetoricae, 1576, he attempted a comprehensive discussion of some figures, and achieved general mystification rather than clarification. The commentators of the sixteenth century frequently pointed out inconsistencies in tables of figures and sometimes they attempted to make explanations. T h e discussion which Velcurio (John Doelsch) appended to the chapters of Erasmus's De duplici copia verborum ac rerum have been helpful in explaining such matters as the relation of the figures of thought to the topics of dialectical investigation. In The Garden of Eloquence, 1577, Henry Peacham followed the arrangement of John Susenbrot's Epitome troporum ac schematum,1 but he partly abandoned this organization in the revised edition of The Garden, which he published in 1593. Iteration of the three main classes of figures may prove helpful at this point. The first of these consists of the figures of thought, which are based upon the processes of dialectical investigation. They include definition, 1

Cf. Appendix V, 1.

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division, distinction, enumeration, cause, effect, antecedent, consequence, comparison, similitude, dissimilitude, example, and citation of authority, embracing proverbs, apophthegms, and maxims. The second group consists of a number of varieties of exclamation, interrogation, and description, all of which direct their appeal to the emotions. The third class comprises about one hundred and fifty figures of a somewhat mechanical nature, produced by alteration from normal spelling, diction, or syntax. T h e difficulty of dealing with these devices is increased by the fact that many of them are known each by two, three, or even more names. A sketch of the practice of rhetoric in the grammar schools of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may well precede individual consideration of the popular texts. Some information may be gleaned from the school records which have been preserved. 2 Most of the available documentary evidence has been presented by Mr. Arthur F. Leach in the chapters which he has written on the schools in the histories of the various counties of England and in several separate publications which have appeared under his name.3 More details of the actual methods of instruction are available in several treatises of the seventeenth century on the art of teaching school. John Brinsley's Ludus literarius; or The Grammar Schoole, 1612, is by far the most important. It represents a codification of the practices which were in vogue during the half century before its publication. Charles Hoole is generally in agreement with Brinsley, in A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole, which was written in 1637 but was not printed until twenty-three years later. In the early years of the Restoration Ralph Johnson published several manuals of school exercises. Among these were Ancilla grammatica, 1660, and the expanded edition of this, The Scholars Guide from the Accidence to the University, 1665. Of special interest are Johnson's rules for amplification and imitation, his directions for writing essays and •Foster Watson in The English Grammar Schools to 1660 has collected some material regarding the schools of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ' Arthur Francis Leach, English Schools at the Reformation, 1546-48, London, 1896; A History of Winchester College, London, 1899; Educational Charters and Documents 598-1909, Cambridge, 1911; The Schools of Medieval England, London,

>9>5-

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characters, and the general instructions he gives for the collection of commonplaces and for the writing of themes. After schoolboys had learned their Sententiae pueriles and had acquired enough knowledge of Latin to be able to form sentences they were frequently set to composing short letters. In this connection the master usually read and commented upon some of the epistles of Cicero. Among the formularies 4 suggested for school use were Macropedius's Methodus de conscribendis epistolis and Hegendorff's De conscribendis epistolis. These were found, however, to be somewhat beyond the comprehension of the young scholars. For instruction in the composition of themes, which generally followed elementary epistles, the two textbooks most popular were Erasmus's De duplici copia verborum ac rerum, written in 1511 for Dean Colet's newly-founded school at Saint Paul's, and the Progymnasmata of the Greek Sophist, Aphthonius. Erasmus's work was frankly a collection of the ways of gaining plenty of words and matter. It received high praise from many schoolmasters and is the text mentioned most frequently in school documents. Yet there were complaints from the first against its lack of organization, particularly by the French educators Budé, Ramus, and Talaeus. Except as a handbook of the means of amplification it must have been difficult to apply in the classroom. As a matter of fact, it appears to have been used mainly by the students as a supplementary manual. T h e immense favor which it at first enjoyed declined sharply after the middle of the sixteenth century. In the forty-five years between its publication and the beginning of Elizabeth's reign a hundred editions had appeared, whereas the whole of the following century saw but twenty-one new impressions. Aphthonius's Progymnasmata, on the other hand, came to be used more and more widely. T h e first complete Latin version of Aphthonius's exercises, by Ioannes Maria Catanaeus, accompanied the Greek text of Aldus's Rhetor es graeci, 1508, although before this Angelo Poliziano and Rudolphus Agricola had turned * For bibliographies of works dealing with the writing of letters see D . G . Morhof's De ratione conscribendarum epistolarum libellus, 1702, and Conrad Gesner's Bibtiotheca universalis, 3 vols., 1545-55.

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some portions into Latin, and in the Middle Ages Priscian had translated the almost identical work of Hermogenes. These exercises became very popular in the schools of Western Europe. J . Ε. B. Mayor, in his edition of Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster, noticed that Fabricius and Hoffman list more than thirty editions in Latin and twenty in Greek of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many other editions have since come to light. Because the book was short, many little-known presses printed it. Its use was very general in the English schools of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition to Richard Rainolde's English version, A Booke Called the Foundacion of Rhetorike, 1563, four Latin issues came from English presses before 1600 and four more appeared between that date and 1635. T w o of the seventeenth-century editions were published for the benefit of the Stationers' Company and two came from the press at Cambridge University. Meanwhile, from more than one hundred editions of Erasmus's De copia, published before 1640, only two bore English imprints. Aphthonius's preliminary exercises were prescribed in the orders of 1580 for the Sandwich Grammar School and in the statutes of 1593 for the Durham School. They were noted by Ascham and also mentioned in the Eton and Winchester time tables. T h e seventeen-century schoolmasters John Brinsley and Charles Hoole relied upon the Progymnasmata for instruction in the writing of themes. Ralph Johnson also recommended Aphthonius's work. In the hands of Renaissance teachers the Progymnasmata amounted almost entirely to exercises in amplification. Evidence of this appears in the emphasis placed on the dilated versions of the illustrations which a number of schoolmasters of the Renaissance prepared; and the comments of such men as Rainolde and Nicholas Caussin testify to the same effect. Much light is thrown upon the process of composition in the schools by the directions for the writing of themes given by Brinsley, Hoole, and Johnson, in connection of Aphthonius's work. The rhetorical treatises of Cicero, particularly his De oratore, De inventione, and De partitione oratoriae, along with the Ad Herennium, which had long been attributed to him, received considerable attention in the schools. Cicero was, moreover, the

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great exponent of the copious style; it was as such that the schoolmasters of the Renaissance looked to him for guidance both in theory and practice. Special consideration was given to the parts of his works on oratory dealing with amplification, imitation, and ornamentation. The Renaissance was less concerned than we are today with distinguishing such matters from one another. T h e sixteenth-century discussions of imitation frequently involve amplification and ornamentation. T o schoolboys and literary men of the Renaissance it mattered little whether such devices as definition, distinction, division, cause, similitude, dissimilitude, example, and testimony of authorities fell under the heading "topics of logic" or under "figures of thought." Hence lists of figures similar to John Susenbrot's Epitome troporum ac schematum and Petrus Mosellanus's Tabulae de schematibus et tropis were popular. T h e one hundred and fifty or more figures treated in such works were supposed to present nearly all that was considered of importance in rhetoric. Melanchthon's rhetorical treatises were much used in Germany, and at Strasbourg the various publications of John Sturm were standard. T o some extent the rhetorical theories of these men found adherents in England. In the last years of the sixteenth century and later Talaeus's Rhetorica was widely favored. It dealt with only a few figures and with delivery. John Brinsley's Ludus literarius; or The Grammar Schoole, 1612, gives many details of the teaching which especially prevailed in England during the half century before it was written. In the section of the work devoted to the writing of themes much attention is given to amplification by means of the processes of dialectical and rhetorical investigation, which Brinsley in the language of his day termed "invention." Among the former are cause, effect, similitude, dissimilitude, example, and testimony of authorities; among the latter are such considerations as manifest, credible, possible, proper, and expedient. The basis of Chapter X I I I , "Of making Theames full of good matter, in a pure stile, and with iudgement," 6 is Aphthonius's Progymnasmata. In the course of their exercises the scholars are "to trie what reasons they can invent of themselves according to the chiefe heads of • Cf. Appendix V, t.

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Invention, following Aphthonius's order, or the ten chiefe heads of Invention: as Causes, Effects, Subjects, Adjuncts, etc." T h e remaining six heads are disagreeable things, comparisons, notations, distributions, definitions, and testimonies. These are the processes which the commentators of the late sixteenth century distinguished in Ramus's system of logic. Involved in Brinsley's discussion of amplification are the thesauri used by students as sources of material and the commonplace books which they made themselves. Some note of these volumes has been taken at the close of Chapter III. In spite of the difficulty which young scholars had in handling the processes of logic in Aphthonius's Progymnasmata Brinsley concluded that this was the best text to serve as an introduction to the writing of short themes. More than two hundred and fifty books are listed for use in the six forms of the grammar school by Charles Hoole in A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole, published in 1660, but written twenty-three years earlier. Hoole's methods of teaching are similar to those of Brinsley, to whom he makes acknowledgment. In the discussion of the writing of themes, which is largely a matter of amplification, Aphthonius's Progymnasmata figures prominently. At one point Hoole gives what appears to be a brief résumé of the steps by which the students advanced in composition.® From exercises in "double translation," as explained by Roger Ascham in The Scholemaster/ and the composition of brief letters the scholars proceeded to the construction of short themes after the patterns in Aphthonius's Progymnasmata. They then learned to write longer compositions and to adorn them with figures and tropes. Ralph Johnson's The Scholars Guide from the Accidence to the University, 1665, contains much condensed information regarding the methods of composition practiced in the schools. Since the material of the book is already in outline form, it is hardly possible to do anything except to quote in full in an appendix 8 the portions which bear particularly on the writing of themes. Amplifica• Cf. Charles Hoole, A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole. print by T h e Liverpool University Press, 1913, pp. 184-85. * Arber's reprint, pp. 92-96. " Cf. Appendix V, 3, 4, and 5.

Re-

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tion is the principal concern in all of these sections. Of special note are the rules of amplification and imitation, the directions for making an essay and a character, and the general instructions for building a theme, which is defined as "a discourse amplifying a subject, by showing the meaning and proving the truth thereof." Following the "Rules for Imitation" an extended list is given of " T h e fountains of Eloquence whence Scholars must draw forth, and lay u p matter for Exercises." Under the "Rules of Amplification" an excellent summary is presented of the means by which John Lyly and the literary men grouped about him sought to ornament and dilate their writings. Aphthonius's Progymnasmata may well be considered here since it served to initiate schoolboys of the lower forms into both logic and rhetoric. It consists of simple exercises intended to introduce the pupil just beginning to write short themes to some of the places of dialectical and rhetorical investigation. Progymnasmata by the Greek schoolmasters Hermogenes 9 and Theon have also come down to us. Some scholars are of the opinion that both T h e o n and Aphthonius based their exercises on those of Hermogenes. Others argue for the priority of Theon. But the use of such exercises had been established in the Greek schools long before the time of any of these teachers. Quintilian discussed them in Book II, Chapter IV of the Institutio oratoria, and in Book I, Chapter I X he mentioned the use of fables, sententiae, and chriae as methods of developing compositions. Hermogenes's Progymnasmata was known to Western Europe in the Middle Ages through Priscian's Latin version. Aphthonius followed Hermogenes's text closely, but he added short illustrative themes. Perhaps it was for this reason that his work superseded that of Hermogenes in the Greek schools and lasted down through the Byzantine Age. By means of progymnasmata the schoolboy who was just beginning to make themes of a few sentences in length became acquainted with some of the processes of rhetorical and dialectical investigation. Aphthonius considers fourteen types of elementary compositions. Rainolde designated these as "fable," "narración," •See Charles Sears Baldwin's translation in Medieval Hermogenes's Progymnasmata.

Rhetoric

and Poetic

of

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"chria," "sentence," "destrucción," "confirmación," "common place," "praise," "dispraise," "comparison," "ethopoeia," "descripción," "thesis," and "legislatio." Some of these might serve for parts of longer themes. "Fable" is merely distinguished as of three kinds, according to its subject matter, and is illustrated by the story of the ant and the grasshopper, told in less than fifty words. "Narración," according to Rainolde, is exposition of true or feigned acts. It is of three kinds, poetical, historical, and civil; the poetical deals with imaginary deeds, the historical with ancient legends and modern chronicle, the civil with facts in controversy. A "narración" should consider six things: the person, the act, the place, the time, the manner, and the cause. It should be marked by clarity, brevity, probability, and apt language. This substantially translates all of Aphthonius's directions regarding narration. A saying or deed of some person upon an occasion, known as "chria," from Greek χ ρ « α , involves the use of some of the general arguments of dialectic. It is developed by praise of the author, exposition of the saying or deed, explanation of the cause, consideration of contrary things, elucidation by means of a simile, use of examples, citation of testimony of the ancients, and recapitulation in a brief epilogue. "Sentence" follows the same process. "Destrucción" and "confirmación" endeavor to show that a matter is manifest, probable, possible, coherent, proper, profitable, or their opposites. "Praise" and "dispraise" depend upon the stock rhetorical places, country of birth, ancestors, education, deeds, and various subheadings under these. "Comparison," which is frequently used in praise and dispraise, is of such importance as to be considered an exercise by itself. "Ethopoeia" and "descripción" attempt by means of vividness to arouse the feelings. "Common place", "thesis", and "legislatio" draw their material mainly from consideration of whether or not a matter is lawful, just, honest, useful, and possible. T h e progymnasmata, it may be repeated, were intended, as the word indicates, to serve as elementary exercises. They furnished the schoolboy with simple patterns by which he could build u p short themes and become familiar with certain means of appeal to the reason and to the feelings. Of all Hermogenes's writings his

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Progymnasmata shows the least preoccupation with style. It may be admitted that his exercises and those of Aphthonius are concerned with amplification in the sense of bringing out the various aspects of a matter. But the schoolmasters of the Renaissance superimposed a process of amplification upon these elementary exercises whereby a simple theme might be dilated to many times its original size. Petrus Mosellanus and Conradus Lorichius, among others, wrote supplementary illustrations of considerable length. In addition to the expanded exercises which Lorichius composed to accompany his edition of Aphthonius's Progymnasmata he wrote a pamphlet containing a simple fable handled in nine different ways and a chria dilated four times over. "An Epistle to Perswade a Yong Gentleman to Mariage," which fills twenty-four pages of Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique, is probably nothing more than Erasmus's attempt to demonstrate his ability in expanding the subject which is given as an example of thesis in Aphthonius. The question is, of course, older than Aphthonius, but the process of development, indicated by the marginal notes of some of the editions of Erasmus's tract, corresponds closely with that prescribed by Aphthonius. The specimens of the method of expatiating upon a fable given by Foster Watson in The English Grammar Schools to 1660 are not in Aphthonius but are additions of a later date. Aphthonius, as has been said in connection with Richard Rainolde's translation of the Progymnasmata, notes only three kinds of fables, according to subject matter, and gives the example of the ant and the grasshopper. The same tendency toward dilation is illustrated by the selection from Erasmus which follows Richard Sherry's A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes in 1550, where the substance of Erasmus's treatise on the education of children is given in three and one-half pages, immediately followed by the expanded discourse, which fills one hundred and twenty-nine pages. Richard Rainolde gave the English version of Aphthonius's Progymnasmata which he published in 1563 the title A Booke Called the Foundacion of Rhetorike, and he added immediately the explanatory declaration "because all other partes of Rhetorike are grounded thereupon." He repeated this statement in his

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address " T o the Reader," 10 and he also preceded the work with an introductory section headed " T h e foundacion of Rhetorike." T h i s preface is devoted largely to consideration of the relative values of logic and rhetoric to the student, in which Rainolde wavers between an attempt to give the first its due and a desire, characteristic of Renaissance schoolmasters, to exalt the latter. Significantly the opening word of his discussion is "Nature." T h i s was not a matter of chance; Rainolde was merely following a practice common in the Renaissance of beginning a rhetorical treatise with at least acknowledgment of the desirability of natural gifts, sometimes divided into physical qualities and wit. T h e subject was traditional in works dealing not only with oratory but also with many other fields of endeavor. Roger Ascham discoursed upon it at length both in Toxophilus, 1545, and in The Scholemaster, 1570. T h e stress placed upon this matter by Renaissance writers was due mainly to Cicero's consideration of it in the De oratore, Book I, Chapter X X V , before he took up the matters of imitation and amplification. Ascham cited the authority of Cicero on this point in both of his works which have been mentioned. It was to Cicero that the Renaissance looked particularly for instructions regarding composition in the full, ornate style and for models of this manner of writing. Because Cicero had placed emphasis upon both natural gifts and copious style, these two matters were likely to be discussed in conjunction by Renaissance authorities on rhetoric. In connection with the endowments of nature, Rainolde remarked, that the function of rhetoric was to enable one "copiously to dilate any matter or sentence." T h i s point was stressed again only a few lines further on 1 1 and at many places throughout the book. 12 With the usual attitude of the Renaissance, Rainolde concerned himself from the beginning to the end of his work with amplification. A t times, he was obviously echoing the praise of ample, ornate style by Cicero, to whom he had made acknowledgment in his foreword. Frequently he linked "copious," "wittie," and "ingenious" together 13 as if he considered these 14

Cf. A p p e n d i x V , 6.

11

Cf. A p p e n d i x V , 7 a n d 8.

u

Cf. A p p e n d i x V , 9 passim.

u

Cf. A p p e n d i x V , 8.

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adjectives roughly synonymous. A single page of the introduction affords three examples of this association. Except for the prefatory material and some of the examples, Rainolde's book was translated from Reinhardus Lorichius's annotated and supplemented edition of Agricola's and Catanaeus's version of Aphthonius's exercises. Aphthonius's directions for building up fourteen types of elementary composition are translated by Rainolde from Lorichius's volume with some additions and modifications from the commentary. A few of Aphthonius's illustrative themes are included; some, Rainolde supplied himself, usually from sources indicated by Lorichius; some, he expanded from the supplementary matter in that editor's edition. Rainolde translated Aphthonius's fable of the ant and the grasshopper; then he built on the same theme a composition thirty times as long as the original. This treatment was suggested by some examples given by Lorichius, already paulo fusius tractata and dilatata. T h e instructions in Rainolde's book which particularly illustrate the methods of amplification by means of logical and rhetorical processes are noted in an appendix. 14 These include cause, similitude, contrast, example, testimony of authorities, and many circumstances special to rhetoric. A translation of Hermogenes's Progymnasmata, substantially the same as Aphthonius's, is given in the first chapter of Charles Sears Baldwin's Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic. Erasmus's De duplici copia verborum ac rerum, written in 1 5 1 1 for Dean Colet's newly founded school at St. Paul's, is exactly what the title indicates, a treatise on the means of obtaining abundance of words and matter. Whatever may serve to amplify and ornament a composition is considered, without regard to the divisions of investigation, arrangement, and style, or for that matter, of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. Guillaume Budé observed in writing about it to Erasmus, that it might more appropriately be called "Of Erasmus" than "Of Copiousness." 1 5 Though he praised Eras" Cf. Appendix V, 9. " "Titulum voco non tantum Copiam sed etiam Erasmum." Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami denuo recognitum et auctum per Percy S. Allen, Epistle 435. 1. 74.

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mus's fecundity and ingenuity, he took exception to the manner in which the material of the second book was handled. Budé was among those who held that the investigation of a matter belonged to the domain of dialectic. Erasmus pointed out in his reply that Quintilian and Hermogenes had done something of the sort before him. Moreover, Rudolphus Agricola had given some treatment to the subject of copiousness in his De inventione dialéctica which had appeared in print since the De copia. Erasmus explained that he was interested in the means of gaining abundance of matter, not particularly in arguments. It was enough for him to have treated the subject more fully than anyone had done before. Whoever might wish to do so could undertake a more systematic treatise.17 At a later date he insisted upon the fact that the De copia had been written hurriedly in order to comply with Colet's importunate request that he dedicate a book to the newly founded school at St. Paul's.18 But the book had long been in Erasmus's mind. As early as 1499 he mentioned it, 19 and it is referred to in a number of later epistles.20 In the course of his travels he lost the manuscript, and the work which was published in 1512 was put together in haste. At the beginning of the De duplici copia verborum ac rerum Erasmus states that Quintilian and some sophists have touched upon the ways of gaining abundance. He probably means to refer to Hermogenes and, possibly, to Aphthonius and Theon, who were all called sophists. In the De copia Erasmus mentions Donatus and Diomedes, who were favorites with him, Macrobius, Aulus Gellius, Hermogenes, Aristotle, Cicero, the Ad Herennium, and, most frequently of all, Quintilian. After a general warning against the dangers of affected verbosity he devotes the rest of the first book to the means of varying words and phrases. The sixteenthcentury owner of the Bodleian copy of 1519, whose manuscript notes have sometimes been helpful in locating exactly Erasmus's sources, gave up after he had counted sixty-six variations of the sentence Tuae literae me magnopere delectarunt. With equal dili16

Bk. II, chs. xviii-xx and Bk. III, chs. ν and xvi. Erasmus, Opus epistolarurn, Epistle 480. " Ibid., " / b i d . . Epistle 95. "Ibid.,

17

Epistle 1 , Epistle 260 et

passim.

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gence I have counted as many more and have at least left several score for some more serious scholar. It is the second part of Erasmus's treatise, the De copia rerum, which deals with gaining abundance of matter, that is of most importance here. This is based principally on Quintilian's Institutio oratoria?1 although some use was made of the figures of thought which conclude the Ad Herennium. Macrobius's Saturnalia and Aulus Gellius's Nodes Atticae contributed slightly. A few suggestions came from Hermogenes, who is mentioned in the discussion of commonplaces. Erasmus also knew Emporius's tract on ethopoeia and commonplaces. T h e lack of organization in the De copia was noted by Erasmus's contemporaries. Attempts were made, which do not entirely agree, to remedy this by John Doelsch in his commentary 22 and by Georgius Maior in his De copia tabulae. In the second part of the De copia Erasmus begins by giving eleven means of obtaining abundance of matter: partition, enumeration of antecedents, enumeration of causes, enumeration of effects and consequences, prosopopoeia, digression, epithets, circumstances, amplification (in the restricted sense of exaggeration and diminution), multiplication of propositions, and heaping of proofs. Then he abandons the attempt to indicate the methods of amplification by number and interpolates other material. T h e sections which make up the remainder of the book deal with commonplaces, examples, two methods of dilating an example, similes, imago, antithesis, notable sayings (including proverbs), moral sentences, expolitio, dreams, fictitious narratives, theological allegories, methods of collecting examples, and multiplication of the parts of a composition. T h e purpose of this heterogeneous collection was simply to provide abundance of material for amplifying and ornamenting themes. Erasmus was little concerned whether these means of dilation fell under one division of learning or another. In each of the three treatises on rhetoric written by Erasmus's 11

Bk. VIII, ch. iii. Ornaments of style and rhetorical description, ch. iv, Amplification, ch. ν, Sentenliae; Bk. V, ch. χ, Arguments, ch. xi, Examples. 23 De duplici copia verborum ac rerumt cum commentariis M. Veltkirchii, Hagcnoa, 1534. Other variants of Doelsch's name are Weltkirch and Velcurio.

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friend Melanchthon (Philip Schwartzerd), the reader is referred to the second part of the De duplici copia verborum ac rerum for more complete treatment of the figures of amplification. Melanchthon also remarked in his commentary 23 on Cicero's Topica that the work corresponded closely to the De copia rerum. Whereas Richard Sherry gave the heading "the ffigures of sentence" to that part of A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes which he took from the De copia rerum, John Doelsch devoted most of his commentary on this section of Erasmus's treatise to demonstration that the nineteen means of gaining abundance of matter to which this section could be reduced have their origins in the processes of dialectical investigation. At the same time he noted that Erasmus was interested merely in the ways of gaining plenty of matter and that he had made no special effort to indicate the relation of these methods of amplification to the general processes or topics of logic. He insisted, moreover, that Erasmus had not wished to separate investigation (inventio) from style (elocutio). Erasmus implied, in his answer to Guillaume Budé's objection to his inattention to logic in the De copia rerum, that he was simply presenting the means of amplifying a composition. Yet in some of his later treatises Erasmus gave more formal consideration to the processes of logical investigation. In the De conscribendis epistolis, 1521, he illustrated the use of both the topics of dialectical and rhetorical investigation in a number of model letters, and in the Ecclesiastae sive de ratione concionandi, 1535, he devoted nearly forty folio pages to the presentation of these processes. From Cicero, Boëthius, Themistius, and Rudolphus Agricola he gathered thirty-two headings of persuasive arguments. Under the influence of Budé and Ramus he appears tacitly to have abandoned his former position. Melanchthon was one of the most capable and sensible among Renaissance educators. His own manner of writing, he admitted, m " H i e libellus pertinet ad earn partem rhetorices, quae rationem inveniendorum argumentorum tradii, et modum amplificandae orationis. Convenit autem plane cum secundo libro Copiae Erasmi, estque idem utriusque libelli argumentum, quia non multum interest inter argumenta et οχήματα diavolas."—Melanchthon, Scholia in Ciceronis Topica, 1524, in his Opera, edited by C . G . Bretschneider and Η. E. Bindseil, X V I , 807.

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was plain and lacked the ornamental qualities and the copiousness so much admired by his contemporaries. Perhaps this was a handicap in his day; but after the exuberance and lack of organization of Erasmus, it is something of a relief to turn to his treatises on rhetoric. T h e y are three in number, the De rhetorica libri tres, 1519, the Institutiones rhetoricae, 1521, and the Elementorum rhetorices libri duo, 1531. T h e last was re-edited a number of times in the ten years following its appearance. T h e r e are contradictions in Melanchthon's writings on rhetoric; in some particulars his friendship for Erasmus may have misled him. But his inconsistencies are at once evident, and his meaning is never confused or vague. Melanchthon professed little interest in the ornaments of eloquence. Yet in his day a treatise on rhetoric would have been incomplete without some attention to them. His procedure was to give them a minimum of treatment and to refer the reader to books which handled them more fully. In the De rhetorica he recommended Mosellanus's Tabulae de schematibus ac tropis, and just before he took u p the discussion of ampliñcation he counseled all to have Erasmus's De copia in hand. T h e Institutiones rhetoricae was published with Melanchthon's consent but probably represents notes on his lectures taken by his friends. T h e r e figures are divided into three kinds, those of diction, those which appeal to the emotions, and those of thought or amplification. Both at the beginning and at the end of the discussion of the last group he referred the reader for more complete treatment to the last book of the De copia. Cicero, he noted, had called this material the ornaments of sentence (exornationes sententiarum). He also pointed out that Quintilian had handled part of it under the head of arguments, part under the special figure amplification. It may be recalled, too, that at the beginning of his commentary on Cicero's Topica Melanchthon stated that this treatise corresponded closely to the second book of the De copia. Most significant is his attempt in the Elementorum rhetorices to class the figures of amplification according to certain processes of dialectical investigation. Perhaps this was suggested by such circumstances as Budé's criticism of the De copia rerum and by the insistence of

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Ramus and others that the figures of thought belonged to dialectic. As usual, Melanchthon showed an inclination to leave the matter to others. T h e fact that all had access to Erasmus's De copia was again made a reason for brevity. 24 Here he stated clearly the point of view from which he regarded the figures of amplification. They are the most important devices of style, also the most difficult to explain. 25 They have their origins, he observed, in the places of dialectic. Yet they are not exactly the same as arguments; the latter form the sinews of confirmation and refutation, the former serve to illuminate a matter. 29 T h e relation between the two is not to be considered too rigorously or superstitiously; it is enough if the fountains of argument and ornament be regarded as close to one another. 27 A discussion of the value of commonplaces precedes the treatment of the figures of amplification. T h e processes of logic under which he groups some thirty figures are ex definitione, de divisione, ex causis, de contrariis, ex similibus, a genere, and ex circumstantiis et signis. T h e first includes exaggeration and extenuation by choice of words, interpretatio, and expolitio. De divisione comprehends distribution, accumulation, and incrementum. A number of figures are grouped under ex causis. T h e chief of these, which Melanchthon terms α ι τ ι ο λ ο γ ί α , means simply to present concise reasons in support of a statement. First and most important under de contrariis is antithesis. In his discussion of ex similibus Melanchthon refers the student to the books of dialectic for treatment of examples and various kinds of comparison, which, he adds, are of the greatest force among the figures of amplification. A genere covers various types of notable sayings. 24 "Sed nos breviores crimus, quia omnibus in manu sunt Erasmi libelli."— Melanchthon, Elementorum rhetorices libri duo, 1531, in his Opera, X I I I , 479. * " I n tertio ordine collacavimus eas figuras, quae augent orationem, et reddunt locupletiorem. Sicut autem hoc eloquentiae summum opus est, alia amplificare, alia extenuare, ita difficile est imperitis huius rei efficiendae viam atque rationem videre."—Ibid., X I I I , 479.

" "Observet autem studiosus lector figuras omnes, praesertim has, quae augent orationem ex loris dialecticis oriri, ad quos si quis prudenter seiet eas referre, plaeraque in causis subtiliter et acute iudicare, et definitas negotii regiones melius videre poterit. Nam iidem loci cum confirmandi aut confutandi causa adhibentur, argumenta sunt ac nervi, ut vocant. C u m adhibentur illuminandi causa, dicuntur ornamenta."—Ibid., X I I I , 479-80. "Ibid., X I I I , 48s et seq.

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Ex circumstantiis et signis serves as a catchall for what is left over, including figures which attempt to arouse the emotions, such as exclamation and prosopopoeia. T h e De copia rerum is particularly cited again as an excuse for not treating the latter more fully. Melanchthon follows his treatment of the figures of amplification with a well-reasoned discussion of the theory of imitation which so enraptured Ascham and others. It cannot be claimed that his discussion of the figures of amplification is of great importance. He lacked Erasmus's enthusiasm for them. But the manner of treatment which he followed in this, the last and most frequently revised of his works on rhetoric, demonstrates that he recognized a relation between the ornaments of thought and the processes of dialectic. A cursory examination of the books published by John Sturm, the renowned schoolmaster of Strasbourg, confirms Bacon's charge that he was one of those most addicted to the study of affected eloquence and copiousness. Charles Schmidt has remarked in his biography of Sturm, that it is astonishing to find a man of Sturm's ability annotating so pedantically the rhetorical treatises of Hermogenes. Most of the works which appeared under Sturm's own name are, as the same biographer has stated, nothing more than repetition of the subtleties of Hermogenes with the addition of a few others gathered from Aristotle, Quintilian, and Cicero. Sturm himself declared, in the dedicatory epistle to his commentary on Cicero's De partitione oratoria, that whoever had studied Aristotle's rhetoric, the dialogues of Cicero on oratory, and the work of Hermogenes, needed nothing else. The successful orator and writer of his day, he thought, would be he who would observe the precepts of the ancients in every minute detail. The longest treatise on rhetoric which appeared under Sturm's name, the De universa ^ratione elocutionis rhetoricae, 1576, is merely a rearrangement of material from Hermogenes, Quintilian, Cicero, Aristotle, and the Ad Herennium. It deals throughout its more than eight hundred pages with the adornments of style. T h e first book handles sentences and their ornaments. The discussion of the latter extends through two hundred and twenty-six pages. Heaping of arguments is touched upon in Chapter X V I I I . Vari-

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ous kinds of exclamation and interrogation are taken up in Chapters X X I - X X I X . O n e of the longest sections of the book is the discussion of the special figure amplification, which occupies Chapters X X X - X X X V I . T h e devices by which this is effected include antithesis, the means of dilation presented by Quintilian, 2 8 and some others, as for example, enumeration and various ways of arousing the emotions. A discussion of characters falls under the heading "vivid description" (¿vápyaa). A t the close of the first book extended consideration is given to similes and examples. T h e volume is written in Latin interspersed with Greek. It is almost an even chance that a sentence which begins in one of these languages will end in the other. T h e second book goes from bad to worse. It deals with words and their ornaments, with overw h e l m i n g emphasis on the latter. T h e third book begins with a discussion of the structure of sentences and the use of balance and rhythm in them. T h e sentence of four parts is particularly stressed. T h e n , having enumerated all the ornaments of thought, words, and sentences, Sturm found there still was material in Hermogenes's treatises which he had not repeated. Hence, he began again and treated the ornaments of thoughts, words, and sentences in combination with one another. Corresponding to the long section " D e amplificatione" of the first book, there is one headed "De amplitudine" in the second. A t the end of the third book still more remained to be repeated from Hermogenes on the subject of dilation. Hence Sturm added another chapter headed "De amplificatione" at the close of the volume. T i m e need not be wasted in pointing out the subtle differences between these sections. T h e r e is little to distinguish them from one another, or, for that matter, from other parts of the work. Sturm was preoccupied throughout with affected ornamentation and amplification. Francis B a c o n 2 9 particularly singled out Sturm's treatises De periodis, and De imitatione oratoria in his censure of those who gave excessive attention to ornamentation and copiousness. T h e De periodis, which was dedicated in 1550 to the Princess Elizabeth Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, Bk. VIII, ch. iv. Francis Bacon, Of the Proficience and Advancement ch. iv, sec. 2. 28

29

of Learning,

1605, Bk. I,

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of England, is based principally on Hermogenes. Some precepts of Aristotle on the same subject also received comment. T h e book treats merely the structure of sentences and the use of rhythm and balance in them. Chapters V, VI, VII, and V I I I have to do with dilation of various kinds of sentences. T h e De imitatione oratoria, 1574, is of more particular interest to students of sixteenth-century England, because of Ascham's treatment of the subject in The Scholemaster and the special acknowledgment which he made to Sturm. Only a small part of the theory of imitation, however, received attention from Ascham, for he was concerned almost wholly with teaching children Latin. T h e Renaissance treatises on letter writing were almost entirely restatements of the rules of ancient oratory, even to the point of classing epistles as deliberative, demonstrative, and judicial. Erasmus 80 or Macropedius 31 might admit a fourth category, embracing the familiar letter; yet they, like other authorities, did little more than repeat the formulae of traditional rhetoric. All letters, according to their directions, must conform to the structural divisions of an oration. In The Enimie of Idlenesse, 1568, William Fulwood summed up the matter in these words, " A n d to describe the true definition of an Epistle or letter, it is nothing else but an Oration written, conteining the mynd of the Orator, or wryter, thereby to give to understand to him or them absent, the same that should be declared if they were present." This statement is of all the greater force coming from what was intended to be the first manual of business correspondence in English. Besides the formularies of Macropedius, Erasmus, and Brandolini, 32 brief syllabi compiled by Despautier, 33 Juan Luis Vives, 84 Conrad Celtes, 36 " " R h e t o r u m plerisque tria causarum genera placuerunt, suasoriutn, encomiasticon, et judiciale. . . . His tribus q u a r t u m genus accersere licebit, quod si placet, familiare nominemus." Erasmus, De ratione conscribendi epístolas liber, 1522, C a p u t X X X I I . " T r e s omnium generum fontes," in his Opera, edited by Le Clerc, I, 379 80. n "Et si quartum velis addi didascalium, seu dialecticum, quibus omnia ciuilia thema pertractantus." Georgius Macropedius, Methodus de conscribendis epistolis, 1543, A6 recto. **Lippo (Aurelio) Brandolini, De ratione scribendi libri tres, 1549. " J o a n n e s Despauterius (van Pauteren), Ars epistolica, 1512. " J u a n Luis Vives, De conscribendis epistolis, 1536. " C o n r a d Celtes, Methodus conficiendarum epistolarum [1537?].

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and Christopher Hegendorff 38 were used to some extent in the grammar schools of the sixteenth century, but always with an eye to inculcating the precepts of ancient oratory. T h e books on letter writing vary little except in the illustrations they provide and in the matter of completeness. Macropedius included an extended list of the rhetorical figures which serve for stylistic embellishment. T h e prevailing inclination of the Renaissance toward ornateness and amplification is evident even in the arid outlines of the letter writers. In the sixteenth century a number of compendiums of rhetorical figures were much in demand. A m o n g the most popular were Petrus Mosellanus's (Schade's) De schematibus et tropis, John Susenbrot's Epitome troporum ac schematum et grammaticorum et rhetoricorum, Georgius Maior's table of the figures in Melanchthon's De rhetorica libri tres, and several epitomes of Erasmus's De duplici copia verborum ac rerum. T h e favor with which these were received may be judged by the use which the compilers of English rhetorics made of them. Both Richard Sherry's A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes, 1550, and Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence, 1577, were much indebted to the tables of figures which have been named. Such sources furnished the material for " T h e T h i r d Booke, of Ornament," which makes up more than half of Puttenham's The Arte of Englishe Poesie, 1589. Angel Day took most of " T h e Treatise of Tropes and Schemes" which he appended to some of the later editions of The English Secretorie, 1587, from Susenbrot's Epitome. T h e English compilers of the sixteenth-century rhetorics also gave some attention to the lists of figures described by Cicero, Quintilian, the author of the Ad Herennium, P. Rutilius Lupus, Aquila Romanus, and lui ¡us Rufiniamus, since these were the sources of the earlier Renaissance tables of figures. Particular emphasis was thrown upon some of the more ornamental figures of rhetoric by Audomarus Talaeus's Rhetorica, 1544 (?). Abraham Fraunce's The Arcadian Rhetorike, 1588, is a version of it. T h e Rhetorica gained many adherents, especially among Cambridge men, in the last third of the sixteenth century. Its popular" Christopher Hegendorff, Methodus

de conscribendis

epistolis,

1537.

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ity continued, at least, into the period of the Restoration. In the eyes of many schoolmasters the brevity of the Rhetorica was an advantage. The treatise had been written as a complement to the Dialecticae partitiones, 1543, of Talaeus's friend Petrus Ramus. It was edited with a commentary by Ramus and as a result has sometimes been taken to be Ramus's own work. Both men argued that all of the figures of thought which could be connected with the topics of investigation should be dealt with under the heading "logic." This left to rhetoric only a few tropes and figures. They number in all about twenty-five. A section on delivery made up the rest of the book. Hence Talaeus's Rhetorica contains no treatment of what Susenbrot and Peacham called "figures of amplification," which are the devices most plentiful in the writings of Guevara, Sir Thomas Elyot, and the literary group of which John Lyly is the best-known member. On the other hand, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and his poetry abound in the figures treated by Talaeus. Sidney was a Cambridge man, and he, at least, knew of Gabriel Harvey, the Cambridge lecturer on rhetoric who championed Ramus and Talaeus. Abraham Fraunce, a younger Cambridge man, supplemented his Arcadian Rhetorike, which was taken from Talaeus's Rhetorica, with illustrations from Sidney's writings. Nicholas Caussin's Eloquentia sacra ac prophana parallela did not appear until 1619. Yet this compendium of previous works on the art of writing, in more than a thousand quarto pages, serves to indicate the trends which prevailed in rhetoric at the close of the sixteenth century. In the third book, which deals with the aids or supports of rhetoric, imitatio has displaced the last member of the customary trio, ingenium, doctrina, and usus. Imitation leads up to the subject of the next book, De inventione et locis, where some fifty means of gaining plenty of matter are discussed. Occasionally these are referred to as processes of amplification, which is, however, the particular subject of the fifth book, De amplificatione. Aphthonius alone is mentioned under the heading De forma et methodo amplificatione, ex Graecis Sophistis. In the next division ten precepts of Cicero regarding amplification are presented. A peculiarity of the work is the large number of set descriptions included in the later books.

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T

HE theory of imitation, which was the subject of much discussion in the Renaissance, was derived from Cicero's oratorical treatises, particularly his De oratore; and the practice of it was based upon his writings as examples of style. An extended and sharp controversy stirred the academic circles of Europe over whether or not the works of any other authors might be taken as models. No one denied Cicero's preeminence; many held that only his writings should be imitated. Among the latter group were Roger Ascham and John Sturm, whom Bacon singled out in Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning1 for particular censure, because of the exaggerated importance they had attached to amplification and stylistic embellishment. T h e starting point of the Renaissance theory of imitation was Cicero's De oratore, Book I, Chapter X X X I V , where he followed his discussion of the value of wit (ingenium) 2 to the orator with a description of his method of translating Demosthenes's orations. Moreover, a full, embellished style was the chief end implied in what both Cicero and the authorities of the Renaissance wrote regarding imitation. Cicero was well aware that ornateness and copiousness were the special virtues of his manner of writing, and in his rhetorical treatises he stressed these qualities above all else. The discussion following the remarks on imitation in the De oratore is largely concerned with amplification. T o his version of the pleas of Demosthenes and Aeschines on the laurel he prefixed a discussion, which is simply an apologia for amplification, as critics both of his own day and of the Renaissance noted. In this preface he explained that he had translated the orations from Greek in order l

B k . I, ch. iv, sec. 2.

'Cicero, De oratore,

Bk. I, ch. xxv.

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to demonstrate that the true Attic style was not lean and dry but full-flowing, ornate and copious. 3 Brutus, Varrò, Cornifìcius, and others had argued that the Attic style was simple and direct. In the course of the discussion in De oratore, Cicero cited his own famous defense of Milo as an example of artfully developed eloquence. It may be recalled that Milo in exile remarked that he would not then have been enjoying the taste of such fine mullets had Cicero actually delivered the embellished version of the plea which was circulated. In De claribus oratoribus both Caesar and Brutus accord high praise to Cicero, who is himself the writer, for his copiousness. In the same work it is pointed out that both Antonio and Demosthenes owed their eminence to their use of figures of words and thought.·4 In the Orator/ Cicero asserted that in the opinion of those competent to judge, it was precisely for the ornaments of thought in Demosthenes's orations that he was to be praised. Here, again, it is declared, that if the true Attic style is not ornate, full-flowing, and copious, then Demosthenes and Aeschines are not Attic.® In the Orator Cicero distinguished three kinds of style, the lofty, the plain, and the intermediate. It was, of course, in the first that he excelled, and it was with this almost alone that the Renaissance writers on imitation were concerned. For them the process of imitation was chiefly one of ornamentation and amplification. A bibliography of all the books and pamphlets of the Renaissance touching upon the subject of imitation would run to considerable length. Many were confined to the controversy concerning whether or not the writings of anyone but Cicero might ' " i d vero desinane dicere, qui subtiliter dicant, eos solos Attice dicere, id est, quasi sicce et integre. A t ample et ornate et copiose, cum eodem integritate, Atticorum est."—Cicero, De optimo genere oratorum. 4 " V e r u m multo magis hoc idem in sententiarum ornamentis et conformationibus. Q u o genere quia praestat omnibus Demosthenes, idcirco a doctis oratorum est princeps judicatus. Σχήματα e n i m quae vocant Graeci, ca maxime ornant oratorem; eaque non tam in verbis pingendis habent pondus, quam in illuminandis sententiis."—Cicero, De claribus oratoribus, ch. xxxvii. • "Sententiarum ornamenta maiora sunt, quibus quia frequentissime Demosthenes utitur, sunt qui putent, idcirco eius eloquentiam maxime esse laudabilem."—Cicero, Orator, ch. x x x i x . • " O r n a t e vero, et graviter, et copiose dicere, aut Atticorum sit, aut ne sit Aeschines, neve Demosthenes Atticus."—Ibid., ch. ix.

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be taken as models; some gave detailed instructions regarding the study of composition through imitation. Where precepts are given they lay stress upon composition in the full, ornate style. Roger Ascham drew most of the material for The Scholemaster from the discussions of imitation which he mentions in his work. He was chiefly indebted to his friend John Sturm, the noted schoolmaster of Strasbourg and to Cicero. Ascham's treatise, which was published after his death, consists of only two books, " T h e brynging up of youth" and " T h e ready way to the Latin tong." In both of these he had the beginning student in mind, and he touched little upon composition as an end in itself. But, as far as his work goes, it rests heavily upon the traditional discussions of imitation. This is particularly true of his opening remarks on wit. Nearly all the Renaissance treatises which went into detail regarding the practice of imitation began with a discussion of the value of natural ability to the orator and pupil. The topic had, however, been traditional, not only in oratory, but also in many other fields of endeavor. Plato made endowment with natural gifts the first requisite of the ideal statesman in The Republic 7 and of the ideal orator in The Phaedrus.8 In both contexts he employed the adjective άφυψ to describe the person so favored. The qualifications of the ideal prince, represented by Cyrus,9 were set forth by Xenophon. Aristotle referred to the desirability of natural cleverness (ευφυΐα) several times in his Rhetoric. Just as Plato had done in The Republic, he indicated in one passage 1 0 that memory was the next most desirable asset. In the third book of The Rhetoric he noted also that the source of clever and popular sayings is either natural genius or practice,11 and he went on to point out that most dicta of this sort gain their force from metaphor, proportional comparison, and vividness.13 Antithesis received mention under the heading "comparison," and proverbs were noticed in connection with metaphor. Hobbes came in contact with these statements in making his brief of Aristotle's 'Plato, Republic, Bk. VII, sec. 535. "Plato, Phaedrus, sees. 269(1-2703. "Xenophon, Cyropaedia. Note Xenophon's comment on the natural endowments of Cyrus, Bk. I, ch. ii, sees. 1-2. "Aristotle, Rhetoric, Bk. I, eh. vi, sec. 15. 11 12 Ibid., Bk. III, ch. χ, sec. 1. Ibid., Bk. III, ch. xi, sec. 1.

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Rhetoric. T h e y were probably also the basis of much that was written on wit in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century by such men as Gracián, Huarte, Persio, and Father Bouhours. O f t e n the discussion of the advantages of natural gifts in the works dealing with rhetoric involved consideration also of the importance of study and practice. Both Plato and Aristotle gave some attention to all three. Horace's question, in the Ars poetica,13 whether a praiseworthy poem arises from nature or from art, is well k n o w n . But in the Renaissance Cicero was, as usual, the supreme authority in the matter. Near the beginning of the De oratore he explained that the work grew out of discussion with his brother Quintus, w h o had argued that only wit and practice are necessary to make an orator. 1 4 Some rather divergent remarks in several of Cicero's writings on the relative value of wit, art, and practice left the way open for Renaissance schoolmasters to argue according to their inclinations. In these discussions the terminology varies somewhat. T h e gifts of nature may be divided into those of the body and those of the mind. Ingenium is usually the word used to indicate the latter. T h e second member of the trio was k n o w n variously as ars, disciplina, scientia, and doctrina; the third was sometimes called usus, sometimes experientia. Since Cicero agreed with Plato that natural endowments were to be desired first of all, the authorities of the Renaissance could hardly b u t admit as much. Y e t both Plato and Cicero had noted that unrestrained wit tended to run away with its possessor. Pericles is the perfect orator because to his natural abilities he has added a pursuit after lofty things. In The Laws Plato declared that entire ignorance is far f r o m b e i n g so great an evil as too much cleverness and learning, improperly directed. 1 5 Furthermore, in the discussion concerning atheists 10 in the same work he made it clear that the greatest harm is to be feared from those w h o possess strong memories and sharp wits. T h e adjective ινφνψ was used in referring to those naturally gifted men w h o attempt to mislead H o r a c e , Ars poetica, 11. 408-12. " Q u o d ego prudentissimorum h o m i n u m artibus eloquentiam contineri statuam; tu a u t e m i l l a m a b e l e g a n t i a d o c t r i n a e s e g r e g a n d a m pûtes, et in q u o d a m i n g e n i i atc|iie e x e r c i t a t i o n i s g e n e r e p o n e n d a m . " — C i c e r o , De oratore, B k . I, ch. ii. 15 P l a t o , Laws, w ¡bid., sec. 819a. sec. goSb-e. 13 u

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others by means of the devices of the sophists. Xenophon stressed the value of natural gifts in his Cyropaedia. T h i s work was, in the minds of teachers, associated with Cicero's De oratore, because, as Cicero pointed out in his first letter to his brother Quintus, it was the picture of an ideal prince rather than an actual biography. Cicero noted the need of adding discipline to wit in the De oratore, and he made similar remarks in several of his other works. His comment on the inadequacy of the unrestrained fluency of Galbus and Hortensius has been mentioned. T h e Orator was a later and less successful attempt by Cicero to present the ideal orator. In a passage 17 which was often echoed in Renaissance discussions he compared wit unaided by judgment to a fertile, untitled field rank in growth but nonproductive. T h e wayward tendencies of wit constitute the main subject of Petrarch's seventh Latin dailogue, De ingenio. Short expressions of admiration of wit by Gaudium are followed by objections and qualifications of considerable length by Ratio. In the sixteenth century Stephanus remarked that άφυητ signified at times "sharp" and sometimes "jocular" in classical Greek. 18 Wit is the subject of comment in a great many books of the sixteenth century. Most of the longer discussions are in works of rhetoric, particularly the treatises of imitation. Frequently the advantages of wit are weighed with those of study and experience. Thomas Wilson touches upon these matters near the beginning of his Arte of Rhetorique, 1553. Under the heading "By what meanes Eloquence is attained," he remarks, First needful it is that hee, which desireth to excell in this gift of Oratorie, and longeth to proue an eloquent man must naturally haue a wit, and an aptnesse thereunto: then must he to his Booke, and learne to bee well stored with knowledge, that he may be able to minister matter for al causes necessarie. The which when he hath got plentifully, he must vse much exercise, both in writing, and also in speaking. For though hee haue a wit and learning together, yet shall they both little auaile without much practise. " C i c e r o , Orator, ch. xv. Cf. A p p e n d i x V I , 1. M "Eύφυή! apud Atticos significai Didacem, Facetum."—Henricus (Henri Estienne), Thesaurus linguae graecae, 1564.

Stephanus

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Angel Day's comment at the opening of The English Secretorie, 1586, is representative of the general attitude toward wit and art. And although pregnant wit ensuing by nature was the foremost cause that first bred the inuention of Letters, and that every one naturally can speake, or in some sort or other set downe their meaning yet Arte prevayling in the cause, and by cunning skill marshalling every thing in his due order, place and proportion, how much more the same is then beautified, adorned, and as it were into a new shape transmitted by such kind of knowledge, the difference that dayly appeareth may yeeld proofe sufficient. Melanchthon takes note of the advantages of natural gifts at the beginning of his Elementorum rhetorices, 1 5 3 1 , and John Sturm begins at least four of his publications with this topic. T h e long discussion in the earliest of his works, De amissa dicendi ratione, 1538, dwells especially upon the waywardness of wit. A marginal note, "Natura, Vsus, Doctrina," directs attention to the subject matter at the beginning of his De literarum, ludio recte aperiendis liber, 1538. Consideration of the value of natural advantages was not confined to rhetorical treatises in the sixteenth century. Even when the subject of a book was something other than rhetoric the discussion of wit usually touched upon fluency and eloquence in speaking and writing. Most of the men who wrote books were familiar with what Cicero had said on the matter. The undesirable results of wit unaided by knowledge and practice are noted near the close of the first book of Roger Ascham's Toxophilus, 1545. Yet most of what he has to say is based on Cicero, to whose authority he directly appeals. In commenting upon "over moch quickness of witte" in The Scholemaster, 157o, 19 he refers the reader to the discussion in his earlier work. William Barkar devoted a number of pages to consideration of wit, study, and experience at the beginning of the preface to his translation, in 1560, of Xenophon's Cyropaedia. Yet eloquence is the chief topic in this discussion, which is itself a decidedly ambitious attempt at copious and ornate style. After noting that "few painfull wits Arber's reprint, p. 34.

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be good, and fewer good wits be painfull," he proceeded to contrast those men who lack fluency in speech with those who speak copiously with ease. In the course of this discussion he gives an inflated version 20 of Cicero's comparison in the Orator of undisciplined wit with a rank and uncultivated garden. George Gascoigne was merely echoing part of tradition when in The Glasse of Government he made Gnomaticus say, "Yea but what is that to the purpose? the quickest wits prove not alwayes best, for as they are readie to conceive, so do they quickly forget, and therewithall the finenesse of their capacitie doth carie such oftentimes to delight in vanities." About the middle of the sixteenth century wit was discussed in a number of treatises dealing with the theory of imitation. T h e persistent association of wit, invention, and copious style is probably to be attributed to the fact that Cicero had taken up these matters in sequence in the De oratore. It is true, however, that the predilections of Renaissance writers might alone account for the connection of wit with amplification and ornamentation. Chief among the treatises on imitation in the sixteenth century were those by Iacobus Omphalius, 21 Bartolomaeus Riccius, 22 Joannes Sambucus, 23 and John Sturm. 24 Each of these men at or near the beginning of his work took up the subject of natural advantages. T h e desirability of being well endowed both in body and in mind they, of course, admitted. But, since they were good schoolmasters, they were inclined to say what they could for study and practice. Riccius devoted some pages to demonstrating that nature can be greatly hindered or furthered by wrong or correct training, respectively. All of these authorities were somewhat suspicious of undisciplined wit. In both the De amissa dicendi ratione, 1538, and the De imitatione oratoria libri tres, ΐ574> John Sturm noted the tendency of well-endowed youth to be selfsatisfied. T h e later of these works he had in preparation for ten 30 Cf. A p p e n d i x V I , 2. " I a c o b u s O m p h a l i u s , Liber de elocuttonis imitatione ac apparatu, 1537. 21 B a r t o l o m a e u s R i c c i u s , De imitatione libri tres, 1545. " J o a n n e s S a m b u c u s , De imitatione Ciceroniana, 1561. " J o h n S t u r m , De amissa dicendi ratione libri duo, 1558; De imitatione libri tres, 1574.

oratoria

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years. The text is hardly more than a pretext for a very extensive commentary. The first chapter, Qui sint ad, imitationem idonei, et quid sit imitatio, begins with discussion of the desirability of natural advantages. Of the gifts of the mind, he distinguishes philosophical and oratorical wit. The latter, he labors to show, may be acquired by education as Demosthenes had acquired it. In each of the long commentaries on the first three chapters the Greek, word άφυΐα is used in connection with the fluency of oratorical wit. One work in English in the sixteenth century touching on imitation is Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster. This consists of only two books, "The bringyng up of youth" and "The ready way to the Latin tong." A digression on wit takes up most of the first section. Ascham himself stated, in a letter acknowledging his indebtedness to John Sturm for all that was good in the book, that it merely formed a rude porch to his friend's school. Sturm's tracts the De amissa dicendi ratione libri duo, 1538, and the Nobilitas literata, 1549, which are specifically named in The Scholemaster, contain some matter bearing on that part of imitation which occupied Ascham's attention. The first gave Ascham some suggestions for his discussion of quick and hard wits. But it is probable that what he meant by Sturm's school was the De imitatione oratoria libri tres. In a letter written in December, 1568, Ascham urgently requested Sturm to send to England some of the manuscript of this treatise, which had already been in preparation four years. Six more were to elapse before it appeared in print. Sturm may have sent his correspondent some of the opening material of his book. It has already been pointed out that he begins the De imitatione oratoria, with a discussion of natural advantages, in which he notes the wayward tendencies of undisciplined wit, says what he can for education as a means of developing it, and in the course of these remarks uses the Greek term άφνια three times. Ascham's discussion of wit merely follows in the tradition of the works dealing with imitation from Cicero's De oratore to Sturm's De imitatione oratoria. Plato's remarks on the advantages and disadvantages of being wellendowed with natural gifts are hinted at broadly in Cicero's De

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oratore, which is the work upon which Ascham depended most. Some of the specific references to Plato's writings were suggested to Ascham by passages in Sturm's works, as John E. B. Mayor noted in his edition of The Scholemaster. Ascham's elaboration on the waywardness of quick wits 2 5 is probably largely the result of an attempt on his part to write in the copious, ornate manner which the practice of imitation encouraged. Many of the stylistic devices which critics have regarded as characteristic of Lyly's Euphues are illustrated in The Scholemaster. T h e subject of imitation was treated by another Englishman, but he wrote in Latin. Gabriel Harvey, the correspondent of Edmund Spenser, delivered two sets of public lectures at Cambridge in 1577. T o the first he gave the title Ciceronianus. "Ass" is Harvey's favorite epithet, and it echoes through all that he did and wrote. It is only fair to admit, however, that Ramus's Ciceronianus probably suggested his title. Harvey had at first been one of those who held that the writings of Cicero should be followed as models of style. But the arguments of Ramus converted him to the opposite camp. T h e second set of lectures bore the title Rhetor, vel duorum dierum oratio, de natura, arte, et exercitatione. In his discussion he acknowledged that natural ability, for which he gave the Greek equivalent άφυία, is the most important qualification of an orator; 28 yet he counseled his many auditors not to be discouraged, since he had reached his position in spite of a considerable lack of natural fitness. H e followed Ramus's lead in turning over investigation, arrangement, memory, and figures of thought to dialectic, 27 and he disparaged the catalogues of figures compiled by Susenbrot and Mosellanus. Yet in his own writings he consciously sought after copiousness and ornamentation. One of his most ambitious efforts is the description of rhetoric at the close of the Rhetor. A translation of this flamboyant panegyric is given in Grosart's edition of Harvey's works. 28 In his letters and in the tracts which he wrote in his quarrels with Greene and Nashe his attempts to obtain fullness " R o g e r Ascham, The Scholemaster, Arber's reprint, pp. 32-34. " G a b r i e l Harvey, Rhetor, 1577, Folio Dii recto. "Ibid., Folio Eiiii verso. " G a b r i e l Harvey, Works, edited by Alexander B. Grosart, I, xx, xxi.

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are obvious. He refers to this process himself both as "invention" and as "amplification." Under whatever name it is considered, it is in essence the same thing. Many English books of the sixteenth century associated wit with the ability to discourse fluently on any subject. Since wit was regarded as having to do with the amplification of a topic, it was frequently linked with the Elizabethan term "invention." Some indication of this connection may be noted as early as Stephen Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure, 150g.2® "Invention" was generally used to indicate the first division of rhetoric, which comprises all the means, logical and otherwise, of investigating and developing a subject. As a result of the Renaissance emphasis on style, however, "invention" came, at times, simply to designate a group of rhetorical devices for amplifying and embellishing a theme. T h e point of view from which these means of dilation and ornamentation were regarded probably made little difference in actual practice to the schoolboys and authors who used them. In the third book of The Arte of Rhetorique, 1553, Thomas Wilson divided figures into three divisions. T h e first kind he called "tropes," the second "schemes." Of the third he gave the following description, when by diversitie of inuention, a sentence is many ways spoken, and also matters are amplified by heaping examples, by dilating arguments, by comparing of things together, by similitudes, by contraries, and by diuers other like, called by Tullie Exoration of sentences, or coulours of Rhetoriken T h e devices which Wilson included in this last group were known both as "figures of thought" and as "figures of amplification" in the English rhetorics of the sixteenth century. T h e y were particularly associated with wit by the men who compiled the commonplace books of the late sixteenth century. A t times the expression "figures of amplification" was understood to include not only figures of thought but also exclamation, apostrophe, and prosopopoeia, which depend for their force upon appeal to the emotions. "Stephen Hawes, The Pastime of Pleasure, 1509, chs. viii and ix. T h e edition of 1517 has been reprinted by T h e Early English T e x t Society, Original Series, No. 173, 1928 [for 19*7]. " T h o m a s Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique, p. 170.

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That the devices of the latter group were especially regarded as manifestations of wit is affirmed by the title pages and prefaces of the sentimental novels which were translated into English during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both types of figures were grouped together simply as means of expanding a subject and embellishing style in such treatises as Erasmus's De duplici copia verborum ac rerum, Rudolphus Agricola's De inventione dialéctica libri tres, Richard Sherry's A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes, and Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence. Amplification by means of these devices, which became the chief quality of wit in the later sixteenth century, was also known under the terms "invention," "variety of matter," and "plenty of matter." "Wit" and "invention" were closely associated in the mind of John Lyly. In Euphues and His England one of the characters declared, " I never heard but of three things which argue a fine wit: invention, conceiving, answering." A longer passage of the same work turns upon the connection between wit and invention.31 Anthony Munday in dedicating Zelauto, 1580, an imitation of Euphues, to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, contrasted his book with Lyly's "pregnaunt inventions." In the dedicatory epistle before Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, Lyly made the following apology for the style of his work at the same time that he claimed approval for the variety of matter which it contained. Though the style nothing delight the dainty ear of the curious sifter, yet will the matter recreate the mind of the courteous reader. The variety of the one will abate the harshness of the other. Things of greatest profit are set forth with least price. When the wine is neat there needeth no ivy-bush. The right coral needeth no coloring. Where the matter itself bringeth credit, the man with his gloss winneth small commendation. It is therefore, me thinketh, a greater show of pregnant wit than perfect wisdom in a thing of sufficient excellency to use superfluous eloquence. We commonly see that a black ground " "Or. if I should be so curious to demand whether, in a tale told to our ladies, disposition or invention be most convenient, I cannot think but you would judge them both expedient, for as one metal is to be tempered with another in fashioning a good blade, lest either being all of steel it quickly break, or all of iron it never cut, so fareth it in speech, which if it be not seasoned as well with wit to move delight, as with art to manifest cunning, there is no eloquence." T h e Croll and Clemons edition contains the following note on this passage, "Invention corresponds to wit below, disposition to art."—p. 400.

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9« doth best beseem a white counterfeit. And Venus, according to the judgment of Mars, was then most amiable when she sat close by Vulcanus. If these things be true which experience trieth, that a naked tale doth most truly set forth the naked truth, that where the countenance is fair there need no colors, that painting is meeter for ragged walls than fine marble, that verity then shineth most bright when she is in least bravery, I shall satisfy mine own mind, though I cannot feed their humours which greatly seek after those that sift the finest meal and bear the whitest mouths. It is a world to see how Englishmen desire to hear finer speech than the language will allow, to eat finer bread than is made of wheat, to wear finer cloth than is wrought of wool. But I let pass their fineness, which can no way excuse my folly. Euphues is, first of all, a book of moral philosophy in the tradition of Sir Thomas Elyot's The Boke Named the Gouernour and Guevara's Libro aureo. Subjects are developed and amplified by means of the processes of dialectical investigation. Lyly depended mainly upon similes, contraries, examples, causes, citation of authority, and, above all else, proverbs. Most of these processes are employed in the passage which has just been quoted. The peculiarities of Lyly's style are to a considerable extent the result of his use of the devices of amplification. Proverbs are by nature pointed in expression. Many of them involve comparison, as Aristotle pointed out. Comparison and contrast result naturally in balance and antithesis, both of which are frequently emphasized by verbal likenesses, such as rhyme and alliteration. It is true that, having developed a direct, analytical style, made up of short phrases and depending much upon balance, Lyly was led into the overuse of alliteration as a means of accentuating his manner. Critics have been puzzled over Lyly's adverse criticism of those Englishmen whom he considered too fastidious in matters of style. The usual opinion is that no one was more meticulous in this matter than he. The explanation may be that as an Oxonian Lyly was taking issue with the Cambridge group of authors led by Gabriel Harvey and Sir Philip Sidney. The views of Ramus and Talaeus regarding logic and rhetoric had gained acceptance at Cambridge before 1579. Their division and treatment of these subjects had the effect of making the development of a theme rigidly logical or of encouraging such purely stylistic devices as

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metonymy, climax, anaphora, and epanalepsis. Tropes of this nature abound in Sidney's Arcadia, the earlier version of which was in circulation by 1580. In the decade following the publication of Lyly's Euphues, "wit," "invention," and "variety of matter" became popular expressions, of which the members of the literary profession particularly made capital. Anthony Munday's reference to Lyly's prose works as "pregnaunt inventions," has been noted. Though written in verse, A light Bondell of Liuly Discourses Called Churchyardes Charge, 1580, is commended on the title page for the "varietie of matter and severall inventions" which it contains. In dedicating this work to the Earl of Oxford, as Lyly had Euphues and His England, Churchyard began, "But now, right noble Earle, the worlde, lovyng change and varietie of matter, waxeth awearie of frevoulous verses (because so many are writers of mieter) and looketh for some learned discourse; by which meanes my barraine bookes maie remaine unred." T o the longest piece in the volume a discourse in verse is appended on the relative values of wit and wealth. Angel Day, in his English Secretorie, 1586, a book applying the ancient rules of rhetoric to letter writing, states that three things are necessary for the orderly expression of any matter. Of these he places "invention first; wherein plentifully is searched and considered, what kinde of matter, how much variety of sentences, what sorts of figures, how many similitudes, what approbations, diminutions, insinuations, and circumstances are presently needfull, or furthering to the matter in handling." Nicholas Breton and Gabriel Harvey were men of very different stamp. Wit and invention were frequently associated, however, in the writings of both. Throughout the many works printed between 1577 and 1626 which are attributed to Breton wit received much attention. It was the subject of comment both in the text and in the prefatory matter of a number of his pamphlets, and he used the word conspicuously in several of his titles. "Variety of invention" was, as he realized, his special forte, and in his preliminary remarks he stressed it above all else. Breton's first publication in prose, The Wil of Wit, Wits Will or Wils Wit, Chuse You

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Whether, 1580, illustrates the emphasis which he placed upon wit and invention. T h e work is described on the title page as five discourses. T h e first two parts, " T h e Will of Wit" and " T h e Authors Dream" are allegorical dialogues, after the manner of the moral interludes of the first half of the sixteenth century. In the second of these pieces the author dreams of a visit to "the iland of Inuention," where he is met by his friends Wit and Reason, Wisdom and Care, Wealth and Content, and by his foes Will and Rage, Folly and Recklessness, Woe and Discontent. By dint of many sententious speeches his friends finally succeed in conducting him to Virtue. In the address " T o the Reader" preceding Wits Trenchmour, In a Conference Had betwixt a Schüller and an Angler, 1597, Breton remarked, "He that will thinke in writing to please all humors, must have more varietie of invention then one wit can hit on." T h e education of the scholar is described in this work as consisting mainly of learning a number of Latin maxims. These are interpreted by English adages and similes, in which the Angler proves as well versed as the scholar. One of the many renderings of natura semper gignet sibi similem which they give is this by the angler, "you mean according to the quantitie of your wit, you must look for the sweete of your inventions." A number of Breton's prefaces contain incidental reference to variety of matter. "Strange Inventions of Witt" are included among the advantages of the court in The Court and the Country, or A Brief Discourse between the Courtier and the Country-man, 1618. Like Breton, Gabriel Harvey, the Cambridge Don, had much to say of "wit" and "invention" in his writings. It is evident from his comments that for him "invention" consisted of the processes of dialectical investigation which serve for the development and amplification of a theme. In some of his writings he employed these devices in a particularly rigid manner. Three Proper and Wittie, Familiar Letters, 1580, is made up of correspondence which is supposed to have passed between Harvey and Spenser. "Mr. H's Short, but Sharpe, and Learned Iudgment of Earthquakes," consists of ten pages of bald analysis according to logical processes, such as material, formal, efficient, and final causes, genus, species, end, means, accident, and effect. At the close Har-

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vey expressed the wish that some "well aduized Universitie man," would attempt to develop the topic further by such means as definition, division, causes, comparison, and circumstances. 32 A statement by Spenser in the same volume may be noted in passing. "I minde shortely at conuenient leysure," he says, "to sette forth a Booke in this kinde, whiche I entitle Epithalamion Thamesis, whych Booke, I dare undertake wil be very profitable for knowledge, and rare for the Inuention and manner of handling." Much regarding wit and invention is contained in Harvey's Foure Letters, and Certaine Sonnets, 1592. These two matters, with such allied topics as commonplaces, amplification, and imitation of Lyly's style take up the greater part of the third letter. Particular attention is directed to the passage beginning, " N o variety, or infinity so infinite, as Inuention," and extending to, " T h e right Noouice of pregnant and aspiring conceit, wil not ouer-skippe any precious gemme of Inuention." 83 In Pierces Supererogation, or A New Prayse of the Old Asse, 1593, directed at Thomas Nashe, Harvey distinguished between art as proficiency acquired by observance of rules and wit as facility of "invention," that is to say, the ability to bring to mind easily matter for the development and amplification of a theme.·''4 It has just been noted that John Lyly indicated this distinction in Euphues and His England. In his remarks on wit Harvey credited Lyly, whom he called "the Arte of figges," with "a bottomlesse pitt of Inuention." A t several places in this work Harvey explicitly connected "invention" with the processes of dialectical investigation set forth in the treatises on logic of Agricola, Ramus, Cicero, and Aristotle. 38 In A New Letter of Notable Contents, 1593, he admitted that it was his habit to resort to logical analysis in developing a subject. " W h e n I bethink me," he wrote, "of any singular, or important effect, I am presently drawne into a consideration of the cause, and deeme it a childish vanity, to dreame of the End, without the Meanes." Most of Harvey's remarks on wit which have been noticed grew out of the flyting which took place between him and Thomas Nashe. In 1597 Harvey took u p the quarrel anew " Cf. A p p e n d i x VI, j . "Cf. Appendix VI, 4.

" G a b r i e l Harvey, Works, I, »17-19. » C / . Appendix VI, 5.

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with The Trimming of Thomas Nashe, which contains a pretended disputation by the two antagonists over Nashe's wit. 3 · T h e argument itself is a good illustration of Harvey's habit of developing and amplifying by means of logical processes. In the course of it wit was formally defined as, "an affluent Spirit yeelding inuention to praise or dispraise, or anie wayes to discourse (with judgment) of euerie subiecte." In the light of the association in the last quarter of the sixteenth century of wit with the means of amplification, which consist mainly of the processes of dialectical investigation (invention), this definition probably has more validity than has generally been accorded to it. In any event it is clear that Harvey associated wit with invention and that he regarded both as having to do with the amplification of a subject. Formal discussions in the seventeenth century continued to stress readiness in discovering material, frequently under the name of "invention," as the chief quality of wit. Robert Johnson's Essaies, or Rather Imperfect Offers, 1601, contains ten pieces largely developed by means of the processes of dialectical investigation set forth in the school manuals. T h e second essay is entitled " O f W i t . " T h e similes which Johnson used to express the tendency of quick wit to run away with itself are clearly echoes from Lyly's Euphues. In The Optick Glasse of Humors, 1607, by T . W., the devices of amplification are employed rather obviously. Some of the similes employed there were also drawn from Lyly's writings. In the seventh chapter, " O f Diversities of Wit; and Most According to Tempers," wit is defined as follows,— It is called among the Grecians ci57*-

translator, Certaine Tragicall Discourses, 1567. Translated by Sir Geoffrey Fenton from the French version by Pierre Boaistuau and Francois de Belleforest of Bandello's Novelle. translator, Golden Epistles, 1575. Translated from letters of Guevara and others. Feuillerat, Albert, John Lyly; contribution à l'histoire de la renaissance en Angleterre, Cambridge, University Press, 1910. Fichetus, De quinqué rhetoricis elementis artem extrinsecus comprehendentibus omnem, Paris, 1471.· Flecknoe, Richard, Epigrams and Characters, 1673. A Short Discourse of the English Stage, 1664. Flemming, Abraham, A Panoplie of Epistles, 1576.· Flores, Juan de, The Historie of Aurelio and of Isabell [Grisel y Mirabella], (English, French, Italian, and Spanish), Antwerp, 1556. Florio, Giovanni, Florio His Firste Fruités: A Perfect Induction to the Italian and English Tongues, 1578. Florios Second Frutes, 1591. Fortescue, Thomas, translator, The Foreste; or Collection of Histories, 1571. Translated from a French version of Pedro Mexia's Silva. Fouquelin, Antoine, La Rhétorique françoise, Paris, 1555.* Fraunce, Abraham, translator, The Arcadian Rhetorike, 1588. From Talaeus's Institutiones oratoriae.· translator, The Lawiers Logike Exemplifying the Praecepts of Logike by Practise of the Common Lawe, 1588. A version of Ramus's Dialecticae partitiones.· Fulgosius (Fregoso), Baptista, De dictis factisque memorabilibus, Milan, 1509. Fulwood, William, The Enimie of Idlenesse: Teaching How to Indite Epistles, 1568.· Gale, Thomas, Rhetores selecti: Demetrius Phalereus, Tiberius Rhetor, Anonymous Sophista, Severus Alexandrinus, (Greek and Latin), Oxford, 1676.· Gardiner, Richard, Specimen oratorium, Oxford, 1643.·

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Gascoigne, George, A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres Bound vp in One Small Poesie, 1573·· The Glasse of Govemement, 1575. Genung, John Franklin, The Practical Elements of Rhetoric, Boston, Mass., 1888.· Gesner, Conrad, Bibliotheca universalis, 3 vols., Zürich, 1545-55. Many works dealing with or mentioning rhetoric are cited in Vol. II, particularly folios 50 verso to 52 recto.· Gordon, George S., "Theophrastus and His Imitators," in English Literature and the Classics, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1912.· Gracián, Lorenzo (i.e., Baltazar), Agudeza y arte de ingenio [ca. 1649]. Grange, John, The Golden Aphroditis, 1577. Greene, Robert, The Life and Works of Robert Greene, edited by Alexander B. Grosart, 15 vols., 1881-86. Greenham, Richard, The Works, Examined, Corrected, and Published by H. Hfolland], 1599. Greenough, C. N., Studies in the Development of Character-writing in England, Harvard, 1898. Guazzo, Stefano, La civile conversatione, Brescia, 1574. The ciuile Conuersation of M. Steeuen Guazzo, translated by George Pettie, 1581. The first three books. Guevara, Antonio de, Epístolas familiares, Valladolid, 1539· The Familiar Epistles of Sir Anthonie of Guevara, translated by Edmund Hellows, 1574. Golden Epistles, contayning varietie of discourse, both morali, philosophicall, and diuine: gathered as wel out of the remaynder of Gueuares Woorkes, as other authours Latine, French, and Italian, translated by Sir Geoffrey Fenton, 1585. Libro aureo de Marco Aurelio, emperador y eloquentissimo orador, Seville, 1527. Libro del emperador Marco aurelio cô relox de principes, Valladolid, 1529. L'Horloge des princes, Paris, 1531. Translated by René Berthault. Horlogii principium, sive de vita M. Aurelii imperatoris libri III . . . traducti et notis illustrati studio J . Wanchelii, Torgau, 1601. The Golden Boke of Marcus Aurelius, 1535. Translated by John Bourchier, Lord Berners, from the French version by René Berthault of Guevara's Libro aureo de Marco Aurelio. The Diali of Princes, with the Famous Booke of Marcus Aurelius, Englysshed oute of Frenche by T . North, 1557. Libro llamado menosprecio de corte y alabança de aldea. Valladolid, 1539.

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Villey-Desmeserets, Pierre L. J., Les Livres d'histoire moderne utilisés par Montaigne, Paris, Librairie Hachette et Cie., 1908. Les Sources et l'évolution des essais de Montaigne, 2 vols., Paris, Librairie Hachette et Cie., 1908. Vincent of Beauvais (ca. 1190-1264), Speculum doctrinale.· Vives, Juan Luis, Ad sapientiam introducilo [Strasbourg, 1521?].· An Introduction to Wysedome, translated by Richard Morysine, 1540.· De conscribendis epistolis, Basle, 1536.· De ratione dicendi libri III, Louvain, 1533.· Vocht, Henry de, De Invloed van Erasmus op de Engelsche Tooneelliteratuur der X V I e en XVII* Eeuwen, Eerste Deel: Shakespeare, Jest-books, Lyly, Ghent, 1908. Voellus, Joannes, De ratione conscribendi epístolas, Brescia, 1601.· Volkmann, Richard, Die RJietorik der Griechen und Römer, Berlin, 1872.· Hermagoras, oder Elemente der Rhetorik, Stettin, 1865.· Vossius, Gerard Jean, Oratoriarum institutionum libri sex, 1616. Third edition.· Rhetorices contractae, sive partitionum oratoriarum, libri ν, [ι6ο6?].· Walker, Obadiah, Some Instructions Concerning the Art of Oratory, »659.· Walkington, Thomas, T h e Optick Glasse of Humors, 1607. Walz, Christian, Rhetores graeci ex codicibus Florentinis, Mediolanensibus, Monacensibus, Neapolitanus, Parisiensibus, Romanis, Venitis, Tauriensibus, et Vindobonensibus, (Greek), 9 volumes, Stuttgart, 1832-36.· Warren, F. M., History of the Novel Previous to the Seventeenth Century, New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1895. Watson, Foster, T h e Beginnings of the Teaching of Modern Subjects in England, London, Sir I. Pitman and Sons, 1909.· The English Grammar Schools to 1660, Cambridge, University Press, 1908.· "The Curriculum and T e x t Books of English Schools in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century," in Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, VI, 159-207, 1913. Webbe, William, A Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586.· Welsted, Leonard, "A Dissertation Concerning the Perfection of the English Language," prefixed to Epistles, Odes . . . 1724. Weymouth, R. F., "Analysis of Euphuism and its Elements," in Transactions of the Philological Society, 1870-72.

276

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Whately, Richard, Elements of Rhetoric, 1828. Whetstone, George, An Heptameron of Ciuill Discourses, 1582. T h e Rocke of Regard, 1576. Wilson, J. D., John Lyly, Cambridge, 1905. Wilson, Thomas, T h e Arte of Rhetorique, 1553.* T h e Arte of Rhetorique, edited by G. H. Mair, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1909. A reprint of the edition of 1585. Wilson, Thomas, T h e Rule of Reason, 1551.* Wimpheling, Jacob, Elegantiarum medulla: oratoriaque precepta, in ordine inventu facilem: copiose: clare: breviterque reducta, Strasbourg, [1495].* Wolff, Samuel Lee, T h e Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, New York, T h e Columbia University Press, 1912. Woodward, W . H., Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, Cambridge, University Press, 1906.* Wydeville, Anthony, Earl Rivers, translator, T h e Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres, Westminster, 1477. Translated from the French version of Guillaume de Tignonville. Xenophon (c. 430-354 B. C.), T h e Bookes of Xenophon Contayning the Discipline, Schole, and Education of Cyrus, translated by William Barkar, [1560?]. Zeitlin, Jacob, "Commonplaces in Elizabethan Life and Letters," in T h e Journal of English and Germanic Philology, X I X , 47-65, 1920. Zinano, Gabriele, Sommarii di varie retoriche greche, latine, et volgari distinamente ordinati in uno, Reggio, 1590.* ANONYMOUS

COLLECTIONS

From the commendatory poems in a number of volumes of sententious materials which were published between 1597 and 1601, it is evident that John Bodenham and Nicholas Ling, who was a publisher of the time, had something to do with the compilation of these books. Robert Allot may have collected the materials in Englands World. Parnassus and Wits Theatre of the Little

Belvedére, or; T h e Garden of the Muses, 1600. Attributed to John Bodenham. Englands Helicon, 1600. Attributed to John Bodenham. Englands Parnassus; or T h e Choysest Flowers of Our Moderne Poets, 1600. Attributed to Robert Allot. Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth, 1597. Attributed to John Bodenham by some, to Nicholas Ling by others. Wits Theatre of the Little World, 1599. Attributed to Robert Allot.

INDEX Achilles Tatius, 163 Adages, see Maxims, Moral precepts. Proverbs, Sentences Adams, Thomas, 156 Addison, Joseph, 13, 15s Ad Herennium, see Rhetorica ad C. Herennium Aeneas Sylvius, see Pius II Aesop, Fables, 39, 46, 186 Agricola, Rudolphus, 69, 72, 126; De invenzione dialéctica, 49· 5·"54> 7°> 9°. 94, "5-17. »58 Alcuin, 24 Alday, John, 120 Alliteration, 21-22, 91, 104, 107, 119, 176, 198-99 Allott, Robert, 45 Amadis de Gaula, 7, 109, 162-63, 175 76, 200. See also Trésor des livres d'Amadis de Gaule Amplification, 1, 4-5, 7-8, 19, 22-23, *9· Si. 53-54. 59. 45 48. 52-53, 55, 57, 6o81, 86-110, 112-23, i*7> ·5°· i54> 'S®. ΐ4°. 145-5*. 154. 158-60, 163, 176, >79" 8ο, 184-85, 190-91. 194. 199-ϊοι. *°5 Anaphora, 9* Antecedent, 5*'54> 58. 6°. 7'> 'S*· ·59 Antithesis, 5. 58. 7·> 74> 7®. 9'· ·°4· ·°6, ιο8, U9. 164, ι68, 172, 174. '9 s 1 Antitheta rerum, 135. 14 · ·44"47 Aphorisms, 121, 134. 138-48, ι68, 185 Aphthonius, 7°; Progymnasmata, 4, 49, 61-70, 79, 136-38, 160 Apophthegms, 8, 20, 22-24, *7·5·> 55*59 44-47, 60, 114, 118-20, 122, 126, 132, 154-39. 146-47. 151-5*. 164-65, 195, 197, 199-201 Aporia, 128, 198 Apostrophe, 8g, 105, 107, 163-64, 167, 169, 171, 176 Aquila, Romanus, 78, 160 Ariosto, 187 Aristotle, 4, 16, 33, 44, 56, 70, 83, 180, 194; Ethics, 115, 133. 153, 157; Rhet-

oric, 14-15, 50-51, 75-76, 82, 83, 91, 14t, 156; Topics, 6, 50-51, 116-17, 158, ·4* Arrangement (known also as "disposition"), 20-21, 55, 57, 69, 88, go n, 128 Art, see Learning Artes dictandi, 7 Ascham, Roger, 80, 109, 1 1 1 , 128; The Scholemaster, 3, 10, 28, 62, 64, 68, 77, 82, 85, 87-88; Toxophilus, 68, 85 Asyndeton, 107 Atkins. J. W. H., 179 Attic style, 81 Awdeley, John, 155 Bacon, Francis, 75; Apophthegms New and Old, 135, 141; The Coulours 0/ Good and Euill, 133, 138, 141-42: Essays, 133-34, »59"5·. 156. *oi: De augmentis scientiarum, 133, 135, 14145; Of the Proßcience and Advancement of Learning, 6, 133, 138, 140-43, 145-46, 148, 150; Promus of Formularies, 135, 141, 144, 147 Balance, 76-77, gi, 103-4, ι·9> ·5°> >76, 178, i8Î, 190, 200 Baldwin, Charles Sears, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic, 6g, 137 η Baldwin, William: A Myrroure for Magistrates, 34, 181-82, 190; A Treatise of Morali Phylosophie, 24, 30, 54-36, 4042, 46, ig5 Bandello, Matteo, Novelle, 183-85, 188 Barclay, John, The Mirror of Minds, 96 Barkar, William, 85, 13g, 145 Beaumont, Francis, 2 Belleforest, François de, 183-85 Belvidére, 34, 40-41, 43-45, 120 Beowulf, 9 Berners, Lord, see Bourchier, John Blage, Thomas, 39; A Schole of Wise Conceytes, 186 Blount, Thomas, The Academie of Eloquence, 112

INDEX

»78

Blundeville, Thomas, The Art of Logike, 55 Boaistuau, Pierre, 183-85; Theatrum mundi,

ito,

135-36,

184

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 7-8, 37, 183, 186, >06; De casibus illustrium vir or um, 181; II decamerone, 1*9-30; La Fiammetta, 7, 162-63, ·7>. zoo; Il Filocolo, 139-30, 1 9 5

Bodenham, John, 4 4 - 4 5 Boëthius, 25, 50-51, 7*; Consolations of Philosophy, 3s Bond, R . Warwick, 190, 197 Books of Courtesy, 8, 1 1 2 , 124-33, '79" 180, 188-90, 194-96

Bouhours, Dominique, 1 4 - 1 5 , 83 Bourchier, John, Lord Berners,

36-37,

1 1 4 , 1 1 8 - 2 0 , 162, 166-67

Bowes, Thomas, 40, 46 Boyle, Robert, 96; Occasional Reflections,

4 5 - 4 7 , 60, 62-64, »»>. 131

Browne, Sir Thomas, 150 Bryan, Sir Francis, 114, 118 Budé, Guillaume, 20, 6 1 , 69-70, Bush, J. Ν. D„ 190

72-73

C., Η., The Forrest of Fancy, 111 Calisto y Melibea, 162, 164-66, 200 Casaubon, Isaac, 153-54 Castiglione, Baldassare, Il libro del cor188-89,

19-20, 1 0 1 - 2 , 1 1 9 η , 1 2 7 - 3 1 , 1 7 9 , 195·

C i c e r o , 7 . i l , 33, 36-37, 44, 46-47, 5 5 , 5 7 , 6 1 , 7 0 , 7 2 - 7 3 , 7 8 - 7 9 , 82, 85, 89, 9 7 - 9 9 , 1 0 1 , 103, 1 0 9 - 1 1 , 1 1 4 - 1 7 , 126, 1 3 2 ,

*°4

Cato, Dionysius, Disticha de moribus, 232 5 , 46, 49, 125, 147 C a u s e , 5 , 49, 5 2 - 5 5 , 58, 60, 63-64, 69, 7 1 ,

74· 9 · . 9S-94.

" 4 . « ι . •S*. ' S 6 ·

1 3 8 , 148, 152, 164, 1 9 1 , 1 9 9 - 2 0 1 , 205

Caussin, Nicholas, 62; Eloquentia sacra ac prophana, 79 Caxton, William, 22-25, 97, 199 Celestina, see Calisto y Melibea

134,

147, 184; De amicitia, 56; De claribut oratoribus, 4, 81; De inventione, 62; De officiis, 46; De optimo genere oratorum, Si; De oratore, 3, 19, 62, 68, 80, 83-88, 98, toa, ìaa, \*η-*%·, Orator, 81, 84, 86; Partitiones oratoriae, 62, 75, 98,

1 6 - 1 7 , >49

Brandolini, Α., De ratione scribendi, 77 Breton, Nicholas, 1 1 , 123-25, 1 5 1 ; Characters upon Essaies, 155-56; Choice, Chance, and Change, 39; The Court and the Country, 39, 93, 124, 127; The Crossing of Proverbs, 40; The Good and Bad, 1 5 6 ; The Wil of Wit, 39. 92-93, 1*4; Wits Private Wealth, 40; Wits Trenchmour, 39, gs, 125 Brinsley, John, 25; Ludus literarius, 36,

tegiano,

Celtes, Conrad, Methodus conficiendarum epistolarum, 77 Chapman, George, 205 Character, 12, 48, 58, 65, 76, 123, 138, 148, 1 5 1 - 6 1 . See also Description, Enargia, Hypotyposis Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, 24 Chria, 66-67, 1 0 ° . 136-33, 197 Churchyard, Thomas, 139, 182; Churchyardes Charge, 92

115,

117;

Topica,

6, 4 9 - 5 1 ,

53-54,

7*"73· 94· 1 1 6-ΐ7· 138, i6o. See also Rhetorica ad C. Herennium Cinthio, Giraldi, 183 C i r c u m s t a n c e s , 5 , 49, 5 2 - 5 4 , 5 7 - 5 8 , 69, 7 1 , 7 4 7 5 . 9*> 9 4 .

10

,

° . «">. >*9.

5 8 · S04-5.

See also Topics of rhetorical investiga tion Citation of authority, 5, 33, 5 1 , 5 3 - 5 4 , 58, 60, 63-64, 69, 7 1 , 74, 9 1 , 100, 102, 106, 1 1 0 , 1 1 4 - 2 2 , 126-28, 1 3 1 - 3 2 , 134-39, 1505 2 . 164-66, 185-86, 199

Clarendon, Lord, see Hyde, Edward Clemons, Harry, 197 Climax, 92, 103, 176, 198 Colet, John, 22, *8, 6 1 , 6 9 - 7 0 "Commonplace," 66, 113, 133, 137-38 Commonplace books, 8, 22-48, 64-65, 1 1 3 - 1 3 7 , 140-42, 145, 150-52,

Commonplace headings,

89,

195

28-29, 32-33, 35-

36, 40-42, 4 4 - 4 5 Commonplaces,

22-23,

28-29, 32-33,

36, 40-48, 6 1 , 7 1 , 74, 94,

110,

35·

112-14,

123. 1 3 3 - 3 7 . 140-48. 1 7 2 , 2 0 1 , 205

Comparison,

5, 1 4 - 1 5 ,

17, 49, 5 2 - 5 5 , 58,

60, 64, 66, 69, 7 4 , 82, 89, 9 1 , 94,

100,

102-6,

167,

in,

121,

128-29,

159,

165,

169, 1 7 1 , 1 9 7 , 200, 202, 204-5

Concession, 124, 163-64, 1 7 6 , 180 Confirmation, 66, 110, 136 Confutation, see Destruction Consequence, 5, 52-54, 58, 60, 71, 102, 132, 1 3 9 , 152, SK>2

INDEX Consultation, 105 Contraries, 5, 52-54, 58, 60, 63-64, 69, 74, 11 89, g · , 102-3, 7> 1 2 7" 2 8. ·3 2 > ι6 136, 138-39. ' 5 ° . 4 · *θ5 Cooper, Α. Α., third earl of Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, 135, 149, 152 Copiousness, see Amplification Coriat, Thomas, g Corne-Waleys, Sir William, 2; Essayes, 140, 148-50 Cornificius, Q., see Rhetorica ad C. Herennium Courtiers, 3 1 , 39, 93, 101, 122, 124-31, 159, 172, 179, 188-90, 192-93, 195, 201 Cowley, Abraham, "Ode: Of Wit," 2 n, 13; Essays, 151 Cox, Leonard, The Arte or Crafte of Rhetoryke, 97-98, 100 Croll, Morris W „ 197 D. T., see T., D. Daniel, Samuel, 41 Davenant, Sir William, Discourse upon "Gondibert," 15-16 Davies, Sir John, 2 Davies, John, of Hereford, 2 Day, Angel, The English Secretorie, 78. 85, 92, 1 1 1 - 1 2 Deduction, 5 1 , 116, 140-41, 146. See also Topics of logical investigation Definition, 5, 8, 40-41, 44, 46, 52-54, 5859, 63-64, 74, 94, 108, 114-16, 120-22, 132. >35. · 3 8 · 148. i 5 ° " 5 2 ' *55. 202 Defoe, Daniel, Essay upon Projects, 152 Delivery, 57. 79 Demosthenes, 3, 47, 80-81, 87, 137, 147, 201 Dennis, John, Reflections Critical and Satyrical, 14-15 De Quincey, Thomas, 205 Description, 5, 8, 27, 33, 66, 76, 79, 100, 103, 105-6, 113, 123, 138, 152-61, 163, 165, 176. See also Character, Enargia, Hypotyposis Despauterius, Ars epistolica, 77 Destruction, 66, 136, 202 Dialectic, see Logic Dickenson, John, Arisbas, 194; Greene in Conceipt, 194 Dicta, see Apophthegms, Maxims, Moral precepts The Dictes and Say en gis of the Philosophas, 22-24, 34-35

»79

Dilation, see Amplification Diogenes, Laertes, 180, 186; The Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers, 27, «9. 35 Disposition, see Arrangement Dispraise, 66, 136 Dissimilitudes, see Contraries Distinction, 5, 52-54, 58, 60, 63, 108, 114, 116, 121-22, 132, 138, 152, 202, 205 Distribution, 64, 74, 99, 103, 105-6, 108. See also Division, Enumeration Division, 5, 52-54, 58, 60, 63-64, 71, 74, 76, 94, 99, 106, 115-16, 121-22, 132, 138, 146, 148, 150-52, 202. See also Distribution, Enumeration Doelsch, Johann, 4 η, 59, 71-72, 99, 158 Dominicus, see Xannus Mirabellius Donne, John, 2, 109 Donnelly, Francis P., Persuasive Speech, 5" Dorne, John, 26 Dryden, John, 17, 152; Annus Mirabilis, 16; An Essay on Dramatic Poetry, 16; Sylvae, 16 Dubitatio, 103, 107, 128, 164, 176, 180, 198, 201 Earl, John, Microcosmography, 157 Ecphrasis, 160. See also Description Effect, 52-54, 58, 60, 63-64, 71, 93, 116, 132, 136, 139, 152, 191 Eloquence, see Style Elyot, Sir Thomas, 79; The Bankette of Sapience, 23, 31-32, 36, 195; The Boke Named The Gouernour, 23, 36, 48, 91, 114-17, 126, 139, 194; The Castle of Helth, 122; The Dictionary, 9 η; The Image of Gouernance, 23, 36-37, 114, Emporius, 71, 160 Enargia, 76, 100, 158-59. See also Character, Description End, 53-54, 93 Englands Helicon, 45 Englands Parnassus, 45 Enumeration, 71, 76, 100, 106, 165-66. See also Distribution, Division Epigram, 2, 12, 16, 18, 27 Epistles, see Letters Erasmus, 18-20, 67, 73, 97, 103, 109, 1 1 1 , 130, 187, 190, 192; Adagia, 22-23, 26-30, 35, 42, 46, 134. 137, 195, 197, 200; Apophthegmata, 22-23, 26-31, 37, 134,

28ο

INDEX

137. 195' 200; Colloquia, 26-27; De conscribendis epistolis, 72, 77, 98, 1 1 1 ; De copia, 4 n, 6, 26-28, 52-53, 59, 61-62, 6975, 90, 98-100, 117, 126, 158, 160, 199; Ecclesiastae, 72, 99, 101-2, 199; Moriae encomium, 19, 26-27, 29, 98; Similia, 22-23, «6-30, 35, 42-43, 122, 134, 137, »9». 195. !97> 200 Essay, 2, 12, 48, 65, 1 1 3 , 132-57, 179 Essayes or Moral Discourses, 145, 151 Estienne, see Stephanus Ethopoeia, 66,158-60. See also Description Etymology, 5, 58, 114, 116, 138 Examples, 5, 8, 17, 19-20, 24-27, 33-35, 39-41. 43-45, 47, 51, 58, 60, 63, 69, 71, 89, 91, 100, 102-4, 10*>> m » 114-16, 11820, 122, 126-28, 130, 132, 134-41, 14647, 150-52, 159, 163-65, 168, 171-73, 177-78, 180-81, 183, 185-87, 191, 195, 197. 199-201. 205 Ευφυής, 3, i o - l i , 82-84, 95 Ευφυΐα, 3, ί ο - l i , 82, 87-88, 95, 127. See also Ingenium, Wit Exargasia, see Expolitio Exclamation, 5, 76, 89, 105, 107, 1 1 3 , 119, 124, 163-64, 169, 176, 180, 191, 199, 201 Experience, see Practice Expolitio, 71, 74, 100, 106, 108 Fable, 33, 39, 65-66, 71, 100, 103, 1 1 5 , 180, 199 Fabricius, Ioannes Α., 62 Familiar letters, 77, 108-12. See also Letters Fenner, Dudley, The Artes of Logike and Rhetorike, 55-56, 106 Fenton, Sir Geoffrey, 155, 184-85 Figures, 6, 56-60, 64, 73, 78-79, 88, 92, 98-108, 1 1 1 - 1 2 , 180, 205 Figures of diction and syntax, 5-6, 2122, 60, 73, 76, 89, 99, 106-8, 119, 164, 176-78, 190, 199 Figures of emotion, 5, 53, 60, 73, 75-76, 89-90, 105-7, 1 1 2 - 1 1 3 , 158-60, 163-64, 169, 176, 180 Figures of thought, 5, 55, 59-60, 63, 71-76, 79, 81, 88-90, 99, 103, 105-8, 164, 177, 179-80 Fitzgeoffrey, Charles, 2 Flecknoe, Richard, 2, 17; Enigmatical Characters, 153; Epigrams and Characters, 155

Flemming, Abraham, 128; A Panoplie of Epistles, 109 Fletcher, John, 2 Flores, Juan de: Grimalte y Gradissa, 162; Grisel y Mirabella, 162, 200 Florio, Giovanni: Firste Fruités, 38, 42; Second Frutes, 38, 131 Franklin, Benjamin, 25 Fraunce, Abraham: The Arcadian Rhetorike, 6, 55-56, 78-79, 106-7, 177' 2°5: The Lawiers Logike, 55-56 Freigius, J., 56 Fuller, Thomas, The Holy and Profane State, 148, 157 Fulwood, William, The Enimie of Idlenesse, 77, 108-9, 171. ·74 Galen, 32 Garnier, Robert, 205 Gascoigne, George, 124, 190, 192; The Glasse of Government, 86, 187; A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, 186 Gellius, Aulus, Noctes Atticae, 70-71, 183 Gesner, Conrad, Bibliotheca universalis, 61 Giles, Peter, 20-21 Golding, Arthur, 190 Gollancz, Sir Israel, 190-91 Googe, Barnaby, 39, 180 Gordon, George S., "Theophrastus and His Imitators," 157 Gosson, Stephen, 41; Ephemerides of Phialo, 122 Gracián, 83 Gradation, see Climax Grammar schools, 1, 4-8, 18,22,24-31,4549, 54, 60-69, 95, 137, 148, 151, 200-201 Granada, Luis de, 42-43 Grange, John, The Golden Aphroditis, 155. 192 Greene, Robert, 1, 1 1 , 29, 41, 43, 121-22, 139. 1 5 1 . 15 6 . 194 Greenham, Richard, Godly Instructions, 139 Guazzo, Stefano, La civile conversatione, 39, 46, 130-31, 189-90, 198-99 Guevara, Antonio de, 7, 38, 79, 176, 183; Epistolar familiares, 118 η, 136; Libro aureo, 36-37, 91, 114, 118-119, i24> 194-95; Menosprecio de corte, 114, 118, 194 Guicciardini, Lodovico, or Francesco, Detti et fatti, 37-39

INDEX H . C., see C., H . Hake, Edward, 182 Hall, Joseph, 2; Characters of Vertues and Vices, 152 53, 155-56 Harmon, T h o m a s , 155 Harrington, Sir John, 2, 43 Harvey, Gabriel, 9, 17, 55-56, 79, 91-95; Ciceronianus, 88; Foure Letters, 94; A New Letter, 94; Pierces Supererogation, 94; Rhetor, 88; Three Proper and Wit tie Familiar Letters, 93; The Trimming of Th. Nashe, 10 n, 95 Hawes, Stephen, The Pastime of Pleasure, 89, 97 Hegendorff, C., De conscribendis episto-

281

Isidore of Seville, 24, 160-61 Isocrates, 7, 35, 109, 176 Jests, 13, 19-20, 29, 31, 37, 101-3, ι*7 *9· •79 John of Salisbury, 24 Johnson, R a l p h , 62; The Scholars Guide, 48, 60, 64-65 Johnson, Robert, Essaies, 95, 140, 150-51 Jonson, Ben, 2, 17; Cynthia's Revels, 155; Discoveries, 134; Every Man out of His Humour, 12, 154; The Silent Woman, 134 Judgment, 10, 13-14, 95, 97, 128, 131, 140

lis, 61, 78, 109-10 Heliodorus, Aethiopian History, 163, 171-74, 176 Hellows, E d m u n d , 118 Hermogenes, 117; Progymnasmata, 4, 62,

Kempe, W „ The Education of Children in learning, 48 Krapp, George Philip, The Rise of English Literary Prose, 102, 117

65. ®9"7'· 75-77. 137. '60 Hey wood, Jasper, 181 Heywood, John, 18, 30, 42, 190, 197 Hippocrates, 32 Hitchcock, Robert, 3S Hobbes, T h o m a s , 13-14· " " Hoby, Sir Thomas. The Boke of the Courtier, 20, 127 2g, 188 Homoioteleuton, 0 103104, 107,176,203 Hoole, Charles, 25; A New Discovery, 36, 47, 60, 62, 64 Horace, 19; Ars poetica, 83 Horae subsecivae, 157 Hoskins, John, 2 Huarte Navarro, Juan de Dios, 83 Huysmann, R., see Agricola Hyde, Edward, ist earl of Clarendon, Essays, 137, 151 Hypotyposis, 158-60. See also Character, Description

Lagnerius, Petrus, 36 La Primaudaye, Pierre de, L'Académie françoise, 41, 46, 120-21, 131 Leach, Arthur Francis, 60 Learning, 79, 83-88, 94, 122, 127, 131,

Imitation, 1, 3-4, 48, 60, 63, 65, 68, 75-77, 79-89, 127, 198 Induction, 51, 116. See also Examples Ingenium, 2, 9-11, 79-80, 83-84, 127. See also Εΰφυία, W i t Interrogation, 5, 76, 107, 113, i i g , 124, 163-64, 167, 176, 180, 191, 199, 201 Invention, see Investigation Investigation, 5-6, 9, 17, 20-21, 39* 63-64, 69-74, 79· 85-86, 88-102, 105-7, 110, 112, 115-18, 123, 125-26, 128, 135. 140, 150-51, 156, 182, 194, 204-5

•39· >44 Leçons morales, 133, 135 Legislatio, 66 Letters, 61, 64, 72, 77-78, 92-94, 108-12, 114, 124, 133, 136, 152, 163, 167-71, 173-76, 183, 185, 189, 190, 192-96, 200 Lever, R a l p h , Arte of Reason, 54-55 Ling, Nicholas, 44-45 Livy, 32, 183 Locke, John, 13, 135, 152 Lodge, Thomas, 2, 1 1 , 4 1 Logic, 5-6, 8, 17-18, 20, 22-23, 33, 49-57, 68, 70, 72, 74. 79, 89, 91, 93-95, 97, 101-2, 104, 107, 115-17, 125-26, 131, 138 39, 201-2 Long, Percy W a l d r o n , 192 Lopez de Mendoza, Iñigo, 39 Lorichius, Reinhardiis, 67, 69 Lucían, 18 Lupus, P. Rutilius, 78, 160 Lvcosthenes, Conradus, 28-29, 42-43. 46 Lydgate, John, 25, 181; The Courte of Sapyence, 97 Lylv. John, 1, 7, 11, 41-43, 65, 79, 94, 103, 105, 163-64, 179; Campaspe, 202; Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, 3-4, 10, 21. 33, 56, 88, 90-91, 95, 102, 107, 113, 121, 124, 126-27, '3°· '47- ' 5 ° . '55-

28a

INDEX

165, 171, 176-78, 180, 186, 190-203; Euphues and His England, 9, 90, 92, 94, 172, 196, 198; Loues Metamorphosis, 202; Mother Bombie, 202; Sapho and Phao, 201-2 Lyly, William, 18 M., R., Micrologia, 157 Machiavelli, 148 McKerrow, R . B., 122 Macrobias, Saturnalia, 70-71, 122 Macropedi us, G., Methodus de conscribendis epistolis, 61, 77-78 Maior, G., De copia tabulae, 71, 78 Marguerite of Navarre, 183 M a r k h a m , Gervase, 41 Marlowe, Christopher, 205 Mason, J . E., Gentlefolk in the Making, 126 π Mayor, J. E. B., 62, 88 Maxims, 8, 22, 33-34, 37-38, 60, 115-16, 1 1 7 η, 126, 139, >43-44. ' 4 8 Means, 93, 148 Medieval sermons, 7 Melanchthon, Philippus, 72; De rhetorica, 73, 78; Elementorum rhetorices, 73-74, 85; Institutiones rhetoricae, 73,97 Melbanke, Brian, Philotimus, 122, 194 Memory, 15-16, 57, 82, 86, 88, 96, 1 1 2 Mercs, Francis, Palladis Tamia, 22, 29, 34, 40, 42-44, 46, 120, 135 Mexia, Pedro, La silva di varia lección, 136 Milton, J o h n , 148; Artis logicae pleninr institutio, 55; "Character of a Long P a r l i a m e n t , " 154; Of Education, 49-50 Montaigne, Michel de, Essais, 38, 131-37, '49 Moody, William Vaughan, 177 Moral discourse, 23-25, 90-92. 113-27, 130, '32-33. MS. ' δ ' . '79· ι8Γ». '92-95 Moral precepts, 15, 22-25, 27-32, 34-35, 37-41, 44-18, 51, 65, 71, 98, 100, 106, 109, 1 1 7 - 2 1 , 126, 171, 180, 194. Sec also Apophthegms, Maxims, Sentences More, Sir T h o m a s , 18-22. 199: Apology, 19, 22; Of Comfort against Tribulation, 18-19; A Dialogue concerning Heresies, 18; Utopia, 19-21 Morhof, Daniel G., 61 η Morysine, R i c h a r d , 32 Mosellanus, Petrus, Tabulae de schematibus et tropis, 63, 67, 73, 78, 99

Munday, Anthony, Zelauto, 90 Mynshul, Geffray, Essayes and Characters, 156 A Myrroure for Magistrates, 34, 181-82, 190 Xannus Mirabellius, Dominicus, Polyanthea, 26, 31-32, 36, 116, 134, 195 Narration (statement and exposition of facts), 65-66 Narrative discourses, 8, 23, 113, 124, 17g202 Nashe, Thomas, 2, 1 1 , 29, 94-95, 139; Anatomie of Absurditie, 122; Haue with You to Saffron-Walden, 34; Lenten Stuffe, 123; Pierce Penilesse, 123, '55 Nature, 68, 82-88, 95, 122, 165, 191, 198, 200. 20s North, Sir Thomas, 114, 118-20, 181 Nourse, T h o m a s , 152 Omphalitis, Iacobus, Liber de elocutionis imitatione ac apparatu, 86 Opposites, see Contraries Ornamentation, 1, 4-6, 7-8, 22, 2g, 33, 45, 48, 56-60, 71, 75-76, 78, 80-81, 86, 88-89, 97, 107, 113, 120, 122, 163, 166, '72. '75 79. ' 9 ° . '94 Osborne, Francis, Essays, 137, 151 Overbury, Sir Thomas, Characters, 154, 156 Ovid, 190; Ars amatoria, 7; Heroldes, 7, 171 Painter, William, The Palace of Pleasure, 130, 182-84 Palfreyman, Thomas, 35-36, 40-41, 46; A Treatise of Heauenly Philosophie, 37 Paradox, 12, 134, 138 Parison, 103-4 Paromoion, 6, 176. See also Alliteration Partition, see Division Paulet, William, Marquis of Winchester, The Lord Margues Idlenes, 39 Pavnell, Thomas, 37, 162, 174-75 Peacham, Henry, the Elder, The Garden of Eloquence, 6, 58, 78-79, 90, 104-6. '59 Pericles, 83 Persio, Antonio, 83 Petrarch, 11, 14, 84, 164-65 Pettie, George, 1, 43, 46, 124, 130-31, 139,

INDEX 199; A Petite Pallace, 177, 180, 189-91. 194. 197-98 Phiston, William, The Welspring of Willie Conceites, 39 Pius II, Pope, Anea Silvio Piccolomini, De duobus amantibus, 7, log, 162, 17071, 200 Places, see Topics of logical investigation Plato, 83, 87-88, 122; Laws, 3, 1 1 , 83; Phaedrus, 3, n , 82, 127; Republic, 3, i l , 82, 127 Plenty of matter, see Amplification Pliny, 28, 109 Plutarch, 28-29, 32-33, 43, 115, 134, 149, 183, 197; Parallel Lives, 119; Moralia, 132, 188, 194; De educatione puerorum, «95 Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth, ig, 24. 3°. 34. 40-47. ι*«». 'S". '35· · 5 ° Poliziano, Angelo, 61, 109 Pontanus, 36 Practice, 79, 82-88, 139, 144 Praise, 66, 136 Primaudaye, Pierre de la, see La Primaudaye, Pierre de Priscian, 4, 65 Problem, ι» Processes of logical investigation, see Topics of logical investigation Progymnasmata, 4, 49, 61-69, 136 Prosopopoeia, 75, 89, 105, 107, 158-59, 164, 176, 180 Proverbs, 8, 15, 18-20, 22-24, 27-47. 5 ' . 60, 71, 74, 82, 91, 93, 100, 102, 104, 114-16, 118-23, 126-28, 131-32, 134-41, 144-47, 150-52, 164-66, 173, 177-78, 182, 186-87, 191-92, ig5, 197, 199-201 Puttenham, 43, 15g; The Arte of Englishe Poesie, 78, 176, 205 Quintilian, 44, 58, 70, g8; Institutio oratoria, 4, 19, 65, 71, 78, 98, 101, n o , 1 1 5 , 1 1 7 , 158, 160 R. M., see M., R. Rainolde, Richard, A Booke Called the Foundacion of Rhetorike, 62, 65-69, 108, 137-38 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 142; The Cabinet Council, 148; Maxims of State, 148 Ramus, Petrus, 61, 72, 91, 94, 106; Dia lecticae partitiones, 51, 55-57, 79 Ravisius, Joannes Textor, 111

283

Refutation, see Destruction Remedies against Discontentment, 139 lieturne from Parnassus, The, 203 Reusner, 46 Rhetoric: ancient, 3-7, 1 1 , 14-15, 19, 75-77, 80-87, 92. 97 99. 1 0 1 -3- " 7 . «54. •57-58, 160-61, 163, 184; medieval, 3-4, 7, 24, 157, 160-61; renaissance, 1, 3-8, l i , 18, 22, 33, 51-52, 56-117, 129, 1 3 1 , 157-60, 198-99, 203, 205; school practice, 1, 4-8, 18, 22, 29, 33, 45-49, 60-79, 122-23, 126-28, 1 3 1 , 137, 140, 145, 148, i5°"5 1 · '57· ' 6 1 . 194. '97-2 0 1 · 2°3· 205 Rhetorica ad C. Herennium, 19, 70, 75, 78, gg, 101, 160 Rhetorical devices, see Figures, Topics of logical investigation, Topics of rhetorical investigation Riccius, Bartolomaeus, De imitatione, 86 Riche, Barnabe, 124, 192-94 Robynson, R a p h e , 19-21 Rojas, Fernando de, see Calisto y Melibea Romance, 5, 8, 12, 105, 107, 1 1 1 , 1 1 3 , 124, 128, 130, 133, 162-64, 171 78, í g i , 199 Sackville, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, 18182, 188 Saint Augustine, De civitate dei, 35, 41 Sambucus, Joannes, De imitatione Ciceroniana, 86 Sanforde, James, 37, 185-86 San Pedro, Diego de, Arnalte y Lucendo, 162, 169-70; Cárcel de amor, 162, 16668, 200 Sansovino, Francesco, 37-38 Satire, 2, 12 Schemes, 5, 59, 8g, g8-io8. See also Figures Schools, see G r a m m a r schools Scot, Michael, 55 Scrope, Stephen, 24 Seiden, J o h n , Table Talk, 149-50 Seneca, the Younger, 7, 12-13, 15, 28, 32-33. 35· 43-44. '°9. " 4 . >32. '34! Epistolac, 122; Thyestes, 181 "Sentences" (pointed statements), 15, 3440, 44-48, 65, 71, g8, 102, 106, 109-11, 113, 115-121, 134, 166, 16g, 172-73. See also Apophthegms, Aphorisms, Maxims, Moral precepts. Proverbs Sententiae pueriles, 25, 49, 61 Sentimental novel, 5, 7-8, 12, 23, 90, 105,

284

INDEX

I H , 1 1 3 , 1 2 1 , 124, 128, 130, 133, 162-71, 175-76, 180, 191, 194, 199 200, 205 Shadwell, Thomas, 96; The Humorists, 17; The Sullen Lovers, 17 Shakespeare, William, 202-3; Henry the Fourth, Pt. I, 204; Henry the Fifth, 204; Love's Labour's Lost, 1 1 , 129, 204; Much Ado about Nothing, 204; Richard the Second, 204; Romeo and Juliet, 204; Two Gentlemen of Verona, 129, 204-5; The Tempest, 12; Venus and Adonis, 1 1 , 204 Sherry, Richard, A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes, 4 η, 6η, 72, ηΆ, go, 98-100, 158 Sidney, Sir Philip, 41, 43, 91, 199; An Apologie for Poetrie, 29, 177; Arcadia, 4· 56, 79. 92. · ° 7 · >75-78. 194, 2°3· Astruphel and Stella, 11 Simile, 5, 8, 13, 19 22, 27-30, 33 35, 37, 40-45, 47, 51-55, 58, 63, 69, 71, 74, 89, 91-93, 100, 102-4, i°6. 114-22, 126-27 132, 135, 138-39, 145-47. 150-52. 159. 164-66, 172-73, 177, 182, 185, 187, 19192, 194 97. 199 *01. 204-5 Similitude, see Simile Skelton, John, 18 Spenser, Edmund, 1 1 , 94, 205; The Shepheardes Calender, 56 Spingarn, Joel £., 13 Stephanus, Thesaurus linguae graecae, 84 Sterne, Laurence, 205 Stobaeus, 47 Sturm, John, 56, 63, 80, 82; De amissa dicendi ratione, 85, 86-87; imitatione oratoria, 76-77, 87; De literarum ludio recte aperiendis, 85; De periodis, 76; De universa ratione elocutionis, 59, 75, 86, 160; Nobilitas literata, 87 Style, 3-8, 10, 12, 15-16, 20, 57-60, 63, 68-69, 7*. 74-77. 80-82, 85, 88, 90-91, 98, ιο6, 119, 128, 163-66, 170-72, 17578, 184-86, 190, 192-95 Susenbrot, John, Epitome troporum ac schematorum, 4 n, 59, 63, 78-79. 104-5, m , 159 T., D „ Essaies Poli ticke and Morali, 151 Tacitus, 32, 183 Talaeus, Audomarus, 55, 61, 91; Institutiones oratoriae, 56-57, 63, 78-79, 106, 177

Taverner, Richard, 25, 28, 30-31, 35, 42, •9°· '97 Testimony, see Citation of authority Themes, 4, 22, 29, 33, 46-48, 61-71, 8», 97, 99, 1 1 1 , 1 1 3 , 121, 131, 133, 137, 140, •5" Themistius, 50-51, 53, 72, 126 Thcon, Progymnasmata, 65, 70 Theophrastus, 28; Characters, 153-55. 157, 161 Thesis, 66-67, 133-34. 137-38. 1 4 · . 144-47 Thompson, E. N. S., 139 η, 157 Tignonville, Guillaume de, 24 Tilley, Morris P., Elizabethan Proverb Lore, 42-43, 199 η Tilney, Edmund, The Flower of Friendship, 130 Topics of logical investigation (known also as "places· ), 5-6. 17, 50-55, 57-59, 63-65. 69, 72-75, 79, 89, 91, 93-95, 9798, 101-7, 114-17, 121, 123, 126, 1 3 1 , 138 40, 151-52, 179, 201 Topics of rhetorical investigation, 52, 57 58. 63, 65-66, 69, 72, 74-75, 108, 1 1 0 - 1 1 , 128-29, 139. See also Circumstances Translacing, 21, 119, 164, 167 Trésor des livres d'Amadis de Gaule, 162, '7475 Tropes, 5, 56-59, 64, 79, 89, 99, 106-7, 1 1 1 , 176-77, 199, 203 Turbervile, George: Tragical Discourses, 182, 187-88; Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs, and Sonets, 187 Tuvil, Daniel, see T., D. Udall, Nicholas, 31 Underdowne, Thomas, 163, 171-74 Valerius, Maximus, 115; Factorum et dictorum memorabilium, 195 Valla, Lorenzo, Elegantiae, 26 Variety of matter, see Amplification Vaughan, William, Golden Grove, 46-47, 151-52, 156 Velcurio, see Doelsch Vergil, Polydore, Prouerbiorum libellus, 26-27 Villey, Pierre, 134-36 Virgil, 16, 56 Vives, Juan Luis, 35, 41 130; Ad sapientiam introductio, 32; De conscribendis epistolis, 77

INDEX Vividness, 15, 76, 82, 1*4, 138, 158. See also Description, Enargia Vocht, Henry de, De Invloed van Erasmus, 29-30 Waleys, Sir William Corne-, see CorneWaleys, Sir William Walkington, Thomas, The Optick Glasse of Humors, 95 Warner, William, 43 Watson, Foster, The English Grammar Schools, 65 Webbe, William, 29, 43; A Discourse of English Poetrie, 201 Welsted, Leonard, 2 Webster, John, 205 Weltkirchius, see Doelsch Whetstone, George, 124; An Heptameron of Ciuill Discourses, 188; The Rocke of Regard, 188 Whittington, Robert, 26

Wilson, Thomas, The Arte of Rhetorique, 19-20, 49, 67, 84, 89, 101-4, 10®· 126, 128, 139, 155, 158-59, 199; The Rule of Reason, 49, 53-54 Wit, 1-4, 8-23, 27-48, 79-80, 82-90, 92-96, 101-2, 110, 120-27, >3*· '39- l49~5°' 164-66, 169, 172-73, 182, 186-89, >96· 198, 203-5. $ee "Iso Ενφνία, Ingenium Wither, George, 2 Wits, 2, 181-82, 187-88 Wits Theatre of the Little World, 34, 40, 43-45, 135 Wolff, Samuel Lee, 176-77 Wotton, Sir Henry, 191-92; Aphorisms of Education, 148 Wydeville, Anthony, Earl Rivers, 22-24 Xenophon, 183; Cyropaedia,St,

84-85,139

Yver, Jacques, Le Printemps d'Iver, 1919*