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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Few Elizabethan scholars are unacquainted with The Arte of Rhetorique that Thomas Wilson published at London in 1553. A supposed connection with the plays of Shakespeare would alone have been sufficient to lend it importance even if intrinsically it did not merit attention; this work, however, is informed with a vigorous commonsense that has long since gained for itself the recognition it deserves.
1 The Treatise of Schemes and Tropes was issued once, by the London printer John Day, without date, but with a prefatory epistle to one Thomas Brooke dated 13 December, 1550. Of this sole issue, six copies survive: two are possessed by the Bodleian Library; one each by the British Museum, Cambridge University Library, Huntington Library, and Yale University Library. See A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475-1640 (London, 1926), no. 22428; W. W. Bishop, A Preliminary Checklist of American Copies of Short Title Catalog Books (Ann Arbor, 1941).
2 Introduction, p. xviii.
3 W. H. Woodward, “English Universities, Schools and Scholarship in the Sixteenth Century,” The Cambridge History of English Literature, iii (New York, 1928), 490-491. This error is repeated by M. W. Croll, Lyly's Euphues, ed. Croll-Clemons (London, 1916), Introduction, p. lxiii.
4 Citations are from the first edition of The Arte of Rhetorique.
5 The English Progymnasmata grammatices vulgaria of Linacre records only the figures of construction.
6 Cf. Quintilian Institutio oratoria, viii.ii.14, vi. 62-67 concerning Hyperbaton; hysterologia is recorded as a species of Hyperbaton by Diomedes, a fourth-century grammarian well-known to sixteenth-century scholars—Grammatici Latini, ed. H. Keil, i (Leipzig, 1857), 460.
7 See Quintilian viii.iii. 56.
8 Ad Herennium, iv.xxxiii.45: “Abusio est, quae verbo simili et propinquo pro certo et proprio abutitur.” Sherry, sig. C5r: “Abusio, when for a certeyne and proper worde, we abuse a lyke, or that is nie unto it.” Wilson, fol. 93r: “Abusion, called of the Grecians Catachresis, is when for a certaine proper woorde we use that whiche is most nighe unto it.”
9 Grammatici Latini, ed. H. Kiel, iv (Leipzig, 1864), 400.
10 Erasmus, Opera omnia, ed. J. LeClerc, I Leyden, 1703), 18B.
11 The necessity of this emendation is indicated (a) by the context—the unemended text involves a repetition of categories—(b) by the derivation of the passage.
12 Sébastien Castellion, the French Hebraist, 1515-1563, is mentioned by Sherry in his prefatory epistle, sig. A7v: “as ryght wyll do testefy Castelio Vestimerus and that noble doctor saint Augustine.” Vestimerus is the Latin name of Bartholomew Westheimer, 1499-1570, a printer at Basle; his Liber troporum theologicorum contributed to the Treatise of Schemes and Tropes.
13 Castellion, Moses Latinus ex Hebraeo factus (Basle: 1546), Praefatio, sig. B2r: “Translatione quoque saepe utitur [scil. Moses], quae est, cum verbum a re quam proprie significabat, ad aliam quae cum ilia similitudine quadam conveniat, transfertur.” Sherry, sig. C4v: “Metaphora. Translatio, translacion, that is a worde translated from the thynge that it proper lye signifieth, unto another whych may agre with it by a similitude.” Wilson, fol. 91 v: “Metaphore is an alteration of a woorde from the proper and naturall meanynge, to that whiche is not proper, and yet agreeth therunto, by some lykenes that appeareth to be in it.” The intial portion of Wilson's definition is derived from Quintilian's definition of trope (Institutio oratoria, viii. vi. 1).—“
est verbi vel sermonis a propria significatione in aliam cum virtute mutatio”—which also contributed to Sherry's definition of trope (sig. C4v): “a movynge and chaungynge of a worde and sentence, from theyr owne significacion into another, whych may agre wyth it by a similitude.”
14 Erasmus, Opera omnia, ed. J. LeClerc, v (Leyden: 1704), 1008B: “… metaphora, quae principatum tenet inter omnes orationis virtutes. nulla persuadet efficacius, nulla rem evidentius ponit ob oculos, nulla potentius movet affectus, nulla plus adfert dignitatis, venustatis aut jucunditatis, aut etiam copiae.” Sherry, sig. C4v: “And amonge all vertues of speche, this is the chyefe. None perswadeth more effecteouslye, none sheweth the thyng before oure eyes more evidently, none moveth more mightily the affeccions, none maketh the oracion more goodlye, pleasaunt, nor copious.” Wilson, fol. 92r: “An Oration is won-derfullye enriched, when apte Metaphores are gotte and applied to the matter. Neither can anye one perswade effecteouslye, and winne men by weyght of his Oration, withoute the helpe of woordes altered and translated.”
15 Opera omnia, i, 20B.
16 Erasmus, Opera omnia, i, 20A.
17 Grammatici Latini, i, 458.
18 Cf. Cicero Orator, xxvii. 93.
19 Petrus Mosellanus, the German scholar Peter Schade, d. 1524; his “Tables” are mentioned by Sherry in his prefatory epistle (sig. A5) and used frequently in the Treatise of Schemes and Tropes.
20 Erasmus, Opera omnia, i, 17B-D.
21 Mosellanus, Tabulae de schematibus et tropis (Deventer, 1527), sig. B4r.
22 Grammatici Latini, I, 460.
23 Institutio oratoria, viii.vi.59-61.
24 Eberhardus Bethuniensis, Graecismus, ed. J. Wrobel (Bratislava: 1887), v.88.
25 Ad Herennium, iv.xxxii.43: “Scipionis providentia Kartaginis opes fregit.” Erasmus, Opera omnia, i, 17B: “si quis eversorem Carthaginis et Numantiae pro Scipione dicat.” Sherry, sig. C6v: “The providence of Scipio, overthrew the might of Carthago.”
28 Institutio oratoria, viii.vi.S9.