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for searching only. reason at fourteen. He then studies to be an orator, using Cicero's Topica or Agricola's De Inventione Dialectica, taking half a year for this phase of his work. He may continue with Hermogenes in Greek or Quintilian in Latin. Cicero's Partitiones may also be used or Copia of Erasmus. Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Tully will furnish examples. For cosmography, study Ptolemy's geography; for historical geography read Strabo, Solinus, Mel; or Dionysius. For history, read Livy, Xenophon's Cyropaedia, and Quintus Curtius. Caesar and Sallust should be reserved until the "Prince" has sufficient experience to understand them. To these, Tacitus may be added. Being on military matters, these books are of the very gravest importance to a nobleman. At seventeen, the "Prince" should begin philosophy, especially moral philosophy, using Aristotle's Ethics, Cicero's De Officiis, and Plato. The Bible is to be used, of course, and the Institutio Principis Christiani of Erasmus.
Sir Thomas is also mightily preoccupied with the moral and political lessons to be drawn from these authors. In fact, they are selected and to be taught from this single point of view, so as to shape the Christian Prince. The teacher is to regard himself as a lay preacher and is to use the moralizable classics in the same way that the preacher uses his Bible. Sir Thomas is as preoccupied in making a "Christian" Prince as Dean Colet and Vives are in producing "Christian" preachers. But Sir Thomas takes a somewhat more worldly point of view, and so permits his "Prince" to know a few naughty things the better to enable him to manage his imperfect subjects, whereas Vives did not propose to let Princess Mary know even that naughty words existed.f6 Both gentlemen must have been plentifully lacking in a sense of humor and in a knowledge of human psychology, even if Vives be, "The Father of Modern Psychology." Sir Thomas would even permit some Terence and Ovid to his youthful charges, if these authors were properly moralized to show the effects of evil ways. His Prince must also be taught as an orator. But Sir Thomas is fundamentally not much more interested in literary qualities as such than were Dean Colet and Vives. He too seeks a Reformation, not a Renaissance.
Vives was a pious Spaniard directing another pious Spaniard in the making of a pious Spanish lady out of her daughter. They are foreigners in England and have no connection with specifically English
Elyot, however, in the preface to his Dictionary invites the seeker of obscene words to look elsewhere; Elyot will not furnish them.
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