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for searching only. ward at the proper time is probably conclusive that he had read the Latin collection in his third year at school, before he was ten. At the same tender age, William Shakspere might well have acquired all the knowledge of Lucian which someone has displayed in Timon of flthens, even though the idea that Shakspere ever had such erudite knowledge has much befluttered the critical dovecotes.
Edward has also used in this letter one of the phrases he was being taught to garner from his readings. In the first sentence of his De Duplici Copia Verborum ac Reruns, Erasmus uses the phrase "aurei fluminis instar."a' Edward has evidently got this into his notebook, and now finds a fitting occasion to use it. He says that the works of Cicero "non solum eloquentiam exuperant instar aurei fluminis, verumetiam continent divinum quendarn sensum."a$ Erasmus had used the phrase of the highest type of oratio; Edward applies it to the work of the greatest writer of the highest type of oratio, Cicero him-self. I believe it is clear that by January as, 1547, Edward had begun systematic work upon the Copia." From the fact that he is using a phrase from the first sentence, one suspects that this was fresh in mind and that Edward had but newly begun the work.
There are also quotations from Cicero's Paradoxes (I, 8), Pro ulrchia (I, 36), and from Horace (I ,2g); but these are pretty certain to have come from Edward's phrase hooks.
So we can see fairly well Edward's further progress from January, 1546 to January, 1547. He had doubtless completed the Cato collection in Latin, and might have learned at least the Cato proper in Greek. He had continued Aesop either in Latin translation, or in Greek, or in both. He was probably pretty well through the Latin translation of dialogues from Lucian, where again he might also have used the Greek as well. He had for a considerable time been studying the Colloquies of Erasmus. He had been learning to write epistles, eventually under the tutelage of De Conscribendis, and was now beginning the Copia of Erasmus, to direct him toward the higher stages of composition. Here, so far, is regular grammar school procedure, with slight adaptation to more individual work. Composition, in the form of letters and preparation for the sequent forms leading
ar I suppose Erasmus has shaped his phrase from Cicero's .4cademic . nestions, "flumen orations aureurtt fundens Aristoteles" (Cicero, De Philosaphia, Pt. I (Venice, 1541), p. 3or}. u Nichols, Edward, Vol. I, p. 37.
as I do not find record of a copy of De Copia belonging to Edward, but his father had the quarto printed Argentorati, 1521 (B. M.; 836. e. 15). Some boy has at some time tried his pen upon it, but I cannot say who.
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