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for searching only. TULLY'S RHETORIC; 11D HERENNIUM 107
Veltkirchius says in his notes to Copia, "Hue refer illas ingeminationes earundem syllabarum vel literarum. vt. 0 the tute Tate tibi tanta tyranne tulisti."108 Wilson speaks of overmuch repetition of some one letter."' At least from some source Shakspere knew this rule and so uses it to display the pedantic false taste of Holofernes.
One remembers the disgust of E. K. in 1579 with
the rakehellye route of our ragged rymers (for so th'eselues vse to hunt the letter) 110 I think this playing with the letter to be rather a fault then a figure, aswel in our English tongue, as it hath bene alwayes in the Latin; called Cacozelon.113
A few years later, in 1585; N. W. can assure Samuel Daniel,
And our time also hath learned to lothe that od riming vaine, and to persecute the letter is cleane out of fashion, which began by a bad portraiture of wit, and is ended by a ripe direction of iudgernent."$
Shakspere was quite aware of the position of critical taste upon the point in his day, but he also knew that the schoolmasters were but grudgingly giving up the type.'13
There are some fairly safe indications, therefore, that Shakspere had some knowledge of the fourth book of Ad Herennium also. The evidence is reasonably conclusive, then, that Shakspere had such a knowledge of the materials covered in .Rd Herennium as he should have obtained in grammar school. Some of this knowledge, such as the quotation from Pacuvius, would seem certainly to have come directly from Ad Herennium. We shall no doubt be safe enough in concluding that like most other "learned grammarians" of his day Shakspere had mastered /Id Herennium as his basic textbook for rhetoric in grammar school.
lac Erasmus, Copia (1566), P- 35-
ion Wilson, Rhetorique (1904), p. 167.
00 Epistle to The 3hepheardes Cakhder.
m Gloss to October.
M 9"he Worthy tract of Paulus Iouius (1585), PĂ *4 V. "s See below, p. 381.
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