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Partition make with spectacles so precious 'Twixt fair and foul?"
It is clear that Shakspere grasped the organic basis of partitionl2 as
differentiated from the ideal basis of division.
It will be remembered that Shakspere also shows a knowledge of division as defined in sld Herennium where division is the only term and no distinction is made, therefore, between division and partition. Consequently, Shakspere sometimes uses division in the sense of 11d Herennium, but he sometimes distinguishes partition from it, as is done in Topic. I suppose a similar squint would be found in Elizabethan rhetorical terminology for this process generally.
After the previously quoted section, Cicero goes on for some distance with the illustrations, etc., before he returns to a further distinction between partition and division.
Partitiohum autem, & diuisionum genus quale esset, ostendimus; sed quid inter se differant, planius dicendum est. In partitione quasi membra suns: vt corporis, caput, humeri, manus, latera, crura, pedes, & cetera. In diuisione, formae sunt, quas Graeci Was vocant: nostri, si qui haec forte tractant, species appellant: non pessime id quidem, sed inutiliter ad mutandos cases in dicendo, Nolim enim, ne si Larine quidem dici possit, specierum, & speciebus dicere: & saepe his casibus vtendum est: at formis, & formarum velim. Cum autem vtroque verbo idem significetur, commoditatern in dicendo non arbitror negligendam. Genus & formam definiunt, hoc mode: Genus, est notio ad plureis differentias pertinens. Forma, est notio, cuius differentia ad eaput generis, & quasi fontem referri potest.
Notionem appello, quod Graeci turn Issotas turn srpl>Xri3Gcs dicunt. Ea est
insita, & ante percepta cuiusque formae cognitio, enodationis indigens. Formae igitur sunt hae, in quas genus sine vllius praetermissione diuiditur: vt si quis ius in legern, morem, aequitatem diuidat. Formas qui putat idem esse, quod parteis, confundit artem; & similitudine quadam conturbatus, non satis acute, quae cunt secernenda, distinguit.18
What parts are to partition, forms are to division, and one must not be confused by their similarity and so confound art. Melanchthon thought this distinction sufficiently peculiar to warrant a clarifying note,
M. Cicero vocat partitionem aliud quiddam quam divisionem. bivisio est, specierum unius generis enumeratio, ut animalium aliud los, aliud asinus etc. Partitionem vacant, quando aliqua res in membra discerpitur, ut corpuris partes aliae caput, pedes, manus etc.14
u Cymbeline, I, 6,32-38. I3 Cf. also Midsummer Night's Dream, III, 2, 210. 13 Tapica (Lambinus, Ciceranis Opera Omnia (1573), Vol. I, pp. 66o-661.)
Bretschneider, Carpus Reformatorum, Vol. XVI, p. 82o. Boethius had added to Cicero's distinction, "Species enim saepe parses, partes uero nunquam species appellantur" (Boethius, Opera (Basle, 1546), p. 804).
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