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for searching only. SOME ENGLISH TREATMENTS 3'
versis standyng in one fate / wherin perchance shal be neither sentece nor eloquece. But I name hym a gramarien by the autoritie of Quintilian / that speakynge latine elegantly / can expounde good autours / expressynge the inuention [inventio] and disposition [dispositio] of the mater / their stile or fourme of eloquece felocutio] / explicatyng the figures / as well of senteces as wordes / leuyng nothyng / psone or place named by the autour / vndedared or hidde from his scholers.'2
Incidentally, it is the ideal of leaving nothing "hidde" that leads to the voluminous commentaries with which the Renaissance "hidde" its texts. Yet this habit of amassing all possible information bearing upon the text furnished a vast assortment of misinformation for each learned grammarian of them all-including, no doubt, William Shakspere.
For his curriculum, Sir Thomas would first take the Topica of Cicero, or of Agricola, whom Melanchthon also names. Sir Thomas speaks of the Topica as logic, as in Aristotle or Agricola was proper. But being inventio, the Topica belonged indifferently to both logic and rhetoric. Evidently Kempe in 1 588 is approaching from the same angle as Sir Thomas in 1531. For the Topica of Cicero
is a treatise on rhetorical commonplaces. . . . In the complete series of his rhetorical works, the last is occupied with the same general theme as the first, namely, the invention of arguments, which, in Cicero's view, as in that of Aristotle, is the very foundation of the art."
As to the foundation of art, Sir Thomas agrees with Cicero, and would use the Topica first. As we have seen, Gabriel Harvey gives us the same information in 1581; and Brinsley in 1612 and 1627 tells us that English schoolmasters were still following the same practice. The Topica is inventio, and prepares for and ends with, the three kinds of argument.
After Topica, Sir Thomas would turn either to Hermogenes in Greek or to the third book of Quintilian in Latin, where after two books of preliminaries, Quintilian begins upon the first parts of rhetoric, making the distinctions which Melanchthon above takes as his point of departure. The boy would then get a complete and consistent presentation of all five divisions of rhetorical theory from this and the remaining books of Quintilian. Instead of the systematic treatment in Quintilian, Sir Thomas presents the alternative of Partitiones, which was a little later to be championed by Sturm. This is also a complete elementary survey, beginning with the systematic
Elyot, The Gouernour (1531), fol. 6or & v; Croft, vol. I, pp. 164-165. u Sandys, dd M. Brutum Orator, p. L
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