Page:Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke - 1899.djvu/29

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////-. //. . KAFTE Of- *//////<'/ - ;

the like. 1 No one can complain of the importance attributed ' art of rhetoru in H awes' allegorical sy<

Cox's .inn in presenting an Art or < raft of Rhetoric to the I

h.sh public of ln> day was a simple and I duration

AimandPUn w - s spread ing ; new grammar schools were being

of Cox's founded; in mm h of the work of teaching in these

Rhetoric. schools the vernacular necessarily was used ; the new

lc. lining Ill-ought with it a new sense of style and form in prose;

and t IK-IT \\cre no text books of the subject in existence written in

'-'uli^i, s, ambassadors, preachers, and all public speak -

'Ox in his ii preface, have need of rhetor:

nothing today is less taught. What wretched work do we daily sec around us for lack of such tea. lunj ' So that when we hear a speaker, very often "Create tediosnes is engendred to the multytudc beynge present, by ot< here of the spekt: .cs or

he liane endyd his tale eyther lefte almost alone to hys no lytlc confusyon, or els, which i> a lyke rebuke to hyin, the audyence falleth for \\erynes of his ineloquent langage on slepe. " Fur- thermore, Cox aims especially to help those who "haue by i gence or els false parsuasyons be put to the lernynge of other scyences or euer they haue .me knowledge of the

latyne tongue." For, of course, not only is I^itin the accepted centra] discipline in the Humanistic theory of education, but it is the store-house of all existing learning The book is intended for "young beginners'"; others, who can read Latin or Greek, ma \ suit "Hermogines among the (ireko, or els Tully or Trapesonce among the Latines. " " And to them that be yonge bcgynners nothinge can be to playne or to short. " We are reminded of the similar words of Colet, in his " Proheme" to the Introduce* of the parfes of spiky ng, for chyldren <//// yonge begynners into lafyn sf*(ke, written for his "newe schole of Powels " in 1510, where that kindly humanist maintains "that nothinge may be to soft nor to famylver for lytell ehyldren. 1

1 Cf. Gower, Conftssio Amamtis, Book V II. " Hie tract at de secunda pane phtl- nsitphi.i-. cuius numen Rhetoric* facundos efficit." etc. (CbaJmer's /V Naturally Rhetoric, as one of the members of the Trivium, or undergraduate curric- ulum in me. i : c<|uent mention in most of the early

See the 'Conclusion of the Author ' p. 87.

3Cf. Seebohm, Tke Oxford Reformer* ( l.ondom 1887) p. a 1 3. See also Hugel.

nglischts Isttbtick ( Halle 1895) P- 298.

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