Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...method of characterization, fixed as the law of decorum, flourished throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In England from Whetstone on it was 0 made much of. Thus a rhetorical tradition of classical pedagogy, derived ultimately from Aristotle, and a poetical tradition of later classical drama, derived from Horace, coincide in the English renaissance. In The Epistle Dedicatory to the Shepheards Calender (1579), for instance, E. K. praises Spenser for "his dewe observing of decorum everye where, in personages, in seasons, in matter, in speach." 18 The archaisms are defended in the first place, indeed, because they are appropriate to rustic speakers, but in the second because Cicero says that ancient words make the style seem grave and reverend. Further praise E. K. grants the author because he avoids loose sentence structure and affects the oratorical period. "Now, for the knitting of sentences, whych they call the ioynts and members thereof, and for all the compasse of the speach, it is round without roughness."1 The "ioynts and members" are the cola and commas of the oratorical prose rhythm. Stanyhurst in the Dedication to his translation of Virgil (1582), like E. K., is concerned with style rather than matter, and of course primarily with 16 P. 187. 17 G. S. Gordon, "Theophrastus" in Eng. Lit. and the Classics, p. 49-86. 18 Smith, I, 128 19 Ibid., 130-131. the revival of classical meters, a subject already so thoroughly investigated that it need not be gone into here.20 Stanyhurst's praise of Virgil is largely concerned with formal and rhetorical excellences. Our Virgil dooth laboure, in telling as yt were a Cantorburye tale, too ferret owt the secretes of Nature, with woordes so fitlye coucht, wyth verses so smoothlye...
