Page:Aristotle - Rhetoric, translator Crimmin, 1811.djvu/9



N ushering to the world this treatise of the learned Stagyrite, I shall confess the difficulties which I have encountered, and the anxiety which I still feel as to its reception. That it is the greatest of all that great master's productions, is an assertion which I do not singly hazard. The learned and laborious Franciscus Philelphus terms it "Rhetorica illustrissimi philosophorum Aristotelis utilissima" and this epithet has been strongly borne out by the following testimony of the celebrated Boileau Despreaux, in his preface to a translation of Longinus upon the Sublime: "C'est une ouvrage d'une extrême utilité; & pour moi, j'avoue franchement que sa lecture m'a plus profite que tout ce qui j'ai jamais lû en ma vie."

So important has this work appeared in the eyes of the learned, during the fifteenth century, that it employed, with incessant emulation, the pens of several most distinguished scholars, to produce a A 3