Page:Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke - 1899.djvu/24

 22 THE ARTE OR CRAFTE OF RHETHORYKE

(b) To which Tanner adds "Ejusdem de justificatione operum."] (b] is perhaps the same work referred to by Tanner when he says

that Cox

[i 2.. "Scripsit Contra justificationem ab operibus lib I." And

by Bale: " Scripsit contra eos, qui ab operibus justificant. lib. I."]

So far as I can discover none of these last mentioned works were

ever printed.

III. THE RHETORIC OF COX I ITS PREDECESSORS AND SUCCESSORS.

The work of Cox and his chief service to his age was that of a translator and commentator, a sort of work much more important

in that century than in this. Cox, like Colet, Grocyn, Cox's Services T. , T.

Lmacre, and Lilly, served as an intermediary in the to Learning.

transmission to England of the Renaissance and

Humanistic influence and literature. He had a reputation of his own among European scholars and men of the new learning, and he helped to carry their work into England. And so the questions of rhetoric and of literary form which deeply concerned all the men of the new learning came to concern Cox also, and to their elucida- tion, as is evident from the foregoing inspection of his letters and of the list of his writings, he devoted a large share of his attention.

The rhetorics of the Renaissance are mainly founded upon

Hermogenes, Cicero, 1 and Ouintilian, and, following the divisions

of these authors, are chiefly of two sorts, those that

concern themselves with questions of invention and Rhetoric.

disposition, and those that mainly discuss matters

of style and diction. 2 Cox, whose work falls in the first class,

1 Especially Cicero. See Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Altert/mtns, oder das erste Jahrhundert des Humanismus, Berlin, 1893, v l- H> P- 44 2 : "Die Lehrbiicher liber Rhetorik .... bilden nicht gerade eine reiche Literatur, weil die Humanisten sich gern unmittelbar an Cicero zu halten liebten. Dessen ' alte Rhetorik,' dass heist die Biicher de inventione, und die an Herennius gerichtete Rhetorik waren im Mittelalter immer beachtet und gelesen worden, wie ja schon Alcuin sein Lehrbuch nach ihnen verfasste .... auch horen wir von den Human- isten oft die Meinung, man lerne die Redekunst besser aus Cicero's Reden als aus seinen Theorien." Notice in this connection that the last five or six pages of Cox's Rhetoric are directly founded on Cicero, while Cox's original, Melanchthon, constantly draws upon Cicero. It is a striking feature in Cox's work also, wherein he departs from Melanchthon, that at every opportunity he introduces and trans- lates long extracts from Cicero's orations.

2 On the emphasis laid on style in the rhetoric of the Italian Renaissance cf. Symonds, Ren. in Italy, The Revival of Learning (N. Y., 1888) p. 525.

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