University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Papers from the University Studies series (The University of Nebraska) University Studies of the University of Nebraska 11-1945 Gabriel Harvey's Ciceronianus Harold S. Wilson Clarence A. Forbes Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/univstudiespapers Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University Studies of the University of Nebraska at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Papers from the University Studies series (The University of Nebraska) by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Gabriel Harvey's Ciceronian us * * * * * H A R O L D S. W I L S O N and C L A R E N C E A. F O R B E S UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA STUDIES November 1945 STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES NO. 4 GABRIEL HARVEY'S GIGERONIAJVUS University of Nebraska Studies November 1945 Gabriel Har,vey's Ciceronianus * * * With an Introduction and Notes by HAROLD S. WILSON And an English Translation by CLARENCE A. FORBES * * * STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES NO. 4 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY AT LINCOIN, NEBRASKA Copyright 1945 by THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA SENATE COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION OF UNIVERSITY STUDIES R. W. Goss, Chairman PAUL jANNKE A. S. ] ENNESS C. E. GEORGI L. W. LANCASTER F. A. LUNDY M. s. PETERSON J. L. SELLERS BOARD OF UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS K. 0. BROADY, Chairman F. C. BLOOD H.P. DAVIS F. A. LUNDY G. S. RouND G. w. ROSENLOF R. V. SHUMATE EMILY ScHossBERGER, Secretary Printed in the United States by the University of Nebraska Printing Department PREFACE Gabriel Harvey's Ciceronianus, except for an extract given in the introduction to Alexander Grosart's edition of Harvey's Works (1884-85), has not been republished since it was originally issued at London in 1577. In the present edition, we have provided a cor­ rected text based upon that of the Huntington Library copy only, since it has proved impracticable to collate the texts of all the known copies of Harvey's treatise. The erratorum elenchus has been re­ printed from· the Huntington Library copy (p. 105), and the textual errors there listed have been silently corrected in the present text. We have likewise corrected fourteen textual errors not noted in the elenchus. These changes are indicated at the foot of each page where they occur. There is one error in the erratorum elenchus itself, which has been discussed in the notes (80.21). We have made a few slight changes from the Elizabethan punctuation, in the inter­ est of clarity, and have omitted the Latin accents; we have silently expanded abbreviations and corrected marks of accent and breath­ ing for the Greek words. The editors have shared the work of preparing the Latin text. While the main responsibility for the introduction, translation, and commentary is indicated on the title-page, we have consulted each other at every stage of the work and have mutually profited from this collaboration. We are indebted to the authorities of the Henry E. Huntington Library for providing us with a photostatic reproduction of their copy of the Ciceronianus and granting per­ mission to reprint from this text. We have likewise to thank the Research Council of the University of Nebraska for two grants of financial assistance; the University Studies Committee for recom­ mending the appropriation which has made possible the present publication; the Univer11ity Editor, Miss Emily Schossberger, for valuable assistance in seeing this work through the press; and the staff of the University of Nebraska Library for much helpful co­ operation. The writer of the introduction and commentary has incurred a number of special obligations in the course of this work which it is pleasant to recall. A grant-in-aid from the Committee on Re­ search Activities of the Modern Language Association enabled him to visit the libraries of the Universities of Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, and Illinois, during the summer of 1944. He is likewise V indebted to the officers of these libraries for their gracious assistance. At Urbana, he was privileged to consult the splendid private col­ lection of Renaissance books owned by Professor T. W. Baldwin and to draw upon the genial resources of that scholar's learning. Mr. C. H. Wilkinson of Worcester College, Oxford, and Mr. John Johnson, Printer to the University of Oxford, generously provided a microfilm of Harvey's annotated copies of the two· treatises entitled Ciceronianus by P; Ramus and J. T. Freigius, at a time when the request for such a photograph could not have been very convenient. Mr. Eric Millar, Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, gave permission for prints of the unpublished part of Harvey's Letter-Book from the photograph in Harvard College Library; and Mr. Ralph Beals, Director of Libraries at the University of Chicago, granted photographs of Harvey's two orations on the study of Greek. The friendly counsel and learned suggestions of a number of others have been of great help, among whom should be espe­ cially mentioned Professor Josephine Waters Bennett of Hunter College; Professor Rosemond Tuve of Connecticut College; Mr. W. A. Jackson of the Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass.; Mr. Paul North Rice of the New York Public Library; and Professor Kenneth Forward of the University of Nebraska. H.S.W. C. A. F. VI CONTENTS Preface Introduction I Reproduction of original title page 35 Text and tr;mslation 36 Reproduction of colophon 104 Erratorum elenchus 105 Notes 107 Bibliography 141 Index of Names 145 VII INTRODUGTION I Though Gabriel Harvey was not, like the poet, A creature quite too bright and good To be so much misunderstood,1 posterity has, on the whole, dealt rather harshly with him. An un­ willing participant in a spectacular and amusing but highly undigni­ fied flyting with the brilliant Elizabethan journalist, Thomas Nashe, Harvey has commonly been judged from the estimate of his opponent as a dull pedant. But Tom Nashe is a biased witness and quite unfit to judge of Harvey's accomplishments in the learned world of his day. While he was still in his middle twenties,2 Harvey distinguished him­ self at Cambridge as a teacher and one of the University's most ac­ complished Latinists. He was warmly praised and encouraged by older scholars like William Lewin and Bartholomew Clerke; he in­ spired the devoted friendship of Edmund Spenser; and he enjoyed the patronage, at one time or another, of statesmen of the eminence of Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Walter Mildmay, Lord Burghley, and the Earl of Leicester. The man whose character and talents were thus admired and commended became one of the most learned scholars of his age and exerted a significant influence upon English letters. But Harvey's claims to serious attention from students of English literature have been too easily disregarded; for these claims are displayed at their best not in the informal pamphlets of his controversy with Nashe but in his less known scholarly writings, which we should also consult for a complete and judicious estimate of the man. The Latin orations which Harvey delivered as lectures in his ca­ pacity of Praelector or Professor of Rhetoric at Cambridge University in 1575-76 and published in 1577 under the titles of Ciceronianus and Rhetor are among the most interesting literary documents of the time. They provide not merely a much needed commentary upon Harvey's own character, literary accomplishments, and influence, but one of the best illustrations remaining to us of Elizabethan learned 1 "Horace's P'itas hinnul(!o (i. 2!1), done by Mr. William Wordsworth," in G. M. Whicher and G. F. Whicher, Roba D'ltalia (Amherst, Mass., 19!10), pp. 67-8. • This assumes that he was born about 1550, as Professor G. C. Moore Smith (Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, p. 8) has most plausibly argued. I 2 GABRIEL HARVEY'S CICERONIANUS interests and what passed for Latin eloquence among university men at the time when writers like Spenser and Shakspere were finishing their formal education. The extent to which the Latin studies pur­ sued in the schools and universities influenced and formed educated Englishmen of the Renaissance is yet to be fully demonstrated.3 Many of the tools which every English writer of the age of Elizabeth knew and used from his youth up, in getting his literary education-the Latin logics and rhetorics, the phrase books, the pedagogical works of great educators like Sturm and Ramus, as well as such representa­ tive accounts as occur in Harvey's rhetoric lectures of the teaching methods and practices that flourished at the universities-are not yet easily available to students of the period. These means were often decisive in shaping the aims and methods of Elizabethan literature. Toward a better understanding of these means, the present edition of Gabriel Harvey's Ciceronianus is especially designed to contribute.' II Harvey's appointment as University Praelector in Rhetoric at Cam­ bridge on April 23, 1574,5 marked the most important honor Harvey had yet attained in his academic career. He had been appointed to • Among recent studies directed to this end, see D. C. Allen, Francis Meres's Treatise "Poetrie": A Critical Edition (1933); W. G. Crane, Wit and Rhetoric in the Renaissance (1937); Warren Taylor, Tudor Figures of Rhetoric (1937); H. D. Rix, Rhetoric in Spenser's Poetry (1940); John Rainolds, Oratio in Laudem Artis Poeticae, ed. W. Ringler and W. Allen (1940); F. R. Johnson, "Two Renaissance Textbooks of Rhetoric: Aphthonius' Progymnasmata and Rainolde's A booke called the Foun­ dacion of Rhetorike," HLQ, VI (1943), 427-44; K.