THOMAS WILSON

[Thomas Wilson was born at Stroby in Lincolnshire, educated at Eton, whence he was elected in 1541 to King's College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1545-6; and became a Fellow and Master of Arts 1549. While in resi

dence at Cambridge he was tutor to Henry and Charles Brandon, sons of the Duke of Suffolk, whose early deaths he commemorates in Latin and English. In 1551 he published The Rule of Reason, conteinyng the Arte of Logique, dedicated to King Edward VI. In 1553 appeared his principal work, the Arte of Rhetorique, dedicated to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, by whom he states its composition was suggested. He spent the years of Mary's reign in exile, studying both at Padua and Ferrara, where he took the degree of LL. D. in civil law; was seized and tortured by the Inquisition at Rome, escaping death only through the chance conflagration of his prison. He returned to England under Elizabeth, who made him successively an Ordinary Master of Requests, Master of St. Katherine's Hospital "nigh the Tower," Secretary of State for four years with Walsingham, and finally, in 1579, although a layman, Dean of Durham. He sat on commissions concerning trade and schismatics; and wrote a Discourse on Usurye in 1572. He served for several years in Parliament; was Ambassador on various occasions to Scotland, Portugal, and the Netherlands, where he witnessed the Sack of Antwerp in November 1576, and wrote an account of it. He also translated the Orations of Demosthenes. He died on the 16th of June 1581. He is accused of trying to plunder the revenues of his Hospital of St. Katharine's, in the church of which Hospital he was buried without a monument.]

THOMAS WILSON belongs to that earlier academic school of Tudor prose writers, whose chief characteristic is a direct and nervous simplicity and purity of diction, due partly to a growing native pride in the English tongue, partly to the revived study of Greek. He has not the sweetness and Herodotean ease of More, who, though a forerunner of the group, represents its style as a historian. He has not the homely poignancy of Latimer, its preacher, nor the graceful learning of Ascham, its teacher, with whom indeed Wilson has most in common. Versed in travel, in trade, in the region of practical politics, he may, however, be taken to stand in that group for its man of affairs.

Learned and scholarly enough, but of that order of scholars

who are keen to turn every shred of their learning to some worldly advantage, languages to him were merely a school to turn the tongue into a lever, to discipline the mind into a weapon, the memory into an armoury of examples.

With a thinker's wrath at the pompous affectations of the ignorant, he has, above all, the man of action's scorn for verbiage. A loyal and ambitious servant of Elizabeth, who himself was to feel the Roman rack, the newly-fashionable jargon from overseas strikes him as a kind of disloyalty, a currency of malign wordcoiners, a papistry of phrases, which he, as High Commissioner to be, does well to stamp out.

In one whose constant reliance was on his wits, whose poverty obliged him to plunder the hospital of which he was master and the Deanery on which as a layman he had intruded; who was selected to carry out his colleague Walsingham's less savoury schemes of statecraft, while Walsingham performed more honourable parts, we must not be surprised to find certain great qualities of style entirely lacking. For nobility of thought, for the rhythmic solemnity of the prose of Cranmer, we shall look in vain. This early writing bears no trace of the music of the passions. It has been well said that the great prose of after writers, like Browne and Overbury, is always either above or below the prose level. Wilson, and his like, are never off it. Bright and abrupt images, vivid proverbs, drop as it were into their discourse from common parlance. But its proper quality is a vigour at once clear and colourless. Even in the Discourse on Usurye travel has enriched neither his fancy nor his vocabulary. Wilson writes of speech like a man of action. It is Puttenham who first treats it from the later developed standpoint of the man of letters.

The sources of the matter and method of the Rhetorique are twofold. Quintilian and the schoolmen with their stiff formularies, and endless divisions and definitions, are closely followed for the first two parts of Wilson's book. These are, however, enlivened by "modell oracions," panegyrics, and epistles, out of his own head. Such are the Oracion on the deaths of Henry and Charles Brandon of Suffolk, the Oracion in Praise of David against Goliath, the Essay on Consolation, and some pieces of tough judicial pleading; besides a quaint and lengthy epistle devised by Erasmus to persuade an exceedingly obdurate young man to marry.

In the third book, however, the chief source is the author's own

keen observation of men. There appears the future member of Parliament, jurist, and diplomatist. Here the freshness, the conciseness, and the common-sense, orderly and yet overriding rules, are simply admirable. Here the tameness of the imitative portions of the book, the diffuse and formal measure of the "Modell Oracions," has vanished, and the proper style of the man appears. Here is the succinct, supple, close-fitted style of the man that will climb by readiness and assiduity from the poor scholar's closet to the seat of the Counsellor of State. He piques himself on knowledge of the world, taking as pattern the pith and gravity of the handling of Demosthenes, whom he commends for "couching more matter in a little room than Tully," for all his grand manner "in a large discourse." Self-confident, and, therefore, when it is convenient, straightforward, he tells you flatly his mind; with a frank egotism is himself the subject of all his own prefaces, and produces, despite his worldliness, the impression of that naïveté which is so charming in the earlier Tudor prose. Though well aware of the value of "nipping taunts," he has in him too much of the ambassador not to prefer the armour of an engaging frankness. Moreover, he had perhaps listened to too many Parliamentary speeches to forget the terrors of the bore. He never ceases to insist on the cardinal truth that a style should be dictated by the natures, moods, and weaknesses of those to whom it is addressed. He lays stress on the needfulness of pleasing, the spirit of urbane conversation; and if his pattern anecdotes, to stir a sleepy congregation or mollify a wearied judge, are somewhat mechanically cold, yet not a few have the merit of point.

Wilson wrote rather for speakers than for writers; yet was he held in high esteem as a guide of letters for some generations. It is characteristic of that active age to have followed the literary counsels of a Privy Councillor; of the author of the Discourse on Usurye, whose Rhetorique was written at a courtier's suggestion in a hasty holiday snatched from affairs. He teaches the uses rather than the beauty of style. "To speak plainly and nakedly after the common sort of men in few words," this was his principle; aiming less at that excellence to which nothing can be added, than at that from which nothing can be taken away. Simple, subtle, practical, he was the Machiavellian father of English criticism.

F. H. TRENCH.

A LESSON IN TACTICS

Not only it is necessary to know what manner of cause we have taken in hand, when we first enter upon any matter, but also it is wisdom to consider the time, the place, the man for whom we speak, the man against whom we speak, the matter whereof we speak, and the judges before whom we speak, the reasons that best serve to further our cause, and those reasons also that may seem somewhat to hinder our cause; and in no wise to use any such at all, or else warily to mitigate by protestation the evil that is in them, and always to use whatsoever can be said, to win the chief hearers' good wills, and to persuade them to our purpose. If the cause go by favour, and that reason cannot so much avail, as good will shall be able to do: or else if moving affections can do more good, than bringing in of good reasons, it is meet always to use that way, whereby we may by good help get the over hand. [So] That if mine adversary's reasons, by me being confuted, serve better to help forward my cause, than mine own reasons confirmed, can be able to do good: I should wholly bestow my time, and travail to weaken and make slender, all that ever he bringeth with him. But if I can with more ease prove mine own sayings, either with witnesses, or with words, than be able to confute his with reason, I must labour to withdraw men's minds from mine adversary's foundation, and require them wholly to hearken unto that which I have to say, being of itself so just and so reasonable, that none can rightly speak against it, and shew them that great pity it were, for lack of the only hearing, that a true matter should want true dealing. Over and besides all these, there remain two lessons, the which wise men have always observed, and therefore ought of all men assuredly to be learned. The one is, that if any matter be laid against us, which by reason can hardly be avoided, or the which is so open, that none almost can deny; it were wisdom in confuting all the other reasons, to pass over this one, as though we saw it not, and therefore speak

never a word of it. Or else if necessity shall force a man to say somewhat, he may make an outward brag, as though there were no matter in it, ever so speaking of it, as though he would stand to the trial, making men to believe he would fight in the cause, when better it were (if necessity so required) to run clean away. And therein though a man do fly and give place, evermore the gladder the less raving there is, or stirring in this matter: yet he flieth wisely and for this end, that being fenced otherwise and strongly appointed, he may take his adversary at the best advantage, or at the least weary him with much lingering, and make him with oft such flying, to forsake his chief defence.

The other lesson is, that whereas we purpose always to have the victory, we should so speak that we may labour, rather not to hinder or hurt our cause, than to seek means to further it, and yet I speak not this, but that both these are right necessary, and every one that will do good, must take pains in them both, but yet notwithstanding, it is a fouler fault a great deal for an orator, to be found hurting his own cause, than it should turn to his rebuke, if he had not furthered his whole entent. Therefore not only is it wisdom, to speak so much as is needful, but also it is good reason to leave unspoken so much as is needless.

(From the Arte of Rhetorike.)

THE VIRTUE OF SIMPLICITY

AMONG all other lessons this should first be learned, that we never affect any strange ink-horn terms, but to speak as is commonly received: neither seeking to be over fine, nor yet living over-careless, using our speech as most men do, and ordering our wits as the fewest have done. Some seek so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mother's language. And I dare swear this, if some of their mothers were alive, they were not able to tell what they say. And yet these fine English clerks will say, they speak in their mother tongue, if a man should charge them for counterfeiting the King's English. Some far journeyed gentlemen at their return home, like as they love to go in foreign apparel, so they will powder their talk with over-sea language. He that cometh lately out of France, will talk French English and never blush at the matter. Another VOL. I.

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