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for searching only. 440 SMALL LATINE AND LESSE GREEKE
well "bicause his whole doctrine, iudgement, and order, semeth to be borowed out of lo. Stun booker." Riccius has examples too, but they are poor.11 Ascham then devotes several pages to a description of the principles on which the needed volume of examples should be constructed.'2 This volume he himself proposed to write, but death intervened. His conclusion is,
Therefore thou, that shotest at perfection in the Latin tong, thinke not thy selfe wiser than Tullie was, in choice of the way, that leadeth rightlie to the same: thinke not thy Witte better than Tullies was, as though that may serue thee that was not sufficient for him.t$
The experts were thus agreed on the fundamental principle of imitation; they were disagreed only on details of method in applying the principle. Even here, however, they were sufficiently agreed, at least upon the content and general objectives of the ideal grammar school curriculum. The business of grammar school was to teach one how to speak and write the finest of Latin. Because of the principle of imitation, it was necessary to keep before budding youth the best of examples always. So Ascham does not want the boys to begin speaking and writing, thus forming habits, until they can form those habits on the best models. He therefore proposes to bring them to ability to imitate these models in the shortest time possible, by methods that we have already examined."
Whatever the exact method, these schoolmasters aimed to get their pupils to Cicero and Terence as soon as possible, for these two were the great models of imitation for true speaking and writing. In theory and in practice, Cicero and Terence were the first objectives, and prime models of imitation, because they were the finest illustra-
Ascham, Scholemaster (i;so), pp. 49v-50r. >, See above, pp. c6z if.
"Ascham, Scholemaster (15570), p. 51r. For a history of Ciceronianism to about the death of Erasmus, the reader may turn to Sabbadini, R., &aria del Ciceronianismo E Di Altre uestioni Letterarie Nell' Et4 Della Rinascenea. For our period, a collection of some chance expressions in English on the subject of imitation will be found in White, Harold O., Plagiarism and Imitation During the English Renaissance. But for Englishmen, as for all educated people, the fundamental body of criticism was in Latin (notice Ascham and Kempe). It is upon the Latin background that the allusions in the vernacular, whether English, French, German, Italian, or what not, must be interpreted. And this background is as yet practically unexplored, Hermann Gmelin has made a large compilation on "Imitatio," part of which is published as "Das Prinzip der Imitatio in den romanischen Literaturen der Renaissance," Romanische Forschungen, Vol. XLVI, pp. 83-36o. From the materials gathered on this single point, the reader may judge the magnitude of the total problem of surveying the Latin Renaissance, and of orienting the various vernacular Renaissances to it and to each other. For these problems of literary criticism were not in their origins national problems, and no trustworthy perspective can be had when they are treated as such. National statements must be interpreted in the international framework of the scholarly world. u See more at large above, pp. 261 If.
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