Quintilian, Plutarch, Basil the Great, and Erasmus. Farnaby cites an
imposing list of sources.

"Greek: Aristotle, Hermogenes, Sopatrus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
Demetrius Phal,[173] Menander, Aristides, Apsinus, Longinus _De
sublimitate_, Theonus, Apthonius. Latin: Cicero, Quintilian, Martianus
Capella, Curio Fortunatus, Mario Victorino, Victore, Emporio, Augustino,
Ruffinus, Trapezuntius, P. Ramus, L. Vives, Soarez, J. C. Scaliger,
Sturm, Strebaeus, Kechermann, Alstedius, N. Caussinus, J. G. Voss, A.
Valladero."

Whether Farnaby had read the works of these gentlemen through from cover
to cover is another matter. He at least knew their names, and had read in
Vossius, whose footnotes would refer him to all these sources as well as
to others, both classical and mediaeval.

With this evidence before us it is easy to understand why the traditions
of the English middle ages persisted so long in the literary criticism of
the English renaissance. The theories of rhetoric and of poetry in
mediaeval England had in the first place, because of remoteness and the
lack of easy transportation, become farther and farther removed from such
classical tradition as was preserved in the Mediterranean countries. In
the second place, the recovery of classical criticism in the Italian
renaissance antedated by a hundred years the domestication of classical
theory in England. Not until the seventeenth century, as has been shown,
did rhetoric in England come again to mean what it had in classical
antiquity. Subsequent chapters will show that classical theories of
poetry, as published and interpreted by the Italian critics, made almost
as slow head against English mediaeval tradition.