renaissance cannot be accurately understood except in the light of the
Greek and Roman authors whose writings inspired them. To this general rule
the literary criticism of the renaissance is no exception. The
interpretation of the critical terms used by the literary critics of the
English renaissance must depend largely on the classical tradition. This
tradition, as the labors of many scholars, especially Spingarn, have
shown, reached England both directly through the publication of classical
writings and to an even greater degree indirectly through the commentaries
and original treatises of Italian scholars.

The indebtedness to the Italian critics is well known and has been widely
discussed. Although the present study does not hope to add to what is
known of the influence exerted on the literary criticism of the English
renaissance by the Italians, it does propose to show the English critics
to have been more indebted than has been supposed to the mediaeval
development of classical theory. For this relationship to be clear it will
be necessary to review classical literary criticism and to trace its
development in post-classical times and in the middle ages as well as in
the Italian renaissance. Only by such an approach will it be possible to
show in what form classical theory was transmitted to the English
renaissance.

As the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne of England inaugurated a
new period in English criticism, during which English critical theories
were largely influenced by French criticism, this study will stop short of
this, restricting itself to the years between the publication of Thomas
Wilson's _Arte of Rhetorique_ in 1553 and that of Ben Jonson's _Timber_ in
1641. Throughout this period the English mediæval tradition of classical
theory was highly important, losing ground but gradually as the influence
first of the rhetoric newly recovered from the classics and then of