The Model of Poesy by William Scott & Gavin Alexander & William Scott & Gavin Alexander

Author:William Scott & Gavin Alexander & William Scott & Gavin Alexander [William and ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2014-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

The relation between natural capacity and art in oratory had also been a key concern of Cicero's De oratore: see, e.g., 1.25.113–15, 2.20.85–9.

8.38–9.1 orator fit…poet born so Compare Sidney in his digression on the state of poetry in England towards the end of the Defence (DP, 43): ‘A poet no industry can make, if his own genius be not carried into it, and therefore is it an old proverb – orator fit, poeta nascitur’ (DP, 43). On the proverb in Elizabethan literary criticism and elsewhere see William Ringler, ‘Poeta nascitur non fit: some notes on the history of an aphorism’, JHI, 2 (1941), 497–504. Ringler traces it back to Pseudo-Acro's commentary on Horace's Ars poetica, 295–8 (on this passage in Horace see 8.18–23n.).

9.3–4 I say, with Horace…in spite of nature Ars poetica, 385: ‘Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva’ (‘But you will say nothing and do nothing against Minerva's will’). Cicero explains in De officiis, a text Scott would doubtless have read at school, that invita Minerva means ‘in direct opposition to one's natural genius’ (1.31.110). For a lengthier gloss see Erasmus, Adagia, 1.1.42. Cf. Viperano, 1.18 (62), and Sidney: ‘taking upon us to be poets in despite of Pallas’ (DP, 43).

9.5–6 Praxiteles…never be polished A misreading of Quintilian 2.19.3 (see 8.36–7n.). Quintilian is only putting a hypothetical, and it concerns a millstone (molaris lapis), not ‘slate or chalk’.

9.8–15 Consider then…meetly well relished Paraphrasing Quintilian 2.19.2 (see 8.36–7n); beachy mould: stony soil.

9.22–4 Sir Philip Sidney…professors of learning Referring to Sidney's discussion of the stylistic shortcomings of his contemporaries, part of the Defence's digression on English literature: ‘Undoubtedly (at least to my opinion undoubtedly), I have found in divers smally learned courtiers a more sound style than in some professors of learning, of which I can guess no other cause but that the courtier, following that which by practice he findeth fittest to nature, therein (though he know it not) doth according to art, though not by art; where the other, using art to show art and not to hide art (as in these cases he should do), flieth from nature and indeed abuseth art’ (DP, 51).

9.28 all in all See OED, all, phrases, P11b, ‘all in all’: ‘All things in all respects; all things altogether in one; everything.’

9.28–33 since the time…Eden See Genesis 2:8–3:24. For the relation of learning to the Fall see 5.34–6n.

9.33–8 Philosophers prove…fighting men in it Aristotle discusses growth as a combination of internal and external factors in On generation and corruption, e.g. 321b–322a; cf. Generation of animals, 735a. He discusses the long life of elephants in, e.g., On length and shortness of life, 466a, and History of animals, 546b and 578a. A more important source here is probably Pliny, 8.1.1–13.35 (castles: 8.7.22 and 8.9.27; adult life begins at 60: 8.10.28), perhaps mediated or supplemented by Conrad Gessner, Historiae animalium (Zürich, 1551–8) or Albertus Magnus (On animals, 22.50–1). A castle is a ‘tower borne on the back of an elephant’ (OED, castle, n., 6a).

9.41–10.1 certain creatures…moulded in heaven first Untraced.

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