Richard Sherry's _A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes_ (1550), a familiar
work of the Renaissance, is primarily thought of as a sixteenth-century
English textbook on the figures. Yet it is also a mirror of one
variation of rhetoric which came to be called the rhetoric of style. As
a representative of this stylistic school, it offers little that is new
to the third part of classical rhetoric. Instead, it carries forward the
medieval concept that ornateness in communication is desirable; it
suggests that figures are tools for achieving this ornateness; it
supplies examples of ornateness to be imitated in writing and speaking;
it supports knowing the figures in order to understand both secular and
religious writings; it proposes that clarity is found in the figures. In
short, the work assisted Englishmen to understand eloquence as well as
to create it.
Four-fifths of ancient rhetoric is omitted in the _Treatise_. The nod is
given to elocution. Invention is discussed, but only as a tool to assist
the communicator in amplifying his ideas, as a means to spin out his
thoughts to extreme lengths. Arrangement, memory, and delivery are
overlooked. Accordingly, the _Treatise_ neatly fits into the category of
a Renaissance rhetoric on style. It is this school which recognized the
traditional five Ciceronian parts of rhetoric, but considered style to
be the most significant precept. The _Treatise_ is not the first to
support an emphasis wholly on style, nor the foremost. We know that
Aristotle's _Rhetoric_, Cicero's works on rhetoric, and Quintilian's
_Institutes_ discussed the significance of style, but they had a broad
view. However, in England, about the time of Bede, arose a limited
concept that rhetoric is mainly style, particularly that of the figures.
It is this latter truncated version of rhetoric that the _Treatise_
continues in the Renaissance. Rhetoric in Sherry's work has lost its
ancient meaning.
The _Treatise_ is highly prescriptive. It was born in an age of rules.
So much so, that the rhetorician who named his rules and tools was not
out of rapport with the period. This accounts for the rigidity, the love
of classification, and the schematic presentation of the work. It is
nothing more than a highly organized dictionary of ancient, medieval,
and Renaissance schemes and tropes. In fact, the major variation from
previous Latin compilers is to be found in the headnotes relative to the
various kinds of figures. Nor is it as thorough in handling the figures
as its predecessors. It utilizes, however, the customary Greek and Latin
terms and supplies a definition, but here the similarity with
contemporaries and ancients ends. It is weak in amplification of
examples during an age when amplification was practiced. Sherry
economizes by selecting usually one example in support of a figure while
contemporary cataloguers, and ancients for that matter, are more
definitive.
Whether the work was ever popular within the schools or without is
unclear. Probably it did not have extensive success because only one
issue of the work appeared and a revised edition was brought out in
1555. By contrast, during the sixteenth century, Erasmus' _De Copia_
(1512) had at least eleven printings, Mosellanus' _Table_ (c. 1529) had
at least eight editions, Susenbrotus' _Epitome_ (1541) had at least
twenty printings, Peacham's _Garden_ (1577) had two editions, and Day's
_Secretorie_ (1586) underwent at least five editions. Some of these
works had new editions printed in the seventeenth century and would seem
to reflect a greater public acceptance than the _Treatise_. Some were
also written in Latin while Sherry moves in the vernacular. It still was
an age of Latin, and Sherry in part recognized this by his alternate
Latin and English movement in his second rhetoric on style published in
1555. Moreover, people seemed content to remain with the giants of the
Renaissance, notably Erasmus and his _De Copia_ instead of turning to a
lesser light such as Sherry.
The _Treatise_ does have merit. The work cannot be judged entirely by
tallying its meager number of editions, its lack of thoroughness, or its
artificial divisions. Its signal contribution rests upon the fact that
it is a pioneering effort at permitting the figures to march, for the
first time, in English. Here Sherry had an opportunity to provide the
English reader with additional words, ideas, and material to be employed
in vernacular communication. His efforts in his works on rhetoric,
the two editions of the _Treatise_, provided the sixteenth century
Englishman with the identical schemes and tropes which had been a
heritage of the Latin language since antiquity. Hence the work can be
called a complicated ordering of the figures, but it is also a sincere
attempt to provide in English those figures which would lend ornateness
to the expression of an idea.
To indicate that the _Treatise_ was part of a continuing school of
rhetoric, we must consider a few rhetoricians subsequent to Sherry's
work. Indeed, one notices the continuance of dictionaries of figures
which carry the admonition that the usual manner of utterance was to be
despised. Thomas Wilson's _The Arte of Rhetorique_ (1553), although
preserving the classical idea of rhetoric, also felt the definition of a
figure employed in communication involved the uncommon. Twenty-seven
years subsequent to Sherry, England again has a pure catalogue of the
figures; this is Peacham's _Garden of Eloquence_. More elaborate than
the _Treatise_, it too suggests that rhetoric is decoration. Continued
interest in the stylistic tools is also seen in Puttenham's The _Arte of
English Poesie_ (1589). When we move to the latter part of the sixteenth
century and then change the genre as exemplified in Day's _The English
Secretorie_, we see a stylistic extension to the art of letter writing
which borrowed rhetorical terms and rules and applied them to written
correspondence. The emphasis in these rhetorics on style is the same:
ornateness in communication is achieved through using the figures.
When we look in the opposite direction, to works which preceded Sherry,
the figures, definitions, and examples in the _Treatise_ derive more
from contemporaries than from the ancients. It relies extensively upon
intermediaries. Sherry explains that Erasmus and Mosellanus will be
major sources. Hence the _De Copia_, the _Ecclesiastae_, and the
_Tabulae de schematibus et tropis_ are used with regularity. Although
further removed in time, the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ is the primary
ancient source. But beyond this first-hand reliance on the ancients,
examples from Vergil, Cicero, and Terence, to mention several, as well
as definitions of the figures, depend heavily upon neo-classical
intermediaries.
Appended to the text on the figures of rhetoric is a seemingly
gratuitous section entitled "That chyldren oughte to be taught and
brought vp gently in vertue and learnynge, and that euen forthwyth from
theyr natiuitie: a declamacion of a briefe theme, by Erasmus of
Roterodame." This essay occupies almost two-thirds of the _Treatise_ and
receives its first English translation from the Latin at the hands of
Sherry. William Woodward in his _Desiderius Erasmus Concerning the Aim
and Method of Education_ gave us another English translation in 1904.
One other translation, in German, by August Israel, is entitled "Vortrag
über die Nothwendigkeit, die Knaben gleich von der Geburt an in einer
für Freigeborne würdigen Weise sittlich und wissenschaftlich ausbilden
zu lassen."
The reason for the inclusion of the Erasmian essay is never clearly
stated in the other sections of the _Treatise_. Nor do the other
translators suppose a reason. From the internal evidence of the essay
and from headnotes preceding it, we may assume that the purpose is one
of supplying readers with an example of amplification of a brief theme,
first illustrated in miniature, and then full blown into a long
declamation. The essay does not appear to be illustrating the numerous
figures discussed in the initial section of the work.
Of Sherry we know little. Beyond the dates in the DNB, we infer from his
works that he had an intense interest in English and had a desire for
his countrymen to communicate well in the vernacular. He was interested
in religion, was most likely a Protestant, and hoped to continue an
interest in religion which he developed in his youth. He was also a
teacher. And although Latin was still a living language, the task of
inculcating a new tongue in the students fell to the schoolmaster;
Sherry was active in this capacity. This does not weaken an acclamation
we possess of the man: "He was a Person elegantly learned."