Elizabethan song-writers commonly strove to achieve a just rapport between the conventions of the music and the meaning of the words. For them the expressive aspect of the music was inseparable from the significance of the verse, and the success of a song depended heavily upon the extent to which verbal sense and musical sound echoed one another.

Few books have been more successful than Erasmus’ Adagia, judged either by the author's intention or the readers’ satisfaction. In the preface to the modest first edition—Veterum maximeque insignium paroemiarum id est adagiorum collectanea (Paris, 1500)—Erasmus stressed the utility of the volume, saying that it provided a model for style and a storehouse of knowledge and morality. This was Erasmus’ first book-length publication; and generation after generation demanded fresh versions, so that he continued to enhance it throughout his life. There were four more editions of the Collectanea before Erasmus revised and greatly augmented the work for the Aldine press, printed under the title Adagiorum chiliades tres (Venice, 1508). After that, there were at least thirty reprints of the Collectanea by mid-century, and at least forty editions of the Adagiorum chiliades by the end of the century, not to mention great numbers of epitomes and extracts and translations. The Collectanea was a handsome start for a new sort of career: public education through print.

Renaissance scholars such as W. S. Howell, T. W. Baldwin, W. G. Crane, and Walter J. Ong have observed in general terms the influence of Rudolph Agricola's dialectic upon northern humanist thought; so far, however, no one has investigated that influence in detail. It is my purpose in this paper to initiate such an examination by describing how Agricola's place-theory made its way into the treatments of invention in the three major English logics of the early Renaissance, those of Thomas Wilson, John Seton, and Peter Carter. Although my account is for the most part restricted to the subject of invention (in bulk at least a lesser part of dialectic than judgment) and deals only with English logicians, the popularity of Agricola's views on dialectical invention may, I think, be taken as symptomatic of a more pervasive influence emanating from Heidelberg, an influence extending to dialectical judgment as well as invention and affecting continental as well as English scholars.

In my edition of The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, I pointed out that the text of the Helmingham Hall manuscript was badly disarranged towards the end of the volume. I there expressed the conviction that the confusion was due to twin faults, first that the leaves in the 'Vorlage’ (cited as V) used by the scribe of the Helmingham Hall MS. (cited as HH) had become jumbled and secondly that this scribe had mechanically and thoughtlessly followed his exemplar without paying the slightest attention to the text. Having recently had the occasion to examine this MS once again (now Glazier MS. 66), it occurred to me that some further deductions might be drawn from this scribal lapse.