Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster:
“This diligence to gather examples, to giue light and vnderstandyng to good preceptes, is no new inuention, but speciallie vsed of the best Authors and oldest writers. For Aristotle him selfe, (as Diog. Laertius declareth) when he had written that goodlie booke of the Topickes, did gather out of stories and Orators, so many examples as filled xv. bookes, onelie to expresse the rules of his Topickes. These were the Commentaries, that Aristotle thought fit for hys Topickes: And therfore to speake as I thinke, I neuer saw yet any Commentarie vpon Aristotles Logicke, either in Greke or Latin, that euer I lyked, bicause they be rather spent in declaryng scholepoynt rules, than in gathering fit examples for vse and vtterance, either by pen or talke. For preceptes in all Authors, and namelie in Aristotle, without applying vnto them, the Imitation of examples, be hard, drie, and cold, and therfore barrayn, vnfruitfull and vnpleasant. But Aristotle, namelie in his Topicks and Elenches, should be, not onelie fruitfull, but also pleasant to, if examples out of Plato, and other good Authors, were diligentlie gathered, and aptlie applied vnto his most perfit preceptes there. And it is notable, that my frende Sturmius writeth herein, that there is no precept in Aristotles Topickes wherof plentie of examples be not manifest in Platos workes. And I heare say, that an excellent learned man, Tomitanus in Italie, hath expressed euerie fallacion in Aristotle, with diuerse examples out of Plato. Would to God, I might once see, some worthie student of Aristotle and Plato in Cambrige, that would ioyne in one booke the preceptes of the one, with the examples of the other. For such a labor, were one speciall peece of that worke of Imitation, which I do wishe were gathered together in one Volume.”
