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The interest of this Art of Rhetoric is threefold. It is the work of a writer intelligently familiar with the Greek and Roman classics, and it thus stands beside Elyot's Governour, which appeared two years before, as one of the earliest illustrations of the influence of the Renaissance on our vernacular literature.
In English, as we have seen, many of the vocabularies from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, were arranged under class-headings according to subject; and, although Sir Thomas Elyot's Dictionary was actually in alphabetical order, that of J. Withals, published in 1554, under the title 'A short dictionarie for young beginners, and with the colophon 'Thus endeth this Dictionary very useful for Children, compiled by J. Withals, reverts to the older arrangement of subject-classes, as Names of things in the Æther or skie, the xii Signes, the vii Planets, Tymes, Seasons, Other times in the yere, the daies of the weeke, the Ayre, the viii windes, the iiii partes of the worlde, Byrdes, Bees, Flies, and other, the Water, the Sea, Fishes, a Shippe with other Water vessels, the earth, Mettales, Serpents, woorms and creepinge beastes, Foure-footed beastes, &c.
Elyot's book is equally a treatise on the education of a gentleman, and on the ordinance of government; for, as he says elsewhere, he wrote "to instruct men in such virtues as shall be expedient for them which shall have authority in a weal public."
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