Thomas Farnaby, according to Anthony à Wood's life of him in his Athenae Oxonienses (Bliss edition, 1813-1820), was "the chief grammarian, rhetorician, poet, Latinist, and Grecian of his time, and his school was so much frequented, that more churchmen and statesman issued thence, than from any school taught by one man in England." In contemporary references to him, "famous" competes with "learned" for preeminence. His Index Rhetoricvs, Scholis & institutioni tenerioris ætatis accomodatus (Rhetorical Index, Suited to the Schools and Training of Those of More Tender Years, 1625), a self-conscious synthesis of the classical and Continental riches of the Renaissance rhetorical tradition, went through thirteen English editions between its first publication in 1625 and 1700; it was thus one of the most popular rhetoric textbooks in seventeenth-century England in terms of the number of copies printed. Farnaby was a corresponding member of the European scholarly republic of letters, and his editions...