Henry Peacham

The Complete Gentleman by Henry Peacham (1622). Engraving by Francis Delaram.

Henry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son.

The elder Henry Peacham (1546–1634) was an English curate, best known for his treatise on rhetoric titled The Garden of Eloquence first published in 1577.

His son, Henry Peacham (b. 1578, d. in or after 1644) was a poet and writer,^[1] known today primarily for his book, The Compleat Gentleman, first printed in 1622. It is presented as a guidebook on the arts for young men of good birth. In it, he discusses what writers, poets, composers, philosophers, and artists a gentlemen should study in order to become well-educated. Because he mentions a large number of contemporary artistic figures, he is often cited as a primary source in studies of Renaissance artists.

A representative passage from The Compleat Gentleman:

"For composition, I prefer next Ludovico de Victoria, a most judicious and a sweet composer: after him Orlando di Lasso, a very rare and excellent Author, who lived some forty years since in the court of the Duke of Bavier."

Henry Peacham, Jr., is known also for having written in the 1622 'The Compleat Gentleman':

“In the time of our late Queene Elizabeth, which was truly a golden age (for such a world of refined wits, and excellent spirits it produced, whose like are hardly to be hoped for, in any succeeding age) above others, who honoured Poesie with their pennes and practice (to omit her Majestie, who had a singular gift herein) were EDWARD EARLE OF OXFORD, the Lord Buckhurst, Henry Lord Paget; our Phoenix, the noble Sir Philip Sidney, M. Edward Dyer, M. Edmund Spencer, M. Samuel Daniel, with sundry others: whom (together with those admirable wits, yet living, and so well knowne) not out of Envie, but to avoid tediousnesse I overpasse. Thus much of Poetrie.”

William Shakespeare was not listed among these eminent Elizabethan writers, though dead six years. The Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, who died in 1604, was known to Peacham, since in 1612 his Minerva Britanna anagrammed Vere's name on the frontispiece, denoting him as the Minerva (or Mind) of the Age. Peacham also tutored the three sons of the Earl of Arundel, Oxford's cousin.

His testimony contributes to the contention that the name 'Shakespeare' was Oxford's pseudonym. It has not been credited by conventional scholarship to date.

Further reading

The Elder

• Shawn Smith, "Henry Peacham the Elder," The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 236: British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500-1660, First Series, Detroit: Gale, 2001, pp. 188–201.
• Willard R. Espy, The Garden of Eloquence: A Rhetorical Bestiary, New York: Dutton, 1983
• Alan R. Young, "Henry Peacham, Author of The Garden of Eloquence (1577): A Biographical Note," Notes and Queries, vol. 24, 1977, pp. 503–507

The Younger

• Edward Chaney, The Evolution of English Collecting (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2003)
• John Horden, "Peacham, Henry (b. 1578, d. in or after 1644)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004
• Alan R. Young, Henry Peacham, Boston: Twayne, 1979.

Notes

References

• Peacham, Henry (1954) [1593]. The Garden of Eloquence. Gainesville, Fla.: Softcover: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints. pp. 280. http://rhetoric.byu.edu/primary%20texts/Peacham.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-24. 
• Peacham, Henry (1664). The worth of a penny: or, A caution to keep money. London: S. Griffin, for William Lee, 1664. pp. 40. http://books.google.com/books?id=pqo4PwAACAAJ. Retrieved 2010-03-24. 

External links

• Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (at silva rhetoricae - A guide to rhetoric, by Dr. Gideon Burton, Brigham Young University).

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