36 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



Despised Shepherd." Of Dicson, " learned, honour- 

 able, lovable, well-born faithful friend Alexander Dicson, 

 whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes," 1 a little more 

 can be told. He was the author of a De Umbra Rationis y 

 (1583), obviously inspired by Bruno's De Umbris 

 Idearum, and on the same basis of Neoplatonism. The 

 work is extremely sketchy, occasionally diffuse, and of 

 little value even were there anything of value in the Art 

 of Memory which it teaches. But it seems from a 

 reply it called forth (Antidicsonus) to have had some 

 vogue, and to have been backed by a vigorous and 

 aggressive school in which Bruno, who is joined in 

 condemnation with Dicson, may have had a place. 2 

 Watson. The poet Thomas Watson has also connected Bruno 

 with Dicson in his Compendium Memorise Localis, 

 published in 1585 or 1586. Watson also published a 

 translation of Tasso's Aminta^ in Latin hexameters, 

 in 1585, i.e. in the year following the appearance 

 of Bruno's Spaccio, with its satire on Tasso's Age of 

 Gold? Watson had been in Paris in 1581, when he 

 met Walsingham, and he may of course have met 

 Bruno also : he was a scholarly poet, although his 

 work lay more in the direction of translation and 

 imitation of foreign writers, than in that of original 

 verse, but during his lifetime he ranked as the equal of 

 Spenser and Sidney. The Compendium of Local Memory 

 is in clear, simple, classical Latin, in strong contrast 

 with the corresponding works of Dicson and of Bruno ; 

 but the principles of the Art which it describes are 

 those of Bruno, or Ravenna, or of some common source, 

 more skilfully arranged and more aptly expressed. 



1 Lag. 223. 4. 2 Vide infra, part ii. ch. 9. 3 In the Amlnta. 



