One of the earliest English philologists, was educated at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge, and afterwards became tutor to the two sons of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; lived abroad during the reign of Mary, and was imprisoned by the Inquisitor at Rome on account of the heresy alleged to be contained in his treatises on Logic and Rhetoric; after torture, which failed to shake his constancy, he escaped in consequence of a fire which caused the populace to release the prisoners from their incarceration; on the accession of Elizabeth returned to England, and became a Master of Requests, Master of St. Katherine’s Hospital near the Tower, and Private Secretary to the Queen; Envoy to the Low Countries, 1576: Secretary of State, 1577; Dean of Durham, 1579; died 1581.

  And so is now our witty Wilson, who, for learning and extemporal wit in this faculty, is without compare or compeer; as to his great and eternal commendations, he manifested in his challenge at the Swan, on the Bank Side.

  It may therefore be justly considered as the first book or system of criticism in our language.

  The “Treatises” of Wilson powerfully assisted the cause which Ascham had been advocating; it displays much sagacity and good sense, and greatly contributed to clear the language from the affectation consequent on the introduction of foreign words and idioms.

  Sir Thomas Wilson is worthy of the phalanx of Knights in which he is here embodied; and will be long remembered as a philologist, rather than as a statesman or divine. His slender little volume, entitled “Epistola de vita et obitu duorum fratrum Sulfolciensium, Henrici et Caroli Brandon,” 1552, 4to. is a volume to rack the most desperate with torture, as to the hopelessness of its acquisition. The Bodleian Library possesses it; so does the British Museum; and so does Earl Spencer. Another copy is not known to me.

  Warton says that it is the first system of criticism in our language. But, in the common use of the word, it is no criticism at all, any more than the treatise of Cicero de Oratore…. Wilson was a man of considerable learning, and his “Art of Rhetorique” is by no means without merit.

  Our English Aristarchus.

  Thomas Wilson belongs to that earlier academic school of Tudor prose writers, whose chief characteristic is a direct and nervous simplicity and purity of diction, due partly to a growing native pride in the English tongue, partly to the revived study of Greek. He has not the sweetness and Herodotean ease of More, who, though a forerunner of the group, represents its style as a historian. He has not the homely poignancy of Latimer, its preacher, nor the graceful learning of Ascham, its teacher, with whom indeed Wilson has most in common. Versed in travel, in trade, in the region of practical politics, he may, however, be taken to stand in that group for its man of affairs.

  Wilson has more merit than that of merely protesting against affectation: he not only lays down sensible laws for English writing, but to a certain extent exemplifies them. He has more command over the language than Ascham, and his style is not so repellantly wooden.

  Wilson, however, did good service by his denunciation of pedantry, “strange inkhorn terms,” and the use of French and “Italianated” idiom, which “counterfeited the kinges Englishe.” In this way Wilson may have stimulated the development of English prose, and it has been maintained that Shakespeare himself owes something, including hints for Dogberry’s character, to a study of Wilson’s book.