Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance / A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism

Chapter IV
Classical Blending of Rhetoric and Poetic

1. The Contact of Rhetoric and Poetic in Style

The coincidence of rhetoric and poetic is in style. They differ typically in movement or composition; they have a common ground in diction. And in this common ground each influenced the other from the beginning of recorded criticism. Aristotle says, for example, that the ornate style of the sophists, such as Gorgias, has its origin in the poets,[86] while the modern student, Norden, asserts that the poets learned from the sophists.[87] The evidence at least points to a very marked similarity between the styles of the sophists and of the poets in the fourth century B.C. This is well illustrated by the literary controversy between Isocrates and Alcidamas, both sophists and both students of the famous Gorgias. Alcidamas reproaches Isocrates because his discourses, so elaborately worked out with polished diction, are more akin to poetry than to prose. Isocrates cheerfully admits the accusation, and prides himself on the fact, affirming that his listeners take as much pleasure in his discourses as in poems.[88]

That there are characteristic differences in style between rhetoric and poetic Aristotle justly shows when he asserts that while metaphor is common to both, it is more essential to poetic. Consequently in the Rhetoric he refers to the Poetics for a fuller discussion of metaphor.[89] At the same time he says that metaphor deserves great attention in prose because prose lacks other poetical adornment. Furthermore, epithets and compound words are appropriate to verse but not to prose. And though both verse and oratorical prose should be rhythmical, a set rhythm, a meter, is appropriate only to verse.[90]

A distinction between the style of poetic and of rhetoric similar to that of Aristotle is maintained by Cicero, but the distinction was losing its sharpness. In the Orator he considers the orator and the poet as similar in style, but not identical. Formerly rhythm and meter were the distinguishing marks of the poet, but the orators in his days, he says, made increasing use of rhythm. Meter is a vice in an orator and should be shunned. The poet has greater license in compounding and inventing words. Both prose and verse, he adds, may be characterized by brilliant imagery and headlong sweep.[91] The only essential difference between Cicero's treatment of style and that of Aristotle is that whereas Aristotle had shown imagery to be an integral part of poetic, Cicero felt it both in poetic and in rhetoric to be superadded as a decoration. Whether or not this difference was caused by lack of discrimination on the part of Cicero, his position was at least in line with a tendency which in later criticism received increasing development. Both the poet and the orator, he says, use the same methods of ornament,[92] and the orator uses almost the language of poetry.[93] And again, in a phrase which was taken up and repeated for fifteen hundred years, the poets are nearest kin to the orators.[94]

2. The Florid Style in Rhetoric and in Poetic

But the public interest in style was increasingly comparable to that in athletic agility. As Socrates applauded the dancing girl who leaped through the dagger-studded hoop,[95] the popular audience of imperial Rome was delighted at a clever turn of speech, a surprising rhythm, or a startling comparison. Literary study of style in occasional oratory must have been extensive and extravagant at a very early date, to judge by the rebukes of such practical speakers as Alcidamas. Moreover, such stylistic artifice as was practiced and taught by Gorgias, Isocrates, and other sophists crept into tragedy, says Norden, beginning with Agathon.[96] The result was that with the poets style became as it had become with the sophists, an end in itself. The epideictic orators became less orators and more poets, and the poets cultivated less the characteristic vividness and movement of poetic than those turns of style which began in oratory.

Thus it was very natural that the discussions of artistic prose in the treatises of the later rhetoricians should be copiously illustrated by quotations from the poets, and that the poets should, in turn, be influenced in the direction of further sophistical niceties by the rhetorical treatises on style, such as those of Demetrius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who devoted whole treatises to style alone. The obsession of style is well exemplified by a comparison of Dionysius and Longinus in their discussion of Sappho's literary art. Longinus praises her passion, and her masterful selection of images which realize it for the reader, while Dionysius, no less enthusiastic, points out that in the ode which he quotes there is not a single case of hiatus. Dionysius is here much the more characteristic of his age, as he is in his belief that there is very little difference indeed between prose and verse. Longinus, while showing the relations of rhetoric and poetic, keeps the two apart; Dionysius draws them together. To Dionysius the best prose is that which resembles verse although not entirely in meter, and the best poetry that which resembles beautiful prose. By this he means that the poet should use enjambment freely and should vary the length and form of his clauses, so that the sense should not uniformly conclude with the metrical line.[97] In this regard he would approve of Shakespeare's later blank verse much more than of his earlier because it is freer and more like conversation. Thus, to Dionysius, the diction of prose and the diction of poetry approach each other as a limit.

3. The False Rhetoric of the Declamation School

Later antiquity carried the mingling further in the same direction. As time went on, the over-refinement and literary sophistication of the florid school of oratory became more and more powerful. The puritan reaction of the Roman Atticists in the direction of the simplicity of Lysias defeated itself in over emphasis and ended in establishing coldness and aridity as literary ideals. Such a jejune style could never hold a Roman audience, and Cicero in theory and in practice took as model not only Demosthenes, but also Isocrates. As Roman liberty was lost under the Caesars, style very naturally assumed greater and greater importance. Bornecque has shown that the strife of the forum and the genuine debates of the senate no longer kept tough the sinews of public speech, and the orators sank back in lassitude on the remaining harmless but unreal occasional oratory and on the fictitious declamations of the schools.[98] In these declamation schools under the Empire the boys debated such imaginary questions as this: A reward is offered to one who shall kill a tyrant. A. enters the palace and kills the tyrant's son, whereupon the father commits suicide. Is A. entitled to the reward? In the repertory of Lucian occurs a show piece on each side of this proposition. For two hundred years there had been no pirates in the Mediterranean; yet in the declamation schools pirates abounded, and questions turned upon points of law which never existed or could exist in actual society. The favorite cases concerned the tyranny of fathers, the debauchery of sons, the adultery of wives, and the rape of daughters. In the procedure of the declamation schools the boys arose and delivered their speeches with frequent applause from the other students and from their parents. The master would criticise the speeches and, when the students had finished, would himself deliver a speech which was supposed to outshine those of his pupils and give promise of what he could teach them.[99]

The utter unreality and hollowness of such rhetoric could show itself no better than in contrast with the practical oratory of the law courts. Albucius, a famous professor of the schools, once pleaded a case in court. Intending to amplify his peroration by a figure he said, "Swear, but I will prescribe the oath. Swear by the ashes of your father, which lie unburied. Swear by the memory of your father!" The attorney for the other side, a practical man, rose--"My client is going to swear," he said. "But I made no proposal," shouted Albucius, "I only employed a figure." The court sustained his opponent, whose client swore, and Albucius retired in shame to the more comfortable shades of the declamation schools, where figures were appreciated.[100] But in spite of the ridiculous performance of the professors of the schools when they did come out into the sunlight, in spite of the protests of Tacitus who complained justly that debased popular taste demanded poetical adornment of the orator,[101] style continued to be loved for its own sake, extravagant figures of speech were applauded, and verbal cleverness and point were strained for. As Bornecque has shown, the fact that the rhetoric of the declamation schools was so unreal, so preoccupied with imaginary cases, and so given over to attainment of stylistic brilliancy, in no small measure explains the loss in late Latin literature of the sense of structure. "It is not surprising," says Bornecque, "that during the first three centuries of the Christian era the sense of composition seems to have disappeared from Latin literature."[102] Thus Quintilian lamented that in his day the well constructed periods of Cicero appealed less to the perverted popular taste than the brilliant but disjointed epigrams of Seneca.

4. The Contamination of Poetic by False Rhetoric

As style gained this preponderence in rhetoric, it continued to increase its hold on poetic. While the rhetoricians were exemplifying from the poets their schemes and tropes, their well joined words, "smooth, soft as a maiden's face,"[103] the poets on their part were assiduously practicing all the rhetorical devices of style. Thus the literature of the silver-age is rhetorical. The custom of public readings by the author encouraged clever writing and a declamatory manner,[104] even had the poets not received their education in the only popular institutions of higher instruction--the declamation schools. The fustian which passed for poetry and equally well for history is well illustrated by the contempt of the hard-headed Lucian for those historians who were unable to distinguish history from poetry. "What!" he exclaims, "bedizen history like her sister? As well take some mighty athlete with muscles of steel, rig him up with purple drapery and meretricious ornament, rouge and powder his cheeks; faugh, what an object one would make of him with such defilements!"[105] But meretricious ornament was popular, and poets, historians, and orators alike scrambled to see who could most adorn his speech. Quintilian's pleas for the purer taste of a former age fell on deaf ears, and despite his warnings orators imitated the style of the poets, and the poets imitated the style of the orators.[106] Gorgias may or may not have learned his style from the ancient poets of Greece, but the poets of the silver age learned from the tribe of Gorgias.

Not only did poetry and oratory suffer from the same bad taste in straining for brilliance of style, but in practice, as Bornecque has shown, both poetry and oratory suffered for lack of structure. The poets paid so much attention to style that they neglected plot construction and the vivid realization of character and situation. The orators paid so much attention to style that they lost the art of composing sentences, and of arranging sound arguments in such a way as to persuade an audience. In effect there was a tendency for the late Latin writers to ignore those elements of structure and movement wherein poetry and oratory most differ, and stress unduly the elements of style wherein they have the most in common. Indeed, so completely did any fundamental distinction between poetic and rhetoric become blurred that in the second century Annaeus Florus was able to offer as a debatable question, "Is Virgil an orator or a poet?"[107]

Chapter V
The Middle Ages

1. The Decay of Classical Rhetorical Tradition

As for poetic, it had no distinct place except in the analyses of the grammaticus, who from classical times had prepared boys for the schools of rhetoric partly by analyzing with them the style of admirable passages. These passages were commonly taken from the poets, whose art was thus considered mainly as an art of words and applied to the art of the orator. Consequently, as a result of this tradition, poetic in the middle ages was commonly grouped with grammar or with rhetoric, although Isidore includes it in his section on theology.[108]

The rhetorical treatises of the middle ages exhibit two phases. On the one hand the earlier post-classical treatises composed by Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, and Isidore, all inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin, are fairly close to the classical tradition of Quintilian. Their weakness consists not in that they restricted rhetoric to style, but in that their whole treatment of rhetorical theory was compact, arid, and schematic. The second phase of mediaeval rhetoric is characteristic of a geographical position more remote from the center of classical culture. Thus it is in the rhetorical treatises of England and Germany in the middle ages that rhetoric was to the greatest extent restricted to a consideration of style. Illustrative of this tendency is the fact that the only surviving rhetorical work by the Venerable Bede is a treatise on the rhetorical figures.

But although the conventional study of rhetoric in such condensed treatment as that of the sections in Martianus, Isidore, or Cassiodorus, was definitely intrenched in the educational system of the seven liberal arts, it had no vitality. In the first place these treatises gave only the dry husks of rhetoric, the conventional analyses, the stock definitions. In the second place rhetoric was little applied. The political life of western Europe centered in the camp, not in the forum. The classical tradition of trial by a large jury, as the Areopagus or the Centumviri, had given place to trial before the regal or manorial court. Thus rhetoric dried up and lost whatever reality it had possessed in imperial Rome.

But if the middle ages had no opportunity to apply rhetoric in its function of persuasion in communal affairs, they did have real need of an art of writing letters and of preparing lay or ecclesiastical documents, such as contracts, wills, and records, and of preaching sermons. Thus in the teaching of the schools, as well as in practice, the oration gave place to the epistle and dictamen. "Dictare" was to write letters or prepare documents. And the rhetorical treatise or "ars rhetorica" often yielded to the "ars prosandi," or the "ars dictandi."[109]

A characteristic treatise of this sort is the Poetria of the Englishman John of Garland (c. 1270). In his introductory chapter John explains that he has divided the subject into seven parts:

First is explained the theory of invention; then the manner of selecting material; third, the arrangement and the manner of ornamentation; next, the parts of a dictamen; fifth, the faults in all kinds of composition (dictandi); sixth is arranged a treatise concerning rhetorical ornament as necessary in meter as in prose, namely, the figures of speech and the abbreviation and amplification of the material; seventh and last are subjoined examples of courtly correspondence and scholastic dictamen, pleasantly composed in verse and rhythms, and in diverse meters.[110]

Under the head of invention John gives definitions, several examples of good letters, a long list of proverbs under appropriate captions so that the letter writer can quickly find the one to fit his context, and an "elegiac, bucolic, ethic love poem" in fifty leonine verses, accompanied by an inevitable allegorical interpretation.[111] Then he comes to selection. Tully, he admits, puts arrangement after invention, "but," he pleads, "in writing letters and documents poetically the art of selection after that of invention is useful."[112] For he thinks of selection only as the selection of words. A writer, he says, should select his words and images according to the persons addressed. The court should be addressed in the grand style; the city, in the middle style; and the country, in the mean style.[113] One should arrange in three columns in a note-book the words and comparisons appropriate to each style so that the material will be handy when he wishes to write a letter. These principles John illustrates with leonine verses and ecclesiastical epistles. Under arrangement he says that all material must be so arranged as to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Then there are nine ways to begin a poem and nine ways to begin a dictamen or epistle. Next he states that there are six parts to an oration: "exordium, narracio, peticio, confirmacio, confutacio, conclusio."[114] As an example of this division of the oration into parts he quotes a long poem which persuades its reader to take up the cross. Still under the general head of arrangement John explains the ten ways of amplifying material. The tenth, "interpretacio," he illustrates by telling a joke, and then amplifying it into a little comedy. "Comedy," he says, "is a jocose poem beginning in sadness and ending in joy: a tragedy is a poem composed in the grand style beginning in joy and ending in grief."[115] Next follow the six metrical faults, the faults of salutations in letters, a classification of the different kinds of poems, and further talk on different styles in writing. His sixth chapter, on ornament in meter and prose, presents what he has up to this left unsaid about style. It includes a list of fifty-seven figures of speech (colores verborum) and eighteen figures of thought (colores sententiarum). This is logically followed by the ten attributes of man. The seventh and final chapter gives a long narrative poem of the horrific variety as an example of tragedy and several letters as examples of dictamen.

Such a digest shows better than any generalization a complete confusion of poetic and rhetoric. Poems were to be written according to the formulae of orations; allegory throve. Infinite pains were to be expended on the worthless niceties of conceited metrical structure and rhetorical figures. Garland has neither real poetic nor real rhetoric.

2. Rhetoric as Aureate Language

As to the late middle ages rhetoric had come to mean to all intents nothing more than style, it is frequently personified in picturesque mediaeval allegory, never as being engaged in any useful occupation, but as adding beauty, color, or charm to life. In the Anticlaudianus of Alanus de Insulis, Rhetoric is represented as painting and gilding the pole of the Chariot of Prudence.[116] In the rhymed compendium of universal knowledge which its author, Thomasin von Zirclaria, justly calls Der Wälsche Gast, for learning was indeed a foreign guest in thirteenth century Germany, rhetoric appears in a similar rôle. "Rhetoric," says Thomasin, "clothes our speech with beautiful colors,"[117] and he gives as his authority, "Tulljus, Quintiljan, Sidônjus," although Apollinaris Sidonius seems to be the only one of the trio he had ever read.[118] This theory lived to a vigorous old age. Palmieri, in his Della Vita Civile (1435), defines rhetoric as "the theory of speaking ornamentally."[119] And Lydgate traces all the beauty of rhetoric to Calliope, "that with thyn hony swete sugrest tongis of rethoricyens."[120]

The most complete example, however, of the mediaeval restriction of rhetoric to style, and of the absorption of poetic by rhetoric is afforded by Lydgate in his Court of Sapyence. The passages which refer to rhetoric are given in full because they can otherwise be consulted only in the Caxton edition of 1481 or in the black letter copy printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1510.[121]

O Clyo lady moost facundyous
O ravysshynge delyte of eloquence
O gylted goddes gaye and gloryous
Enspyred with the percynge influence
Of delycate hevenly complacence
Within my mouth let dystyll of thy shoures
And forge my tonge to gladde myn auditoures.

Myn ignoraunce whome clouded hath eclyppes
With thy pure bemes illumynyne all aboute
Thy blessyd brethe let refleyre in my lyppes
And with the dewe of heven thou them degoute
So that my mouth may blowe an encense oute
The redolent dulcour aromatyke
Of thy deputed lusty rhetoryke.

The section of rhetoric.

Dame Rethoryke moder of eloquence
Moost elegaunt moost pure and gloryous
With lust delyte, blysse, honour and reverence
Within her parlour fresshe and precyous
Was set a quene, whose speche delycyous
Her audytours gan to all Joye converte
Eche worde of her myght ravysshe every herte.

And many clerke had lust her for to here
Her speche to them was parfyte sustenance
Eche worde of her depured was so clere
And illumyned with so parfyte pleasaunce
That heven it was to here her beauperlaunce
Her termes gay as facunde soverayne
Catephaton in no poynt myght dystane.

She taught them the crafte of endytynge
Whiche vyces ben that sholde avoyded be
Whiche ben the coulours gay of that connynge
Theyr dyfference and eke theyr properte
Eche thynge endyte how it sholde poynted be
Dystynctyon she gan clare and dyscusse
Whiche is Coma Colym perydus.

Who so thynketh my wrytynge dull and blont
And wolde conceyve the colours purperate
Of Rethoryke, go he to tria sunt
And to Galfryde the poete laureate
To Janneus a clerke of grete estate
Within the fyrst parte of his gramer boke
Of this mater there groundely may he loke.

In Tullius also moost eloquent
The chosen spouse unto this lady free
His gylted craft and gloyre in content
Gay thynges I made eke, yf than lust to see
Go loke the Code also the dygestes thre
The bookes of lawe and of physyke good
Of ornate speche there spryngeth up the flood.

In prose and metre of all kynde ywys
This lady blyssed had lust for to playe
With her was blesens Richarde pophys
Farrose pystyls clere lusty fresshe and gay
With maters vere poetes in good array
Ovyde, Omer, Vyrgyll, Lucan, Orace
Alane, Bernarde, Prudentius and Stace.

Throughout this passage rhetoric is never mentioned in any other context than one of pleasure to the ear of the auditor. Of the three aims of rhetoric which Cicero had phrased as docere, delectare, et movere, only the delectare remains in the rhetoric of Lydgate. From his initial invocation to Clio, in which he prays that his style be illuminated with the aromatic sweetness of her rhetoric, to the passage in which he refers to his own writings for examples of ornate speech Lydgate never refers to the logic or the structure of persuasive public speech. Rhetoric, in Lydgate, is not used in its classical sense, but as being synonymous with ornate language--style. Here and here only does Lydgate discuss any part of rhetoric in its classical implications. When, in his poem, he discusses the craft of writing as including "coulours gay," he refers to the figures of classical rhetoric--Cicero's "colores verborum." And when he refers to the "coma, colum, perydus," he is harking back to the classical divisions of the rhythmical members of a sentence: the "comma, colon, et periodus." In the classical treatises on rhetoric this division of "elocutio" or style into two parts: (1) figures of speech and language, and (2) rhythmical movement of the sentence, is universal. Lydgate's rhetoric is thus a development of only one element of classical rhetoric--style.

But Lydgate's rhetoric was not only restricted to style; it was expanded to include the style of the poets as well as that of the prose writers, as the last stanza shows. If Lydgate thought poetry to include anything more than this style, he does not say so.

Lydgate does not present an isolated case of this meaning of rhetoric. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England the term rhetoric and its related words regularly connoted skill in diction. A rhetor was one who was a master of style.[122] Henryson, for instance, calls rhetoric sweet, and Dunbar, ornate.[123] Chaucer admired Petrarch for his "rethorike sweete" which illumined the poetry of Italy,[124] and was himself in turn loved by Lydgate as the "nobler rethor poete of brytagne,"[125] who is called "floure of rethoryk in Englisshe tong," by John Walton.[126] According to James I both Gower and Chaucer sat on the steps of rhetoric,[127] while Lyndesay includes Lydgate in the number and asserts that all three rang the bell of rhetoric.[128] Bokenham calls Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate the "first rethoryens";[129] and as late as 1590, Chaucer and Lydgate are called "The first that ever elumined our language with flowers of rethorick eloquence."[130] The entire period was thus in substantial agreement that rhetoric was honeyed speech exhibited at its best in the works of the poets.

The best example of this view of rhetoric is furnished by Stephen Hawes in his delectable educational allegory of the seven liberal arts which he calls The Pastime of Pleasure (1506). He begins, of course, with an apology for

Thys lytle boke, opprest wyth rudenes
Without rethorycke or coloure crafty;
Nothinge I am experte in poetry
As the monke of Bury, floure of eloquence.[131]

O mayster Lydgate, the most dulcet sprynge
Of famous rethoryke, wyth balade ryall.[132]

The poem records the experiences of Grande Amour, who, accompanied by two greyhounds, seeks knowledge. After visiting Grammar and Logic in their rooms, he goes upstairs to see Dame Rhetoric. Rhetoric sits in a chamber gaily glorified and strewn with flowers. She is very large, finely gowned and garlanded with laurel. About her are mirrors and the fragrant fumes of incense. Grande Amour asks her to paint his tongue with the royal flowers of delicate odors, that he may gladden his auditors and "moralize his literal senses." She pretends to understand him, but when he asks her what rhetoric is,

Rethoryke, she sayde, was founde by reason
Man for to governe wel and prudently;
His wordes to ordre his speche to purify.[133]

It has five parts,--and so on. The introduction, however, to the beflowered dwelling place of the fair lady and the request of Grande Amour to have his tongue perfumed are much more characteristic of the temper of the age than are the professed reasons for the origin of rhetoric. Rhetoric in their hearts they felt to be gay paint and sweet smells.

Hawes's five parts have the same names as the five parts of classical rhetoric.[134] The first part of rhetoric, he says, is "Invencyon," the classical inventio. It is derived from the "V inward wittes," discernment, fantasy, imagination, judgment, and memory. Anyone, however, who is familiar with the inventio of classical rhetoric, concerned as it is with exploring subject matter, will be at a loss to see the connection with Hawes. In fact the whole chapter, and the one following, are devoted not to rhetoric, but to the theory of poetical composition, and explanation of the allegorical conception of the end of poetry, and a defense of the poets against detractors. The classical term inventio is thus lifted over bodily, with both change and extension in meaning, from rhetoric to poetic.

In the chapter on Disposicion, instead of discussing the arrangement of a speech, Hawes devotes most of his space to praise of the rhetoricians because they turned the guidance of the drifting barge, the world, over to competent pilots, the kings. Here, perhaps, Hawes is using the word rhetorician more closely than usual in its classical sense. He may even have known that the fact of kingship had robbed rhetoric of its purpose. At any rate, his Disposicion is like the classical dispositio only in name, and again it is transferred from rhetoric to poetic.

Pronunciation (pronuntiatio), or delivery, of course applies to either poets or orators. But whereas classical writers applied it to the orator's use of voice and gesture, Hawes applies it only to the poet's reading aloud. He recommends that when a poet reads his verses, he should make his voice dolorous in bewailing a woeful tragedy, and his countenance glad in joyful matter. It is important, however, that the reading poet be not boisterous or unmannered. Let him be moderate, gentle, and seemly. The final section, that on memory, comes closer to its classical sense than does any other. Here the mnemonic system of "places," supposedly invented by Simonides, is explained obscurely. Even more obscure is its applicability to Hawes's subject.

It is noteworthy that the chapter on Elocution (elocutio), or style, far outweighs all the others in scope and bulk. Of the 108 seven-line stanzas which Hawes devotes to rhetoric, 20 praise the poets; 7 define rhetoric; 13 explain inventio; 12, dispositio; 40, elocutio; 8, pronuntiatio; and 8, memoria. "Elocusyon," says Hawes, "exorneth the mater."

The golden rethoryke is good refeccion
And to the reader ryght consolation.[135]

Rhetoric and style, to Hawes and his contemporaries, mean the same thing. Both have to do, in Hawes's own language, with choosing aromatic words, dulcet speech, sweetness, delight; they are redolent of incense; they gleam like carbuncles in the darkness; they are painted in hard gold. But beyond these picturesque generalizations there is little trace in Hawes of any discussion of style such as one would find in a classical treatise. A few figures of speech are mentioned, but not dwelt upon. Hawes consistently confines himself to poetry. Tully, the only orator mentioned, shares a line with Virgil. The main concern is with the devices used by the poets to cloak truth under the veil of allegory. Rhetoric is an adjunct of the poet.

my mayster Lydgate veryfyde
The depured rethoryke in Englysh language;
To make our tongue so clerely puryfyed
That the vyle termes should nothing arage
As like a pye to chatter in a cage,
But for to speke with rethoryke formally.[136]

In a word, the whole traditional division of rhetoric is transferred to poetry, and at the same time both rhetoric and poetic are limited to the single part which they have in common--diction. The style cultivated by this focus is ornamental and elaborate. If Lydgate or Hawes had believed that rhetoric included more than aureate language, surely the scope of their treatises would have afforded them opportunity to correct this impression. Each of them is endeavoring to present a compendium of universal knowledge according to the conventional analysis of the seven liberal arts. Illustrative details might be omitted, but not important sections of the subject matter.

The meanings of words change, and with such changes we have no quarrel. It is important, however, that we should know what the English middle ages meant by rhetoric if we are to appreciate how powerful was the tradition of the middle ages and in what direction it influenced the literary criticism of the English renaissance. To resume, the middle ages thought of poetry as being composed of two elements: a profitable subject matter (doctrina), and style (eloquentia). The profitable subject matter was theoretically supplied by the allegory. This will be discussed in the second part of this study, as historically being a phase of critical discussions of the purpose of poetry. The English middle ages, as has been shown, considered style synonymous with rhetoric.

Chapter VI
Logic and Rhetoric in the English Renaissance

1. The Content of Classical Rhetoric Carried Over into Logic

But among serious people the painted and perfumed Dame Rethoryke of Lydgate and Hawes was in disrepute. She had turned over her business in life to the kings and devoted too much attention to ornament. Such a serious person was Rudolph Agricola, who, in his treatise on logic, accepted the mediaeval tradition that rhetoric was concerned only with smoothness and ornament of speech and all that went toward captivating the ears, and straightway picked up all the serious purpose and thoughtful content of classical rhetoric which mediaeval rhetoric had abandoned, to hand them over to logic. Consequently, in a work which he significantly entitles De inventione dialectica, he defines logic as the art of speaking in a probable manner concerning any topic which can be treated in a speech.[137] According to Agricola's scheme, rhetoric retains "elocutio," style; and logic carries over "inventio," as his title shows, and "dispositio." His whole-hearted disgust with the stylistic extremes of rhetoric he shows by denying to oratory any aim of pleasing and moving. Of Cicero's threefold purpose, to teach, to please, and to move, he retains only teaching as pertinent to effective public speech. "Docere," to teach, he uses in the classical sense which includes proof as well as instruction. Thus he says it has two parts: exposition and argument.[138] The parts of a speech he reduces to the minimum proposed by Aristotle: the statement and the proof. Thus although Agricola admits that rhetoric is most beautiful, he will have none of her.

Following this lead, Thomas Wilson, the English rhetorician and statesman, defines logic and rhetoric as follows:

Logic is occupied about all matters, and doeth plainlie and nakedly set forth with apt wordes the sum of things, by way of argumentation. Rhetorike useth gaie painted sentences, and setteth forthe those matters with freshe colours and goodly ornaments, and that at large.[139]

According to Agricola and Wilson logic has supplanted rhetoric in finding all possible means of persuasion in any subject. Following Peter Ramus,[140] Wilson finds that logic has two parts: judicium, "Framyng of thinges aptlie together, and knittyng words for the purpose accordynglie," and inventio, "Findyng out matter, and searchyng stuffe agreable to the cause."[141] Hermagoras and others had in antiquity considered judicium, or judgment, as a part of rhetoric,[142] although Quintilian thought it less a part of rhetoric than necessary to all parts.[143] Inventio, of course, has always been the most important part of rhetoric. This same carrying over of the content of classical rhetoric into logic is further illustrated by Abraham Fraunce, who divides his Lawiers Logic (1588) into two parts: invention and disposition.

2. The Persistence of the Mediaeval Tradition of Rhetoric

But while the survival of the mediaeval notion that rhetoric was concerned mainly with style thus gave over in the English Renaissance inventio and dispositio to logic, there naturally remained nothing of classical rhetoric but elocutio and pronuntiatio. A brief survey of the English rhetorics of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries will show that this was the case. Richard Sherry devotes an entire book to style in his "Treatise of Schemes and Tropes" (1550).[144] He begins by defining "eloquucion, the third part of Rhetoric," as the dressing up of thought. Rhetoric to him had not in theory become style, but style is the only part which he finds interesting enough to treat. His schemes and tropes are of course the rhetorical figures; but let him explain them in his own artless way. "A scheme is the fashion of a word, sayyng or sentence, otherwyse wrytten or spoken then after the vulgar and comon usage. A trope is a movynge and changynge of a worde or sentence, from thyr owne significacion into another which may agree with it by a similitude." Henry Peacham's Garden of Eloquence, Conteyning the Figures of Grammer and Rhetoric (1577) likewise deals only with the rhetorical figures.

In the anonymous, The Artes of Logike and Rhetorike (1584),[145] rhetoric is denned as "an arte of speaking finelie. It hath two parts, garnishing of speach, called Eloqution, and garnishing of the manner of utterance, called Pronunciation."[146] Thus by definition rhetoric includes only style and delivery. Under garnishing of speech the author treats only the rhetorical figures. This restriction of style to figures is characteristic. The rhythm of prose upon which classical treatises on style lavished such enthusiastic pains is practically ignored in those English treatises. The comma, colon, and periodus which to classical authors signified rhythmical units in the sentence movement had already come to mean to most people only marks of punctuation.[147] Garnishing of utterance Fenner does not discuss at all.

In The Arcadian Rhetorike (1588), Abraham Fraunce treats both. "Rhetorike," he says, "is an Art of Speaking. It hath two parts, Eloqution and Pronuntiation. Eloqution is the first part of Rhetorike, concerning the ordering and trimming of speech. It hath two parts, Congruity and Braverie." Congruity (as pertaining more to grammar) he does not discuss. "Braverie of speach consisteth of tropes or turnings, and in figures or fashionings."[148] The remainder of the first book deals with meter and verse forms, baldly of prose rhythm, epizeuxis, conceited verses, and various rhetorical figures. The second book deals with the voice and gestures. This rhetoric of Fraunce's, then, complements his Lawiers Logike of the same year, the latter dealing with the finding out and arrangement of arguments in a speech, and the former with style and delivery. Rhetoric is thus concerned only with stylistic artifice in verse as well as in prose.

The same tradition is upheld by Charles Butler, who in his Latin school rhetoric (1600) defines rhetoric as the art of ornate speech and divides it into elocutio, a discussion of the tropes and figures, and pronuntiatio, the use of voice and gesture.[149] And John Barton is worse. In his Art of Rhetorick (1634) he says:

Rhetorick is the skill of using daintie words, and comely deliverie, whereby to work upon men's affections. It hath two parts, adornation and action. Adornation consisteth in the sweetness of the phrase, and is seen in tropes and figures.

He continues:

There are foure kinds of tropes, substitution, comprehension, comparation, simulation. The affection of a trope is the quality whereby it requires a second resolution. These affections are five: abuse, duplication, continuation, superlocution, sublocution. A figure is an affecting kind of speech without consideration had of any borrowed sense. A figure is two-fold: relative and independent,

and he names over in his jargon the six figures which are of each kind.[150] If this be rhetoric, perhaps there was justification for John Smith's The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvailed (1657), which continued the fallacious tradition by dividing rhetoric into elocution and pronunciation.

This perversion of rhetoric which considered it as concerned only with style, or aureate language, was not restricted to the school books. The popular use of rhetoric as synonymous with "fine honeyed speech,"[151] is seen in a passage from Old Fortunatus, where it carries the modern connotation of a meretricious substitute for genuine feeling, as where Agripyne says,

"Methinks a soldier is the most faithful lover of all men else; for his affection stands not upon compliment. His wooing is plain home spun stuff; there's no outlandish thread in it, no rhetoric."[152]

3. The Recovery of Classical Rhetoric

"This grew speedily to an excesse; for men began to hunt more after wordes than matter, and more after the choisenesse of the Phrase and the round and cleane composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their workes with tropes and figures, then after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgement."[153]

Sooner or later the school books had to reform. The Latin school rhetoric of Thomas Vicars (1621), after one has perused the treatise of his predecessors and contemporaries, is so conservative as to appear startling. It has all the air of a novelty. Yet all he does is to return to the classical tradition by defining rhetoric as the art of correct or effective speech having five parts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio[154]. And Thomas Farnaby, whose Index Rhetoricus appeared in six editions between 1633 and 1654, gives a fairly proportioned treatment of inventio, dispositio, elocutio, and actio. Memoria he omits, following here, as elsewhere, the sound leadership of Vossius.

4. Channels of Classical Theory

Servatus Lupus (805-862), Abbot of Ferrieres and a learned man, was unusual in his scholarship; for he knew not only the rhetoric Ad Herennium which was believed to be Cicero's but also the De oratore and fragments of Quintilian.[155] The current rhetorical treatises of the middle ages were Cicero's De inventione, and the Ad Herennium. The De oratore was used but slightly, and the Brutus and the Orator not at all.[156] What little classical rhetoric there is in Stephen Hawes was derived from the Ad Herennium.

The survival and popularity of the Ad Herennium during this period is one of the most interesting phenomena of rhetorical history. Of the classical treatises on rhetoric which survive to-day it undoubtedly arouses the least interest and can contribute the least to modern education or criticism. Yet it is the most characteristic Latin rhetoric we possess. It is a text-book of rhetoric which was used in the Roman schools. In fact, Cicero's De inventione is so much like it that some suspect that Cicero's notes which he took in school got into circulation and forced the publication of his professor's lectures. Aristotle's philosophy of rhetoric, Cicero's charming dialog on his profession, Quintilian's treatise on the teaching of rhetoric--none of these is a text-book. The rhetoric Ad Herennium is. It is clear and orderly in its organization. It defines all the technical terms which it uses, and illustrates its principles. As one might expect, it delights in over-analysis, in categories and sub-categories, the four kinds of causes, the three virtues of the narratio. In the hands of a skilled teacher of composition, however, and with much class-room practice, it undoubtedly would get rhetoric taught more effectively than would more philosophical or literary treatises. Thus in Guarino's school at Ferrara (1429-1460) the Ad Herennium was regarded as the quintessence of pure Ciceronian doctrine of oratory, and was made the starting point and standing authority in teaching rhetoric. In more advanced classes it was supplemented by the De oratore, Orator, and what was known of Quintilian.[157] The Ciceronianus of Erasmus testifies that by the next century the scholarship of the renaissance had discovered that the Ad Herennium was not from the pen of Cicero, and that the De inventione was considered apologetically by its famous author, who wrote his De oratore to supersede the more youthful treatise.[158] But six years after the publication of the Ciceronianus of Erasmus, the edition of Cicero's Opera published in Basel in 1534 still incorporates the Ad Herennium, and Thomas Wilson in England owes most of his first book and part of the second of his Arte of Rhetorique to its anonymous author, whom he believed to be Cicero. For instance in his section on Devision as a part of a speech, Wilson says, "Tullie would not have a devision to be made, of, or above three partes at the moste, nor lesse then three neither, if neede so required."[159]

"Tullie" says no such thing. Indeed, Cicero never considers divisio as one of the parts of a speech. But the Ad Herennium does make divisio a part of a speech,[160] and does require not over three parts.[161] As late as 1612, Thomas Heywood quotes the authority of "Tully, in his booke Ad Caium Herennium."[162]

The relative importance of Cicero's rhetorical works to the middle ages is well illustrated by a count of the manuscripts preserved. In the libraries of Europe today there exist seventy-nine manuscripts of the De inventione, eighty-three of the Ad Herennium, forty of the De oratore, fourteen of the Brutus, and twenty of the Orator.[163] Thus in the University of Bologna the study of rhetoric was based on the De inventione and the Ad Herennium.[164] The De inventione is the source for Alcuin's rhetorical writings, and was the only Ciceronian rhetoric known to Abelard or Dante. Brunette Latini translated seventeen chapters of it into Italian.[165] Although mutilated codices of the De oratore and the Orator were known to Servatus Lupus and John of Salisbury, complete manuscripts of these most important works were not known previous to 1422.[166] The Ad Herennium and the De inventione were first printed by Jenson at Venice in 1470. The first book printed at Angers (1476) was the Ad Herennium under the usual mediaeval title of the Rhetorica nova. The first edition of the De oratore was printed in the monastery of Subaco about 1466. The Brutus first appeared in Rome (1469) in the same year which witnessed the first edition of the Orator.[167] Before its first printing the Orator was used as a reference book for advanced students by Guarino in his school at Ferrara.

Castiglione's indebtedness to the De oratore is well known, but few notice that his first paragraphs are a close paraphrase of Cicero's dedicatory paragraphs of the Orator.

But in England the first reference to the Orator appears in Ascham's Scholemaster (1570) one hundred years after its first printing.[168] Thus the Ciceronian rhetoric of the middle ages was derived from the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium and from the youthful De inventione, not from the best rhetorical treatises of Cicero as we know them. Moreover the mediaeval tradition persisted in England for over a hundred years after it had been displaced in Italy.

The Rhetoric of Aristotle was known to the middle ages only through a Latin translation by Hermanus Allemanus (c. 1256) of Alfarabi's commentary. The Greek text was first published in the Aldine Rhetores Graeci (1508), and was for the first time incorporated in the works of Aristotle published in Basel, 1531. As early as 1478, however, the Latin version by George of Trebizond had been published in Venice.[169] This was frequently reissued in the Opera of Aristotle together with the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, long believed to be the work of Aristotle, in the Latin translation by Filelfo, and the Poetics in Pazzi's translation. As the true Rhetoric of Aristotle, known to the renaissance as the Ars rhetoricorum ad Theodecten, was so frequently published with the spurious Rhetorica, references to Aristotle's Rhetoric in the sixteenth century are likely to be confusing. Thus it is difficult to tell whether the Rhetoric required to be read by Oxford students in the fifteenth century[170] is the one or the other. The surprising thing is, however, with all the editions and translations of Aristotle which were available, that the Rhetoric of Aristotle had so slight an influence on English rhetorical theory.

The De institutione oratoria of Quintilian was too long to be preserved intact. From the fourth to the seventh centuries, however, it was well known and highly valued by Hilary of Poitiers, St. Jerome, and Rufinus, and closely followed and abridged in their rhetorical works by Cassiodorus, Julius Victor, and Isidore of Seville. From the eighth century until Poggio discovered the complete manuscript at St. Gall in 1416, the world knew only mutilated fragments of the text. On the basis of an incomplete manuscript Etienne de Rouen prepared in the twelfth century an abridgment of Quintilian, and soon after an anonymous enthusiast made a selection of the Flores Quintilianei.[171] Thus, while the rhetorical works of Aristotle were practically unknown, and the Ciceronian tradition rested on the De inventione and the Ad Herennium, the rhetorical ideas of Quintilian, as preserved in abridgments and in the treatises of Cassiodorus and Isidore, passed current throughout the middle ages. When the first edition was published by Campano in 1470, the world of scholars welcomed a familiar friend.

Other classical critical treatises filtered into England even more slowly. The De compositione verborum of Dionysius of Halicarnassus received its first printing at the hands of Aldus in 1508 and was edited again by Estienne in 1546, and by Sturm in 1550. Yet had Ascham not been a friend of Sturm's, it might not have been heard of in England as early as 1570, when the Scholemaster was published. Ascham says it is worthy of study, but shows no great familiarity with the text.[172]

The De sublimitate of pseudo-Longinus has a similar history in England. Published by Robortelli in Basel in 1554, it was reissued three times, once with a Latin translation, before Langhorne edited it (1636) at Oxford. No Elizabethan writer alludes to it or seems to have been aware of its existence until Thomas Farnaby cites it as an authority for his Index Rhetoricus (1633). The advance of classical scholarship in England is indeed no better illustrated than by a comparison of Farnaby's cited sources with those of Thomas Wilson (1553). Wilson knew and used Cicero, Quintilian, Plutarch, Basil the Great, and Erasmus. Farnaby cites an imposing list of sources.

"Greek: Aristotle, Hermogenes, Sopatrus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demetrius Phal,[173] Menander, Aristides, Apsinus, Longinus De sublimitate, Theonus, Apthonius. Latin: Cicero, Quintilian, Martianus Capella, Curio Fortunatus, Mario Victorino, Victore, Emporio, Augustino, Ruffinus, Trapezuntius, P. Ramus, L. Vives, Soarez, J. C. Scaliger, Sturm, Strebaeus, Kechermann, Alstedius, N. Caussinus, J. G. Voss, A. Valladero."

Whether Farnaby had read the works of these gentlemen through from cover to cover is another matter. He at least knew their names, and had read in Vossius, whose footnotes would refer him to all these sources as well as to others, both classical and mediaeval.

With this evidence before us it is easy to understand why the traditions of the English middle ages persisted so long in the literary criticism of the English renaissance. The theories of rhetoric and of poetry in mediaeval England had in the first place, because of remoteness and the lack of easy transportation, become farther and farther removed from such classical tradition as was preserved in the Mediterranean countries. In the second place, the recovery of classical criticism in the Italian renaissance antedated by a hundred years the domestication of classical theory in England. Not until the seventeenth century, as has been shown, did rhetoric in England come again to mean what it had in classical antiquity. Subsequent chapters will show that classical theories of poetry, as published and interpreted by the Italian critics, made almost as slow head against English mediaeval tradition.

Chapter VII
Renaissance Poetic

1. The Reestablishment of the Classical Tradition

In concluding his authoritative study, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, Spingarn asserts that before the sixteenth century, "Poetic theory had been nourished upon the rhetorical and oratorical treatises of Cicero, the moral treatises of Plutarch (especially those upon the reading of poets and the education of youth), the Institutions Oratoriae of Quintilian, and the De Legendis Gentilium Libris of Basil the Great."[174] With the turn of the century, he goes on to say, a great change was brought about by the publication of the classical critical writings, especially the Poetics of Aristotle. Then the mediaeval criteria of doctrina and eloquentia were superseded by many new ones.

The development of Aristotelian poetic in the Italian renaissance is a separate inquiry, which has been made extensively, and need not be gone into here. The results which bear upon the present inquiry may be summarized as follows:

The recovery of Aristotle's Poetics brought about a complete change in poetical theory, and stimulated in Italy a great body of critical writing and discussion, the results of which did not reach England until almost a hundred years later.

The Poetics had been known to the middle ages only through a Latin abridgment by Hermannus Allemanus. This was derived from a Hebrew translation from the Arabic of Averroes, who, in turn, knew only a Syriac translation of the Greek.[175] Although the Poetics was not included in the Aldine Aristotle (1495-8), the Latin abstract by Hermannus was printed with Alfarabi's commentary on the Rhetoric for the first time at Venice (1481). Valla published a Latin translation in 1498. The Greek text was first published in the Aldine Rhetores Graeci (1508)[176] badly edited by Ducas. A Latin translation made by Pazzi in 1536 appears in the Basel edition of Aristotle's Opera (1538) with Filelfo's version of the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, falsely attributed to Aristotle, and George of Trebizond's (Trapezuntius) translation of the Rhetoric. Robortelli edited it in 1548. Segni translated it in 1549. It was edited again by Maggi in 1550, by Vettori in 1560, by Castelvetro in 1570, and by Piccolomini in 1575. It had inspired the De Poeta (1559) of Minturno and the Poetics (1561) of Scaliger. But in England its critical theories were ignored before Ascham, who cites them in the Scholemaster (1570), and never elucidated before Sidney's Defense of Poesie (c. 1583, pub. 1595).

But with all the changes which were worked in the literary criticism of the renaissance by the recovery of Aristotle's Poetics, renaissance theories of poetry were nevertheless tinged with rhetoric. Vossler has summarized renaissance theories of the nature of poetry as passing through three stages: of theology, of oratory, and finally of rhetoric and philology.[177] While the influence of Aristotle is most clearly seen in the new emphasis on plot construction and characterization, the importance the renaissance attached to style is in no small measure a survival of the mediaeval tradition of classical rhetoric. Moreover, as Spingarn has pointed out, there was a tendency in the renaissance for the classical theories of poetry to be accepted as rules which must be followed by those who would compose poetry. If a poet followed these rules and modeled his poem on great poems of classical antiquity, some critics suggested, he could not go far wrong. Thus one should follow the precepts of Aristotle for theory, and imitate Virgil for epic and Seneca for tragedy. The rhetorical character of these poetical models is significant. Both are stylists, of a distinct literary flavor. Both recommended themselves to the renaissance because they too were imitators of earlier literary models.

Although with good taste as well as classical erudition Ascham preferred Sophocles and Euripides to the oratorical and sententious Seneca, his view was not shared by the renaissance. Scaliger, preoccupied as he was with style, found his ideal of tragedy not in the plays of the great Greeks, but in the closet dramas of the declamatory Spaniard. Seneca appealed to the renaissance not only on account of his verbal dexterity and point, but also on account of his moral maxims or sententiae. In England the two greatest literary critics, Sidney and Jonson, followed Scaliger in this high regard for Seneca. Sidney found only one tragedy in England, Gorbuduc, modeled as it should be on his dramas. Its speeches are stately, its phrases high sounding, and its moral lesson delightfully taught.[178] And Jonson conceived the essentials of tragedy to be those elements found in Seneca: "Truth of argument, dignity of person, gravity and height of elocution, fullness and frequency of sentence."

The middle ages conceived of poetry as being compounded of profitable subject-matter and beautiful style. The English renaissance never entirely evacuated this position. Consequently the Aristotelian doctrine that the essence of poetry is imitation was either entertained simultaneously, as in Sidney, or interpreted to mean the same thing, as in Jonson. The commoner renaissance idea of imitation is not that of Aristotle, but that of Plutarch, whose speaking picture so often appears in the critical treatises.

Robertelli thought poetic might be either in prose or in verse if it were an imitation; Lucian, Apuleius, and Heliodorus were to him poets.[179] Scaliger, on the other hand, insisted that a poet makes verses. Lucan is a poet; Livy a historian.[180] Castelvetro probably came nearest to Aristotle in asserting that Lucian and Boccaccio are poets though in prose, although verse is a more fitting garment for poetry than is prose.[181] Vossius anticipates Prickard's explanation of Aristotle by defining poetry as the art of imitating actions in metrical language. To him verse alone does not make poetry. Herodotus in verse would remain a historian; but no prose work can be poetry.[182] These are only a few examples typical of the general tendency which Spingarn has so thoroughly studied.

2. Rhetorical Elements

This tendency to follow Aristotle in allowing that the vehicle of verse was not characteristic of poetry tended to preclude any vital distinction between rhetoric and poetic. The renaissance had inherited from the middle ages the belief that poetry was composed of two parts: a profitable subject matter (doctrina) and style (eloquentia). If the definition goes no further, then the only difference between the poet and the orator lies in the Ciceronian dictum that the poet was more restricted in his use of meter. Consequently, when Aristotle's theory that poems could be written in either prose or verse was accepted, there remained no stylistic difference at all. In fact, there is very little. But throughout the middle ages this common focus on style had led to undue consideration of style as ornament. In the renaissance this same tendency appears in Guevara, for instance, and in Lyly. The Euphuistic style, as Morris Croll has pointed out, is more largely than was formerly supposed to be the case, derived from mediaeval rhetoric.[183]

In the theoretical treatises on poetry produced on the continent there is frequent use of rhetorical terms. It was to be expected that scholars whose education had been largely rhetorical should carry over the vocabulary of rhetoric into what was on the rediscovery of the Poetics practically a new science. The rhetorical influence is readily recognized in Vida's preoccupation with the mechanics of poetry and in Scaliger's over-analysis and extensive treatment of the rhetorical figures, the high, low, and mean styles, the three elements (material, form, and execution) of poetry. Lombardus makes poetry include oratory.[184] Maggi[185] and Tifernas[186] echo Cicero that the poet and the orator are the nearest neighbors, differing only in that the poet is slightly more restricted by meter. J. Pontanus insists that epideictic prose and poetry have the same material,[187] that poets should learn from the precepts of rhetoric to discriminate in their choice of words.[188]

As an interpretation of classical doctrine this is not illegitimate; but Pontanus runs into confusion by applying to the narrative of epic the narratio of classical rhetoric, which meant the lawyer's statement of facts. Confusing the narratio of oratory with narrative, Pontanus says:

There are three virtues of a narration, brevity, probability and perspicuity. The epic poet should diligently strive to attain the second and third, and may learn how to do it from the masters of rhetoric.[189]

Thus a poet should seek in an epic the same qualities which an orator is supposed by classical rhetorics to strive for in the statement of facts of his speech.[190] Furthermore, says Pontanus, one can write very good poetry by paraphrasing orations in verse.[191] No wonder Luis Vives complained in his De Causis Corruptarum Artium,

The moderns confound the arts by reason of their resemblance, and of two that are very much opposed to each other make a single art. They call rhetoric grammar, and grammar rhetoric, because both treat of language. The poet they call orator, and the orator poet, because both put eloquence and harmony into their discourses.[192]

From this brief summary, derived for the most part from the exhaustive studies of Vossler and Spingarn, one may recognize some of the rhetorical elements in the theories of poetry current in the Italian renaissance. The Aristotelian studies of the Italian scholars very largely accomplished the overthrow of the mediaeval theories of poetry and the re-establishment of the sounder critical theories of classical antiquity. Their service to subsequent criticism has been so great and their critical thinking on the whole so sound that it may seem ungracious to call attention to a few cases where they were unable to shake themselves entirely free from the mediaeval tradition of classical rhetoric.