Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance Part 4

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 cla.s.sical rhetoric.[134] The first part of rhetoric, he says, is "Invencyon," the cla.s.sical _inventio_. It is derived from the "V inward wittes,"

discernment, fantasy, imagination, judgment, and memory. Anyone, however, who is familiar with the _inventio_ of cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical _dispositio_ only in name, and again it is transferred from rhetoric to poetic.

p.r.o.nunciation (_p.r.o.nuntiatio_), or delivery, of course applies to either poets or orators. But whereas cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical 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, _p.r.o.nuntiatio_; 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 cla.s.sical 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 a.n.a.lysis of the seven liberal arts. Ill.u.s.trative 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 Cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical rhetoric which mediaeval rhetoric had abandoned, to hand them over to logic. Consequently, in a work which he significantly ent.i.tles _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 t.i.tle 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical rhetoric into logic is further ill.u.s.trated 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 cla.s.sical rhetoric but _elocutio_ and _p.r.o.nuntiatio_. 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 p.r.o.nunciation."[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 cla.s.sical treatises on style lavished such enthusiastic pains is practically ignored in those English treatises. The _comma, colon_, and _periodus_ which to cla.s.sical 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 p.r.o.nuntiation. Eloqution is the first part of Rhetorike, concerning the ordering and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 _p.r.o.nuntiatio_, 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, subst.i.tution, 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 p.r.o.nunciation.

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 pa.s.sage from _Old Fortunatus_, where it carries the modern connotation of a meretricious subst.i.tute 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 Cla.s.sical Rhetoric

A half century before Smith unveiled the mysteries of rhetoric, Bacon had in his _Advancement of Learning_ (1605) pointed out the fallacies of the renaissance obsession with style. He briefly traces the causes of the renaissance study of language and adds:

"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 ill.u.s.tration 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 cla.s.sical tradition by defining rhetoric as the art of correct or effective speech having five parts: _inventio_, _dispositio_, _elocutio_, _memoria_, and _p.r.o.nuntiatio_[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 Cla.s.sical Theory

This perversion of rhetorical theory in the middle ages and early renaissance had resulted not from mere wrong-headedness on the part of the rhetoricians, but from the limited knowledge of cla.s.sical tradition during the middle ages. Especially was this true in those parts of western Europe, such as England, which were remote from the Mediterranean countries which better preserved the heritage of Greece and Rome.

Moreover, the most important cla.s.sical treatises on the theory of poetry--by Aristotle and Longinus--were almost unknown throughout the middle ages, and the rhetorical writings of Cicero and Quintilian were known only in fragments.

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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical 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 ill.u.s.trates its principles. As one might expect, it delights in over-a.n.a.lysis, 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 cla.s.s-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 cla.s.ses it was supplemented by the _De oratore, Orator_, and what was known of Quintilian.[157] The _Ciceronia.n.u.s_ 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 _Ciceronia.n.u.s_ 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]