Chapter 7

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

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 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

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 classical 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 classical 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 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.