to flourish in the schools. Patrizzi was forgotten; if Ramus and Vives
had some followers (such as Francisco Sanchez and Keckermann), they
were generally held up to odium by the traditionalists. In the end,
Rhetoric found a supporter in philosophy when Campanella made the
following declaration in his _Rational Philosophy_: "_quodammodo Magiae
portiuncula, quae affectus animi moderator et per ipsos voluntatem ciet
ad quaecumque vult sequenda vel fugienda._"[10] Baumgarten owed to it
his tripartition of Æsthetic into heuristic, methodology and semeiotic
(invention, disposition and elocution), adopted later by Meier. Among
Meier's numerous works is a little book entitled _Theoretic Doctrine
of Emotional Disturbances in General_,[11] considered by him to be a
psychological introduction to æsthetic doctrine. On the other hand,
Immanuel Kant in his _Critique of Judgment_ observes that eloquence, in
the sense of _ars oratoria_ or art of persuasion by means of beautiful
appearance and dialectical form, must be distinguished from beautiful
speaking (_Wohlredenheit)_; and that the art of oratory, playing upon
the weakness of men to gain its own ends, "is worthy of no esteem"
(_gar keiner Achtungwürdig)_[12] But in the schools it flourished in
many celebrated compilations, including one by the French Jesuit Father
Dominique de Colonne, which was in use until some few decades ago. Even
to-day, in so-called Literary Institutions, we come across survivals of
ancient Rhetoric, notably in chapters devoted to the art of oratory;
and fresh manuals on judicial or sacred eloquence (Ortloff, Whately,
etc.[13]) are actually appearing, though rarely, to-day. Still,
Rhetoric in the ancient sense may be said to have disappeared from the
system of the sciences; to-day no philosopher would dream of following
Campanella in dedicating a special section of rational philosophy to
Rhetoric.
[Sidenote: _Modern signification of Rhetoric. Theory of literary form._]
In compensation for this process, the theory of elocution and beautiful
speech has been in modern times progressively emphasized and thrown
into scientific form. But the idea of such a science is ancient, as we
have seen; and equally ancient is the style of exposition, consisting
in the doctrine of a double form and the concept of ornate form.
[Sidenote: _Concept of ornament._]
The concept of "ornament" must have occurred spontaneously to the mind
as soon as attention was directed to the values of speech by listening
to poets reciting[14] or to oratorical contests in public gatherings.
It must very early have been thought that the difference between
good speaking and bad, or between that which gave more pleasure and
that which gave less, between grave or solemn, and commonplace or
colloquial, consisted in something additional superimposed upon the
canvas of ordinary speech like an embroidery by a skilful orator. These
considerations led the Græco-Roman rhetoricians to adopt the practice,
like the Indians, who arrived at the distinction independently, to
distinguish the bare (ψιλή) or purely grammatical form from another
form containing an addition which they called ornament, κόσμος: _ornatum
est_ (Quintilian will serve, as typical of all the rest) quod perspicuo
ac probabili plus est.[15]
The notion of ornament as something added on from outside forms the
basis of the theory which Aristotle, the philosopher of Rhetoric, gave
of the queen of ornaments, Metaphor. According to him the high pleasure
aroused by metaphor arises from the collocation of different terms
and the discovery of relations between species and genera, producing
"learning and knowledge by means of the genus" (μαθησιν καi γνῶσιν
διὰ τοῦ γένους), and that easy learning which is the greatest of human
pleasures,[16] which amounts to saying that metaphor adds to the
concept under consideration a group of minor incidental cognitions, as
a kind of diversion and relief and pleasant instruction for the mind.
[Sidenote: _Classes of ornament._]
Ornaments were divided and subdivided in a number of different ways.
Aristotle (and previously Isocrates, rather differently) classified
the ornaments which diversify bare or nude form, under the heads of
dialect forms, substitutions and epithets, prolongations, truncations
and abbreviations of words, and other departures from common usage,
and, finally, rhythm and harmony. Substitutions were of four classes:
species for genus; genus for species; species for species; and
proportionate.[17] After Aristotle, elocution was especially studied
by Theophrastus and Demetrius Phalereus; these rhetoricians and their
followers further solidified the classification of ornament by
distinguishing tropes from figures (σχήματα) and dividing figures
into figures of speech (scheimata τῆς λέχεως) and of thought
(τῆς διανοίας), figures of speech into grammatical and rhetorical,
and figures of thought into pathetic and ethic. Substitutions were
divided into fourteen principal forms, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy,
antonomasia, onomatopeia, catachresis, metalepsis, epithet, allegory,
enigma, irony, periphrase, hyperbaton and hyperbole; each divided
into subspecies and contrasted with its relative vice. Figures of
speech amounted to a score or so (repetition, anaphora, antistrophe,
climax, asyndeton, assonance, etc.); figures of thought to about the
same number (interrogation, prosopopœia, ætiopœia, hypotyposis,
commotion, simulation, exclamation, apostrophe, aposiopesis, etc.).
If these divisions have any value as aids to memory in relation to
particular literary forms, considered rationally they are simply
capricious, as is evidenced by the fact that many classes of the ornate
appear now under the heading of tropes, now of figures; sometimes
under figures of speech, then as those of thought, no reason for the
alteration is given except the arbitrary caprice of an individual
rhetorician which so decrees and disposes. And since one function
which may be fulfilled by the rhetorical categories is to point
out the divergence between two ways of expressing the same thing,
one of which is arbitrarily selected as "proper,"[18] it is easy
to see why the ancients defined metaphor as "_verbi vel sermonis a
propria significatione in aliam cum virtute mutatio,_" and figure as
"_conformatio quaedam orationis remota a communi et primum se offerenti
ratione._"[19]
[Sidenote: _The concept of the Fitting._]
So far as we know, antiquity raised no revolt against the theory of
ornament or of double form. We do sometimes hear Cicero, Quintilian,
Seneca and others saying, _Ipsae res verba rapiunt, Pectus est quod
disertos facit et vis mentis, Rem tene, verba sequentur, Curam
verborum rerum volo esse sollicitudinem,_ or _Nulla est verborum nisi
rei cohaerentium virtus._ But these maxims did not bear the weighty
meanings which we moderns might attach to them; they were perhaps in
contradiction with the theory of ornament, but as the contradiction was
unheeded, it was ineffective: they were the protests of common sense,
powerless to combat the fallacies of school doctrine. Moreover, the
latter was fitted with a safety-valve, a sage contrivance to disguise
its inherent absurdity. If the ornate consisted of a _plus,_ in what
degree should it be used? if it gave pleasure, must we not conclude
that the more it were used, the greater the pleasure derived? would its
extravagant use be attended by extravagant pleasure? Herein was peril:
instinctively the rhetoricians hastened to the defence, snatching
up the first weapon that came to hand, namely, the fitting (πρέπον)
Ornament must be used carefully; neither too much too little; _in medio
virtus_; as much as is fitting (ἀλλά πρέπον). Aristotle recommends
a style seasoned with "a certain dose" (δεῑ ἃρα κεκρᾶσθαί πως
τούτοις.) for ornament should be a condiment, not a food (ἤδυσμα, οὐκ
ἒδεσμα). [20] The fitting was a concept quite inconsistent with that of
ornament; it was a rival, and enemy, destined to destroy it. Fitting to
what? to expression of course; but that which is fitting to expression
cannot be called an ornament, an external addition; it coincides with
expression itself. But the rhetoricians contented themselves with
maintaining peaceful relations between the ornate and the fitting,
without troubling to mediate them through a third concept. The
pseudo-Longinus alone in answer to an observation of his predecessor
Cæcilius that more than two or three metaphors must not be used in
the same place, remarked that a larger number ought to be used where
passion (τὰ πάθη) rushes headlong like a torrent, carrying with it as
necessaries (ὡς ἀναγκαῑον) a multitude of such substitutions.[21]
[Sidenote: _The theory of ornament in the Middle Ages and Renaissance._]
Preserved in the compilations of later antiquity (such as the works of
Donatus and Priscian and the celebrated allegorical tract of Marcianus
Capella), and in the compendia of Bede, Rhabanus Maurus and others,
the theory of ornament passed to the Middle Ages. Throughout this
period Rhetoric, Grammar and Logic continued to form the _trivium_ of
the schools. The theory was to some extent favoured in mediæval times
by the fact that writers and scholars made use of a dead language;
this helped to reinforce the idea that beautiful form was not a
spontaneous thing but consisted in an addition or embroidery. Under the
Renaissance the theory continued to flourish and was revived by study
of the best classical sources; to the works of Cicero were added the
_Institutiones_ of Quintilian and the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, with the
host of minor Latin and Greek rhetoricians, amongst whom was Hermogenes
with his celebrated _Ideas,_ brought into fashion by Giulio Camillo.[22]
Even those writers who dared to criticize the organism of ancient
Rhetoric left the theory of ornament unassailed. Vives lamented
over the "exaggerated subtlety of the Greeks" which had multiplied
distinctions to infinity in this matter without diffusing light,[23]
but he never took up a definite stand against the theory of ornament.
Patrizzi was dissatisfied with the insufficient definition of
ornament given by the ancients; but he asserted the existence of
ornaments and metaphors as well as seven different modes of "conjoined
speech,"--narrative, proof, amplification, diminution, ornament with
its contrary, elevation and depression.[24] The school of Ramus
continued to entrust Rhetoric with the "embellishment" of thought.
Owing to the vast extension and intensification of life and literature
in the sixteenth century, it would be easy to quote phrases, as we have
done from ancient authors, asserting the strict dependence of speech
upon the things it wishes to express, and lively attacks on pedants
and pedantic forms and rules for beautiful speech. But what would be
the use? The theory of ornament was always in the background, tacitly
admitted as indisputable by all. Juan de Valdés, for instance, makes
the following confession of stylistic faith: "_Escribo como hablo;
solamente tengo cuidado de usar de vocablos que sinifiquen bien lo
que quiero decir, y dígolo cuanto más llanamente me es posible,
porqué, á mi parecer, en ninguna lengua está bien la afectación._"
But Valdés also says that beautiful language consists "_en que digais
lo que quereis con las menos palabras que pudiéredes, de tal manera
que ... no se pueda quitar ninguna sin ofender á la sentencia, ó
al encarescimiento, ó á la elegancia._"[25] Here it seems that
amplification and elegance are conceived as extraneous to the meaning
or content.--A gleam of truth is visible in Montaigne, who, confronted
by the laboured categories into which rhetoricians divide ornament,
observes: "_Oyez dire Métonymie, Métaphore, Allégorie et aultres tels
noms de la Grammaire; semble il pas qu'on signifie quelque forme de
langage rare et pellegrin? Ce sont tiltres qui touchent le babil de
vostre chambrière._"[26] That is to say, they are anything but language
remote from the _primum se offerens ratio._
[Sidenote: Reductio ad absurdum in the seventeenth century.]
The impossibility of upholding the theory of ornament was first noticed
during the decadence of Italian literature in the seventeenth century,
when literary production became but a play of empty forms, and the
convenient, long violated in practice, was abandoned and forgotten even
in theory, and came to be looked on as a limit arbitrarily imposed on
the fundamental principle of ornamentation. The opponents of that style
loaded with conceits which is known as "secentismo" from its prevalence
in the seventeenth century (Matteo Pellegrini, Orsi and others) felt
the viciousness of the literary production of their day; they were
aware that decadence was due to the fact that literature was no longer
the serious expression of a content; but they were embarrassed by the
reasoning of the champions of bad taste, who were able to demonstrate
that the whole business conformed in every particular with the literary
theory of ornament, the common ground of both parties. In vain did the
former appeal to the "convenient," the "moderate," the "avoidance of
affectation," to ornament as "condiment, not food," and all the other
weapons which had sufficed in times when healthy literary production
and sound æsthetic taste had automatically corrected faulty theory:
the other party replied, there was no reason to be sparing in use
of ornament when it lay in masses ready to hand, or to avoid an
ostentatious display of wit when one had an inexhaustible supply.[27]
[Sidenote: _Polemic concerning the theory of ornament._]
The same reaction against the abuse of ornament, against "Spanish and
Italian conceits" (whose supporters had been Gracian in Spain and
Tesauro in Italy), took place in France. "... _Laissez à l'Italie
De tous ces faux brillants l'éclatante folie"; "Ce que l'on conçoit
bien s'énonce clairement. Et les mots, pour le dire, arrivent
aisément._"[28] Among the sharpest critics of conceits was the Jesuit
Bouhours, already quoted, author of the _Manière de bien penser dans
les œuvres d'esprit._ The rhetorical forms were the subject of warm
controversy. Orsi, on national grounds the opponent of Bouhours (1703),
asserted that all the ornamental devices of wit rested on a middle
term and could be reduced to a rhetorical syllogism, and that wit
consists of a truth which appears false or a falsehood which appears
true.[29] If this controversy produced no great scientific result at
the time, at least it prepared the mind for greater liberty; and, as
we have remarked elsewhere,[30] it may have influenced Vico, who, in
framing his new concept of poetical imagination, recognized that it
necessitated a wholesale reconstruction of the theory of rhetoric
and the conclusion that its figures and tropes are not "caprices of
pleasure" but "necessities of the human mind."[31]
[Sidenote: _Du Marsais and metaphor._]
We find the theory of rhetorical ornament jealously kept intact by
Baumgarten and Meier, while in France it was as vigorously assailed
by César Chesneau du Marsais, who published in 1730 a treatise on
_Tropes_ (the seventh part of his _General Grammar_)[32] wherein he
develops, on the subject of metaphor, the observation already made by
Montaigne: indeed he was perhaps inspired by Montaigne, although he
does not mention his name. Du Marsais remarks that it is said that
figures are modes of speech and turns of expression removed from the
ordinary and common; which is an empty phrase, as good as saying "the
figured differs from the non-figured and figures are figures and not
non-figures." On the other hand it is wholly untrue that figures
are removed from ordinary speech, for "nothing is more natural,
ordinary and common than figures: more figures of speech are used
in the town square on a market-day than in many days of academical
discussion"; and no speech, however short, can be composed entirely of
non-figurative expressions. And Du Marsais gives instances of quite
obvious and spontaneous expressions in which Rhetoric cannot refuse
to recognize the figures of apostrophe, congeries, interrogation,
ellipsis, prosopopœia: "The apostles were persecuted and suffered
their persecutions with patience. What can be more natural than
the description given by St. Paul? _Maledicimur et benedicimus;
persecutionem patimur et sustinemus; blasphemamur et obsecramus._
Yet the apostle makes use of a fine figure of antithesis; cursing is
the opposite to blessing; persecution to endurance; blasphemy to
prayer." But further, the very language of the figure is figured,
since it is a metaphor.--But after such acute observations, Du Marsais
ends by himself becoming confused and defines figures as "manners of
speech differing from others in a particular modification by which it
is possible to reduce each one to a species apart, and give a more
lively, noble or pleasing effect than can be gained by a manner of
speech expressing the same content of thought without such particular
modification."[33]
[Sidenote: _Psychological interpretation._]
But the psychological interpretation of figures of speech, the first
stage towards their æsthetic criticism, was not allowed to drop here.
In his _Elements of Criticism,_ Home says that he had long questioned
whether that part of Rhetoric concerning figures might not be reduced
to rational principles, and had finally discovered that figures consist
in the passional element;[34] he set himself therefore to analyse
prosopopœia, apostrophe and hyperbole in the light of the passional
faculty. From Du Marsais and Home is derived everything of value in the
_Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres_ of Hugh Blair, professor
at Edinburgh University from 1759 onwards;[35] published in book form,
these lectures had an immense vogue in all the schools of Europe
including those of Italy, and replaced advantageously, by their "reason
and good sense," works of a much cruder type. Blair defined figures
in general as "language suggested by imagination or passion."[36]
Similar ideas were promulgated in France by Marmontel in his _Elements
of Literature_.[37] In Italy Cesarotti was contrasting the logical
element or "cypher-terms" of language with the rhetorical element or
"figure-terms," and rational eloquence with imaginative eloquence.[38]
Beccaria, though a shrewd psychological analyst, held to the view of
literary style as "accessory ideas or feelings added to the principal
in any discourse"; that is, he failed to free himself from the
distinction between the intellectual form intended for the expression
of the principal ideas, and the literary form, modifying the first by
the addition of accessory ideas.[39] In Germany an effort was made by
Herder to interpret tropes and metaphors as Vico had done, that is to
say as essential to primitive language and poetry.
[Sidenote: _Romanticism and Rhetoric. Present day._]
Romanticism was the ruin of the theory of ornament, and caused it
practically to be thrown on the scrap-heap, but it cannot be said
to have gone under for good or to have been superseded by a new and
accurately stated theory. The chief philosophers of Æsthetic (not
only Kant, who as we know remained in bondage to the mechanical and
ornamental theory; not only Herder, whose knowledge of art seems to
have been confined to a little music and a great deal of rhetoric;
but such romantic philosophers as Schelling, Solger and Hegel) still
retained the sections devoted to metaphor, trope and allegory for
tradition's sake, without severe scrutiny. Italian Romanticism with
Manzoni at its head destroyed the belief in beautiful and elegant
words, and dealt a blow at Rhetoric: but was it killed by the stroke?
Apparently not, judging by the concessions unconsciously made by the
scholastic treatise-writer Ruggero Bonghi, whose _Critical Letters_
assert the existence of two styles or forms, which at bottom are
nothing else than the plain and the ornate.[40] German schools of
philology have pretty generally accepted the stylistic theory of
Gröber, who divides style into logical (objective) and affective
(subjective):[41] an ancient error masked by terminology borrowed from
the psychological philosophy in fashion at modern universities. In
the same spirit a recent writer rechristens the rhetorical doctrine
of tropes and figures by the title "Doctrine of the Forms of Æsthetic
Apperception," and divides them into the four categories (the ancient
wealth of categories reduced to a paltry four!) of personification,
metaphor, antithesis, and symbol.[42] Biese has devoted an entire
book to metaphor; but one searches it in vain for a serious æsthetic
analysis of this category.[43]
The best scientific criticism of the theory of ornament is found
scattered throughout the writings of De Sanctis, who when lecturing on
rhetoric preached what he called anti-rhetoric.[44] But even here the
criticism is not conducted from a strictly systematic point of view. It
seems to us that the true criticism should be deduced negatively from
the very nature of æsthetic activity, which does not lend itself to
partition; there is no such thing as activity type _a_ or type _b,_ nor
can the same concept be expressed now in one way, now in another. Such
is the only way of abolishing the double monster of bare form which
is, no one knows how, deprived of imagination, and ornate form which
contains, no one knows how, an addition on the side of imagination.[45]
[1] For Gorgias' saying see Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 18.
[2] Cicero, _Orat. ad Brut.,_ introd.
[3] Quintilian, _Inst. orat._ xii. c. i.
[4] Fran. Patrizzi, _Della rhetorica,_ ten dialogues, Venice, 1582,
dial. 7; Tassoni, _Pensieri diversi,_ bk. x. ch. 15.
[5] _De causis corruptarum artium,_ 1531, bk. iv.; _De ratione
dicendi,_ 1533.
[6] Cicero, _De or at:_ i. chs. 10-11; Quintil. _Inst. oral._ iii. ch.
5.
[7] _De orat._ ii. chs. 16-17.
[8] P. Ramus, _Instil, dialecticæ,_ 1543; _Scholæ in artes liberales,_
1555 etc.; Talæus, _Instit. orator.,_ 1545.
[9] _Della rhetorica,_ dial. 10, and _passim._
[10] _Ration. Philos.,_ part iii. _Rhetoricorum liber unus juxta
propria dogmata_ (Paris, 1636), ch. 3.
[11] _Theoretische Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen überhaupt,_ Halle,
1744.
[12] _Kritik d. Urtheils kraft,_ § 53 and _n._
[13] H. F. Ortloff, _Die gerichtliche Redekunst,_ Neuwied, 1887; R.
Whately, _Rhetoric,_ 1828 (for _Encyd. Brit._); Ital. trans., Pistoia,
1889.
[14] Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 1.
[15] Quintil. _Inst. orat._ viii. ch. 3.
[16] _Rhet._ iii. ch. 10.
[17] _Poet._ chs. 19-22; cf. _Rhet._ iii. cc. 2, 10.
[18] See above, pp. 68-69.
[19] Quintilian, _Inst. orat._ viii. ch. 6; ix. ch. 1.
[20] Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 2; _Poet._ ch. 22.
[21] _De sublimitate_ (in _Rhet. græci,_ ed. Spengel, vol. 1. § 32.)
[22] Giulio Camillo Delminio, _Discorso sopra le Idee di Ermogene_ (in
_Opere,_ Venice, 1560); and trans. of Hermogenes (Udine, 1594).
[23] _De causis corruptarum artium, loc. cit._
[24] _Della rhetorica,_ dial. 6.
[25] _Diálogo de las lenguas_ (ed. Mayans y Siscar, _Origines de la
lengua espanola,_ Madrid, 1873), pp. 115, 119.
[26] _Essais,_ i. ch. 52 (ed. Garnier, i. 285); ci. _ibid._ chs. 10,
25, 39; 10.
[27] Croce, _I trattatisti italiani del concettismo,_ pp. 8-22.
[28] Boileau, _Art poétique,_ i. 11. 43-44, 153-154.
[29] G. G. Orsi, _Considerazioni sopra la maniera di ben pensare,_
etc., 1703 (reprinted Modena, 1735, with all polemics relating thereto).
[30] See above, pp. 230-231.
[31] See above, pp. 225-226.
[32] _Des tropes ou des différens sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un
même mot dans une même langue._ Paris, 1730 (_Œuvres de Du Marsais,_
Paris, 1797, vol. i.).
[33] _Des tropes ou des différens sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un
même mot dans une même langue,_ part i. art. 1; cf. art. 4.
[34] _Elem. of Criticism,_ iii. ch. 20.
[35] Hugh Blair, _Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres_ (London,
1823).
[36] _Lect. on Rhet. and belles lettres,_ lecture 14.