IMITATION OF PROSE FORMS, CICERONIANISM, RHETORICS
1. ORATIONS, LETTERS, DIALOGUES
Renaissance classicism is most obvious in adoption of prose forms.
Orations, letters, dialogues, first in Latin, then in the vernaculars,
studiously conform. Orations were none the less a preoccupation because
they had little to do with affairs. Actual Renaissance conduct of
government soon left little room for moving the people to action by
oratory. Legal pleading, as always, had its special technic. But the
oratory of occasion, that third type which marks anniversaries, extols
achievements, and commemorates great men, was invited widely and
cultivated classically. It embraces most of the published oratory of
the Renaissance, and was practiced by most of the humanists in Latin.
Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo (Leonardo Aretino) is typical both as official
orator of Florence and in his early imaginary orations. Agostino Dati
of Siena delivered an encomium of Eusebius (_De laudibus D. Eusebii
presbyt. Stridonensis et Ecclesiae maximi doctoris, in ejus solemniis
publice habita, anno 1446_). The funeral of Cardinal Bessarion at Rome
had a Latin oration by the Cardinal Capranica. Jacopo Caviceo cast
his congratulatory address to Maximilian on the victory (1490) over
King Ladislaus of Bohemia in the form called _prosopopoeia_, that
is, of imaginary addresses by Babylon, Troy, Byzantium, Carthage, and
Rome (_Urbium dicta ad Maximilianum Federici Tertii Caesaris filium
Romanorum regem triumphantissimum_, Parma, 1491). The Cologne collection,
_Orationes clarorum virorum_,[13] made such oratory available for study
and imitation.
Of the Italian orations collected by Francesco Sansovino (Venice, 1561,
including some translations) as representative of his time, only one
fifth are political, and these only to the extent of being hortatory.
The rest are all occasional: nine funeral orations, a Christmas address,
two before an academy, a call to high aim, a praise of Italian, four
congratulations, and four imaginary addresses (_prosopopoeiae_). Claudio
Tolomei has two imaginary orations, one for, the other against.[14] Such
oratory, of course, is perennial. Its Renaissance vogue is distinctive
only in being almost exclusive and in being imitative. Bartolomeo Ricci
records[15] that on two occasions in his office of public orator at
Ferrara he imitated specific orations of Cicero. The habit was general.
The desire to sound classical led even to the lifting of Augustan phrases
and cadences. Similar conditions had led the decadent Greek oratory
called sophistic[16] into archaism as a means of display. Renaissance
oratory, even when it was not led further into the sophistic sacrifice
of the message to the speaker, was thus habitually literary. In Latin
especially it was less often a means of persuasion than an imitative
literary form.
What the Latin oration might nevertheless attain was exhibited by the
lectures of Poliziano and again in the range of Marc Antoine Muret
(Muretus, 1525-1585). From a conventional _praelectio_ on the _Aeneid_
(1579) Muret turned to Tacitus (1580), not only with lively vigor, but
with penetrative suggestion and urgent sentences. When he returned to
official oratory for the feasts of St John Evangelist (1582) and the
Circumcision (1584), he kept the suggestiveness within the obligatory
pattern. True to their kind, models of conciseness, these have also their
own appeal. Occasional oratory in the Renaissance, then, might be a
literary achievement and a literary progress. More generally it was but
one evidence of the Renaissance preoccupation with rhetoric.
No less inevitable among the published works of the humanists are their
collected Latin letters. Since these had been carefully composed and
revised, they might serve not only history, but literature. Sometimes
in effect essays, sometimes almost orations, they are sometimes themes.
The favorite model is Cicero; and in extreme cases the letter seems to
consist of style. It is hardly a letter; it is an exercise. But thus
to label Renaissance letter-writing generally would be grossly unfair.
Poliziano’s letter to Paolo Cortesi is admirable as a letter, and comes
into literary history on that ground. For so letters have entered
literature in any time. A Latin letter of John of Salisbury[17] lifts
the heart and fills the eyes. Its cadences are studiously conformed to
the _cursus_ of the Curial _dictamen_; its diction is expertly chosen to
strike always by appeal and suggestion, never by violence; its hazardous
course steers between Scylla and Charybdis because it is constantly
shaped to its goal. For all this skill is spent singly on making the
truth prevail. A less important, but more famous English letter, Dr
Johnson’s to the Earl of Chesterfield, is no less studious of style,
no less expertly adjusted, even to the phrasing of the obligatory
subscription, and no less single in its aim. Those who make light of
such delicacy as mere style have much to learn both of letters and of
literature. Among the works of Erasmus none is more important than his
collected letters. The Renaissance did well to study Latin letters, and
learned much. But it was mistaken in thinking that a letter reaches
posterity except by reaching its original address and aim. The Latin
letters of the Renaissance often betray a tendency to regard classical
style as an end in itself. Such letters, written to be literary, give the
impression that the Latin letter is a Renaissance literary form.
Perhaps the most popular of ancient prose forms in the Renaissance was
the dialogue; for it was used even oftener in the vernaculars than in
Latin, and became a favorite form of exposition. The Middle Age, of
course, had many dialogues, but not of this sort. _Débat_, _estrif_,
_conflictus_, amoebean eclogue were often allegorical and generally forms
of poetry. Renaissance dialogue is typically prose discussion. Its vogue
was evidently stimulated by the increasing availability of Plato in both
translation and Greek text; but its method is not often his. The Platonic
dialogue typically conveys the illusion of creative conversation. As
Sperone Speroni observes,[18] it is a sort of prose that takes after
poetry. It invites the reader to join a quest for truth, to feel his
way with the speakers, to measure this objection, respond to that hint;
and often it leaves him still guessing with them, still questing. The
other ancient literary type of dialogue is Cicero’s _De oratore_. This
is less conversation than debate with definite argument, rebuttal, and
progress to a conclusion.[19] Cicero’s dialogue is not a quest; it is
an exposition of something already determined, and it unfolds that by
logical stages. Renaissance dialogue, having generally his object,
turns oftener to his type; but it does not forget Plato. The more
dramatic grouping of friends in converse appealed widely to Renaissance
imagination. It was imitated in Platonic academies as well as in writing;
and its form of dialogue opened more opportunities for exhibiting one’s
literary acquaintance and bringing forward one’s literary friends.
Further Renaissance dialogues did not often go with Plato. They stopped
with the Platonic setting, or used challenges merely for transition.
Even the most popular of them all, Castiglione’s _Cortegiano_, though
its _personae_ are unusually distinct, and though it concludes upon
Platonic love, is evidently framed upon the _De oratore_. Platonic
dialogue must be easy to read; it is by no means easy to write; witness
the failure of many imitations, both Renaissance and modern. It is a
very delicate adjustment of poetic to rhetoric. The grafting of Plato
on Cicero demands long preparation. The usual Renaissance compromise of
letting Plato introduce the speakers and Cicero rule their discourse
was practically sufficient for the better Renaissance dialogues. The
inferior ones have nothing but the externals of either. Their rejoinders,
neither conversation nor debate, become tedious ceremony;[20] and their
composition lacks the Ciceronian sequence. But even these show how widely
the dialogue form was imitated from antiquity.
2. CICERONIANISM
The pervasive humanistic imitation was not adoption of forms; it was
borrowing of style. The logical extreme of the humanist cult of Augustan
Latin is the exclusive imitation of Cicero as the ideal of prose style.
In 1422 Gherardo Landriani, Bishop of Lodi, drew from a long-forgotten
chest in the cathedral library a complete manuscript of the principal
works of Cicero on rhetoric. The _De oratore_ and the _Orator_ are the
most mature and suggestive treatment of oratory by the greatest Roman
orator. “_Summe gaudeo_, I have the greatest delight,” wrote Poggio
on receiving the news in London; and Niccolo de’Niccoli of Florence
promised a copy to Aurispa in Constantinople. So widely was the world
of scholarship stirred. For the recovery of the greater Cicero directly
stimulated Renaissance classicism. In the Middle Age Cicero had been
rather a name of honor than a literary influence. His _De inventione_,
a common source of medieval rhetoric, is only a youthful compend. What
was usually added for further study, especially of style, the _Rhetorica
ad Herennium_, was ascribed to him quite erroneously. His greater works
on rhetoric were appreciated doubtless here and there, as by John of
Salisbury, but not generally. Hence the recovery of the _De oratore_
in 1422 was indeed an event in the history of literature. This and
_Orator_ are fine encomia of the higher function of oratory, and of the
orator as leader. Neither is a manual. Both in Cicero’s intention are
contributions to the philosophy of rhetoric. Without very original or
even very specific doctrine they are eloquently persuasive. What did the
Renaissance do with them?
Most obviously it carried classicism to the extreme of Ciceronianism,
that exclusive imitation which made Cicero the ideal of Latin prose, the
perfect model. The doctrine involves certain characteristic assumptions:
(1) that Latin, or any other language, attains in a certain historical
period its ideal achievement and capacity, (2) that within such a great
period style is constant, (3) that a language can be recalled from later
usage to earlier in scholastic exercises, (4) that such exercises can
suffice for personal expression, (5) that a single author can suffice as
a model, even for exercises.
Medieval Latin had departed from classical usage because it was a living
language, so widely active in communication as to grow. Men used it
without being disconcerted by changes from place to place, from time
to time. Such changes are inevitable so long as a language is used
generally. Denotations are extended or contracted, connotations are
modified or superseded, even by written use. Oral use adds changes in
cadence. From the seventh century on through the Middle Age Latin was
accentual. The speech tune of Cicero had faded; and no one had tried
to resuscitate what had been supplanted by other cadences. The Latin
hymns had carried medieval measures to the heights of poetry. Not till
the seventeenth century did humanism succeed in having them revised
classically; and fifty volumes have since been spent in recovering their
medieval forms.[21] The extreme form of Renaissance classicism, by
ignoring the historical development of language, tended to inhibit the
use of Latin in immediate appeal.
So rigid a doctrine did not, of course, enlist all Renaissance humanists.
The more judicious were content to select certain expert habits,
especially Cicero’s strong and supple wielding of sentences. But the
extremists, such as Christophe de Longueil (Longolius, 1488-1522), got
fame; the doctrine continued in teaching and in practice; and as late
as 1583 there was point in Sidney’s scornful allusion to “Nizolian
paper books.” His readers knew that he meant the use of the Cicero
thesaurus as a handbook for composition. Even where it did not enlist
devotees, Ciceronianism confirmed the prevalent idea of the standard
diction of the great period. Yet before the end of the fifteenth century
both the general assumption and the particular cult had been exploded
by Poliziano. As university teacher, in the introductory lecture
(_praelectio_) of his course at Florence on Quintilian and Statius, he
challenged the doctrine of the ideal classical period by a plea for the
pedagogical value of later Latin.
Finally I would not attach undue importance to the objection
that the eloquence of these writers was already corrupted by
their period; for if we regard it aright, we shall perceive
that it was not so much corrupted and debased as changed
in kind. Nor should we call it inferior just because it is
different. Certainly it shows greater cultivation of charm:
more frequent pleasantry, many epigrams, many figures, no dull
realizations, no inert structure; all not so much sound as
also strong, gay, prompt, full of blood and color. Therefore,
though we may indisputably concede most to those authors who
are greatest, so we may justly contend that some qualities
which are earlier attained and much more attainable [i.e., by
students] are found in these [minor authors]. So, since it is
a capital vice to wish to imitate one author and him alone, we
are not off the track if we study these before those, if we
do some things for their practical use.... [So, he adds, did
Cicero himself when he turned from the Attic orators to the
Rhodian and even to the Asiatic.] So that noble painter who was
asked with what master he had made the most progress replied
strikingly “With that one,” pointing to the populace; yes,
and rightly too. For since nothing in human nature is happy
in every aspect, many men’s excellences must be viewed, that
one thing may stick from one, another thing from another, and
that each [student] may adapt what suits him (_Opera_, Gryphius
edition, Lyon, 1537-1539, III, 108-109).
Perhaps nothing else so pointed and telling against Ciceronianism was
written during the Renaissance as Poliziano’s letter to Paolo Cortesi.
Nor are those who are thought to have held the first rank
of eloquence like one another, as has been remarked by
Seneca. Quintilian laughs at those who shall think themselves
cousins of Cicero because they conclude a period with _esse
videatur_. Horace declaims against imitators who are nothing
but imitators. Certainly they who compose only by imitation
seem to me like parrots or magpies uttering what they do not
understand. For what they write lacks force and life, lacks
impulse, lacks emotion, lacks individuality, lies down, sleeps,
snores. Nothing true there, nothing solid, nothing effective.
But are you not, some one asks, expressing Cicero? What of it?
I am not Cicero. I am expressing, I think, myself. Besides,
there are some, my dear Paul, who beg their style, as it were
bread, piecemeal, who live not only from the day, but unto the
day. Thus unless they have at hand the one book to cull from,
they cannot join three words without spoiling them by rude
connection or disgraceful barbarism. Their speech is always
tremulous, vacillating, ailing, in a word so ill cared and ill
fed that I cannot bear them, especially when they pass judgment
on those whose styles deep study, manifold reading, and long
practice have as it were fermented. But to come back to you,
Paul, of whom I am very fond, to whom I owe much, whose talent
I value very highly, I am asking whether you so bind yourself
by this superstition that nothing pleases you which is simply
yours, and that you never take your eyes from Cicero. When you
have read Cicero—and other good authors—much and long, worn
them down, learned them by heart, concocted, filled your breast
with the knowledge of many things, and are now about to compose
something yourself, then at last I would have you swim, as the
saying is, without corks, take sometimes your own advice, doff
that too morose and anxious solicitude to make yourself merely
a Cicero—in a word risk your whole strength (_Opera_, Gryphius
edition, Lyon, 1537-1539, I, 251).
The writer of that letter, in spite of his youthful triumphs in the
vernacular, gave his mature years to the writing of Latin and the
teaching of Latin and Greek literature. Unfortunately his expert Latin
did not move Renaissance classicism to abandon either the practice of
Ciceronianism or the theory of the ideal great period.
Some forty years after the destructive analysis of Poliziano,
Ciceronianism was still active enough to draw the satire of Erasmus
in the _Dialogus Ciceronianus_ (1528). This _reductio ad absurdum_,
beginning with the error of using a Cicero thesaurus as a handbook
for composing, proceeds to the affectation of using for the Christian
religion the terms proper to classical paganism: Jupiter Optimus Maximus
for God the Father, Apollo for the Christ. Erasmus amuses himself by
thus rewriting the Apostles’ Creed in Ciceronian terms. His point is
not merely the pedantry of such paganism, nor its irreverence, but
its unreality. Only the words can be taken over; the meaning or the
suggestion, in one direction or the other, is violated. The point
had been made more forcibly, because more practically, by Poliziano.
Preoccupation with past usage thwarts the expression of actual present
things and thoughts. Further Erasmus makes his Ciceronian admit that the
cult is illusory, a dream which according to its own adepts has never
quite come true. Incidentally the names thus brought up in the dialogue
are not only of those Ciceronians who had at least a transient fame, but
also of some whom history does not even know.
In spite of this destructive satire, Giulio Camillo reaffirmed
Ciceronianism with undisturbed simplicity.
Latin is no longer spoken, as our vernacular is, or French; it
has been shut up in books. Since we are limited to gathering
it not from actual speech, but from books, why not rather
from the perfect than from the inferior? Let us first recall
the language to the state in which we may believe it to have
been while Vergil wrote it, or Cicero, and then confidently
use that, even as Vergil did, or Cicero? (_Trattato della
imitatione_, 1544.)
In 1545 Bartolomeo Ricci, tutor to Hercole d’Este’s son Lorenzo, closed
his treatise _De imitatione_ with a Ciceronian credo and a long defense
of Longolius. Ciceronianism, then, survived both rebuttal and satire.
As late as 1580 Muret, having renounced his own early Ciceronianism,
attacked its major premise, the doctrine of the ideal great period. His
argument is not, as Poliziano’s a hundred years before, pedagogical; it
is a direct challenge to Renaissance competence in judging Latin style.
His previous _praelectio_ had urged the distinctive claims of Tacitus:
practical philosophy, finished economy of style. This second lecture on
Tacitus deals with objections. The preference for Suetonius he merely
dismisses. But Tacitus is accused of inaccuracy. By whom? By Vopiscus;
and who is Vopiscus? Tacitus is hostile to the Christian religion. Shall
we rule out all the pagans? The rest of the lecture deals with style.
There remain two objections brought against Tacitus by the
inexpert: that his style is obscure and rough, and that he does
not write good Latin. When I hear complaints of the obscurity
of Tacitus, I reflect how easily people transfer their own
faults to others. [I remember the anecdote of the man who
complained that the windows were too small, when the real
trouble was his own failing sight. So a deaf man was heard to
complain that people did not speak distinctly.]
But Tacitus, says another, is rough. Alciati, praising his
friend Jovius, has not feared to call the histories of Tacitus
thorny. Well, praising Jovius shows as much judgment as blaming
Tacitus. No two could be more different. Tacitus could not but
displease a man who made so much of Jovius.... For Jovius is
all smooth; he has not a trace of that roughness which offends
Alciati in Tacitus. He not only flows; he overflows.... As
Alciati is afraid of roughness, I am sick of silliness. Sirup
for babes; but let me have a bowl of something with a tang.
Finally, those who grant to Tacitus his other qualities still
deplore his bad Latin. The first movers of this calumny, each
of whom had spent much pains in expounding Tacitus, were
Alciati and Ferret. If they themselves wrote Latin as well as
they think, perhaps we might be disturbed by their authority.
Do you make bold, some one may say, to judge such men? They
have made bold to judge Tacitus.... [If we can know Latin
(as Camillo says) only from books (and, we may add, from
comparatively few books), we have the less warrant for judging
Latin usage.]... Who dare affirm for certain today, when “the
old authors” are so extolled, that the questioned phrases of
Tacitus were never used by these “old authors?” (Leipzig ed. of
1660, vol. II, pp. 108-112.)
Even now, perhaps, though the name of the heresy has long been forgotten,
the Ciceronian perversion of imitation is not extinct. But if this kind
of imitation is not valid, what kinds are valid? Imitation of style may
be suggestive when it remains subconscious, not the recalling of words,
but the adaptation of remembered rhythms. The deliberate conformity
proposed by Ciceronianism can be useful only as exercise, as the learning
of certain effects by trying them. Once learned, these become an added
resource in revision. In composing, in the creative process of bringing
one’s message to one’s audience, deliberate imitation of style has no
warrant. It would at least interrupt, and might deviate or inhibit. In so
far as Ciceronianism confuses two processes normally separate, composing
and revising, it tends to make style stilted.
Further, Ciceronianism narrows imitation by a theory of perfectionism.
The _Imitatio Christi_ (about 1460) is the direct appeal of an author
preoccupied with his message. Sébastien Châteillon (1515-1563) rewrote
its spontaneous Latin in Ciceronian cadences. It was imperfect; he would
make it perfect. If this was pedantic, even absurd, wherein? If the
_Pilgrim’s Progress_ should not be rewritten in the style of Hooker or of
Sir Thomas Browne, why? Because _the_ one ideal style is an illusion.
Finally, imitation need not be of style; it may be of composition;
and for writing addressed to an actual public this is at once more
available and more promising. For real writing, that is for a message
intended to move the public, imitation generally risks less, and gains
more, in guiding the plan, the whole scheme, the sequence. Renaissance
preoccupation with style and tolerance of published themes tended to
obscure the larger opportunity.
But there is no Ciceronianism in Castiglione’s adopting the form of
Cicero’s _De oratore_ for his _Cortegiano_. Though he naturally shows
awareness of Cicero’s expert periods, he is bent not on conformity of
style, but on focusing the typical man of his own time in the literary
frame used by Cicero for the typical Augustan Roman. Renaissance
imitation of Vergil’s style was often futile; but Tasso’s _Jerusalem_ was
animated and guided by Vergil’s epic sequence. Robert Garnier, imitating
the style of Euripides, missed the dramatic composition; but Corneille
caught the whole scheme of a Greek tragedy. Such larger imitation imposes
no restraint on originality. Its recognition of ancient achievement is in
practical adaptation to one’s own conception and object and time. In this
direction the classicism of the seventeenth century became more fruitful
than that of the sixteenth.
3. RHETORICS
Manuals and treatises on rhetoric published in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries exhibit marked differences in tradition, scope,
and tendency. They range from narrow concentration on style to a full
treatment of the five parts of rhetoric. They exhibit sophistic as well
as rhetoric. Some persist in medieval preconception as others recover the
classical heritage of Aristotle and Quintilian. The works mentioned below
are typical of the many Renaissance manuals.
The _Rhetorica_ (1437?) of George of Trebizond shows in brief the whole
classical scope:[22] _inventio_, the exploration of the subject and the
determination of its _status_; _dispositio_, plan and order; _elocutio_,
style; _memoria_, the art of holding a point for effective placing; and
_pronuntiatio_, delivery. He is most expansive on the first, which had
been both neglected and misapplied by the Middle Age.[23]
The presentation of rhetoric by Juan Luis Vives (_De ratione dicendi_,
Bruges, 1532; reprinted in Vol. II of the Majansius edition of his works)
is both meager and vaguely general.
Vives urges that rhetoric is not a study for boys, and that it
should not be confined to diction. But he himself offers hardly
anything specific about composition. Book I deals mainly with
sentences (_compositio_), e.g., with dilation and conciseness
as in the _Copia_ of Erasmus, and with the period. Book II
offers brief generalizations on type or tone of style, on the
conventionalized measure of native ability against study and
revision, on consideration of emotions and moral habits, on
the threefold task of instructing, winning, and moving, and
on appropriateness. Book III deals with narration (history,
exempla, fables, poetry), paraphrase, epitome, commentary.
History as composition is hardly even considered.
His incidental discussion of rhetoric in _De causis corruptarum artium_
and _De tradendis disciplinis_ (Vol. VI of the collective edition) is no
more satisfying. In Book IV of the former Vives so far misconceives the
classical _inventio_ as to rule it out of rhetoric altogether. Thus he
practically ratifies the procedure of those Renaissance logicians who
classified _inventio_ and _dispositio_ under logic. The classification
was not a reform; it merely recorded tardily the medieval practice
of reducing rhetoric to style by relying for all the active work of
composition on debate. Yet Vives pays repeated homage to both Aristotle
and Quintilian.
On the other hand the concise manual of Joannes Caesarius (_Rhetorica_,
Paris, 1542) returns to the full classical scope. The source cited most
explicitly and quoted most frequently is Quintilian.
But that later ancient tradition called sophistic, which had deviated
the rhetoric of the Middle Age, had also its Renaissance revival. Giulio
Camillo (1479-1550), known in France as well as in Italy, published
together a treatise on the orator’s material, the oratorical fund, and
another on imitation (_Due trattati ... l’uno delle materie che possono
venir sotto lo stile dell’eloquente, l’altro della imitatione_, Venice,
1544-1545). His constant preoccupation is with the topics, headings,
commonplaces (_loci_) which guide the writer’s preparation. Such are the
headings of the sophistic recipe for encomium: birth and family, native
city, deeds, etc. But sophistic had elaborated such obvious suggestions
for exploring one’s material into a system applicable both to material
and to style. Camillo’s source is:
the _Ideas_ of Hermogenes, who in each considers eight things:
the sense, the method, the words, the verbal figures, the
clauses, their combination, sentence-control (_fermezza_),
and rhythm. But my method is perhaps easier, since I proceed
not from the forms (_forme_) to the materials, but from the
materials to the forms.... I have sought how many things can
combine to produce the forms, and I find (as I have argued
in my Latin orations) not eight things, as Hermogenes writes,
but fourteen which may enter to modify any material. They
are these: conceptions, or inventions (_Trovati_), passions,
commonplaces, ways of speaking (_le vie del dire_), arguments,
order, words, verbal figures, clauses, connectives, sentence
forms, cadence (_gli estremi_), rhythms, harmonies.
This bewildering cross-division might serve as the _reductio ad absurdum_
of the system of bringing on eloquence by topics if Camillo had not gone
even further in a grandiose symbolistic scheme entitled _L’idea del
theatro_ (Florence, 1550). The theater here is not any actual stage; it
is the manifold pageant of the world presented allegorically by topics
for all literary purposes.
Starting from the medieval, or perhaps the neo-Platonic,
premise that sacred things are not revealed, but figured, he
divides his book into seven _gradi_. Seven is the perfect
number; e.g., seven planets, Isaiah’s seven columns, Vergil’s
_terque quaterque_, etc. Each _grado_ is named after a planet,
whose attributes are a mixture of astrology and mythology, as
in the Middle Age, but again with a suggestion of orientalized
Platonism. This general scheme constitutes the first section.
The second is entitled _Il convivio_; the third, _l’Antro_;
etc. A figure may appear in more than one _grado_.
Referring to this book in his treatise on imitation, he says: “By topics
and images I have arranged all the headings that may suffice to group
and to subserve all human conceptions.” In the same treatise he even
thinks of painting and sculpture as proceeding by topics: genus, sex,
age, function, anatomy, light and shadow, attitude and action, adaptation
to place. Topics can no farther go. Camillo’s system, moreover, hardly
touches composition; all its manifold application is to style. Thus the
more readily he accepts the common Renaissance confusion of poetic with
rhetoric.
Another Ciceronian treatise on imitation is Bartolomeo Ricci’s
(_Bartholomaei Riccii de imitatione libri tres ad Alfonsum Atestium
Principem, suum in literis alumnum, Herculis II Ferrariensium Principis
filium ..._ Venice, 1545). Written ostensibly for the guidance of his
pupil Alfonso, it is a discussion, not a textbook; but in the back
of the author’s mind is the prevalent conception of writing Latin
as writing themes. The examples quote prose and poetry side by side
without distinction of poetic from rhetoric. The usual complimentary
references to contemporaries and to recognized previous humanists
give the schoolmaster opportunity to exhibit his wide acquaintance.
Poliziano is cited as challenging imitation; but his arguments are not
given, nor the fact that his challenge was of Ciceronianism. Instead
of citing his letter to Cortesi, Ricci merely praises Cortesi’s reply
as elegant. The _Ciceronianus_ of Erasmus is similarly dismissed as an
attack on Longueil. The progress of the book is generally from definition
of imitation (I) through application of it in composition (II) to
application in style (III). Ciceronianism, implied throughout, first in
classicism, then by increasing use of Cicero as a model, is explicitly
declared in III and supported by a long defense of Longueil.
I. Imitation, practiced in all human activities, is accepted
in literature. Though Catullus in the marriage of Thetis and
in the desolation of Ariadne said the last word and every
word, nevertheless Vergil imitated him in Dido; and each has
his own merits. [The Catullus passages are stock citations of
the period.] Cicero and Vergil both counseled and practiced
imitation. Why reduce following nature to following yourself?
Following nature demands no more than being natural, i.e.,
verisimilitude. [The quibble here between nature in the sense
of human nature and nature in the sense of one’s own nature
(_ingenium_) is unpardonable. Further, it is not clear what
either has to do with imitation.] Imitate the best authors,
each in his own kind. There follows a summary of Latin
literature. [The book supplies no distinct definition of
imitation as a means of advancing literary control. It shows,
quite superfluously, that imitation is prevalent in the arts;
it does not define the limits and the methods of practicing it
in writing.]
II. A review of the revival of Augustan diction in a long list
of humanists proves nothing specific concerning imitation,
much concerning pride in humanistic Latin. Scholars, however,
are not well paid. Doctors and lawyers write bad Latin.
Teachers are incompetent. The vernacular has come even into
the schools; and even Cicero is translated. Let us all combine
to save Latin style. Imitation is not repetition, not copy;
there must be variation. Imitation with Plautus and Terence
was the taking of Greek plots [a very inexact account]. Vergil
imitated Homer even to the lifting of passages, and made a
better tempest. Cicero imitated the Greek orators. Vergil used
the _Pharmaceutria_ of Theocritus. [He did not imitate it.]
Vergil’s use of Cato and Varro adds beauty of style. [Is this
imitation, or simply use of material?] Sallust’s Catiline is
admirable; but it did not preclude Cicero’s. So, even after
Lucretius, Ovid and Vergil treated the gods. [Here is mere
confusion. Cicero did not imitate Sallust; he wrote on the same
subject.] The exposure of Andromeda is told by Manilius, Ovid,
and Pontanus; and the last did it best. Comparison of Vergil’s
Dido with the Ariadne of Catullus is followed by another
_comparatio_ without enlightening us as to the nature or the
method of imitation. Rehearsal of literary forms (history,
exposition, pleading) leads to the assertion that Cicero is the
best model in all three styles.
III. Let us take Cicero, then, for our model. Proverbs,
epigrams, definitions may be lifted as familiar enough to
be common property. How to make variations on the model is
exemplified abundantly in sentence form and in diction by both
prose and verse. The book closes with many analyzed examples
from Longueil, to rebut the charge that his writing is mere
_cento_, or _pastiche_, and to exhibit him as the perfect
Ciceronian. Ricci appends a practical hint from his own
experience. His habit is to start boys with Terence because the
plots are interesting, then to add some Cicero, and finally to
give them Cicero alone.
The demonstration of Longueil’s eloquence is rather an epilogue than a
conclusion. It does not suffice to justify Ciceronianism, much less to
explain imitation. The character of imitation, its limits, its profitable
methods, are left still vague.
Of the same year is Bernardino Tomitano’s _Discussions of Tuscan_
(_Ragionamenti della lingua toscana ..._ Venice, 1545). The sub-title
goes on: “wherein the talk is of the perfect vernacular orator and
poet ... divided into three books. In the first, philosophy is proved
necessary to the acquisition of rhetoric and poetic; in the second
are set forth the precepts of the orator; and in the third, the laws
pertaining to the poet and to good writing in both prose and verse.”
A dialogue in form, with an academy setting, this is largely a
monologue by Speroni with interruptions, and is devoted mainly to “the
perfect orator and poet.” The book is a stilted and diffuse digest of
conventional rhetoric jumbled with poetic, with examples under each
conventional heading. Petrarch is made the exemplar of everything, even
of argumentation. The idea of poetic as a distinct mode of composition
never even enters.
I. Sperone Speroni, the protagonist, is made to repeat his
contention that language study is not the gateway to philosophy
and his epigram: “things make men wise; words make them seem
so.” Tomitano apparently takes him to mean that philosophy
feeds style, not style philosophy; for Tomitano goes on to
exhibit Petrarch as full of philosophy and perfect in style.
Dante is less careful, but Petrarch is a treasury for all
writers.
II. The anxiety to exhibit Petrarch leads to strange rendering
of the conventional divisions of rhetoric. _Inventio_, “first
of those five strings on which the orator makes smoothest
harmony,” is “imagining things that have truth, or at least
verisimilitude,” and is forthwith confused with _dispositio_
(_compartimento_). Petrarch exemplifies not only _exordium_
and _narratio_, but even proof and rebuttal. Of the “three
styles” of oratory the highest is Boccaccio’s in _Fiammetta_,
the median in the _Decameron_. But since among verse forms the
highest are _canzone_, _sestina_, and _madriale_; the plainest,
_ballata_, _stanza_, and _capitolo_; the sonnet, Petrarch’s
favorite form, must be median. Under style the doctrine of
“tone-color” is easily reduced to unintentional absurdity.
III. The distinction of poet from orator is discovered at
great length to be—verse. The Ferrarese are best in comedies,
the Venetians in sonnets, the Marchigiani in _capitoli_,
they of Vicenza in _ballate_, the Romans in odes and hymns,
the Paduans in tragedies, the Florentines in blank verse.
_Inventio_ in poetry is the rehearsal of myths, of which the
poet is lord and guardian. An interruption! How can you put
Petrarch above Dante when you began by urging that the poet
should be a philosopher? Answer (240): Petrarch had all the
philosophy he needed, and used it more poetically. Though Dante
was the greater philosopher, Petrarch was the better poet.
When Aristotle calls Sophocles more perfect than Euripides,
he does not mean in style [!]. In poetry _dispositio_ is
evenness, consistency, harmony; and _narratio_ has the same
rules as in oratory. Horace’s precepts, to begin _in mediis_,
to combine instruction with charm, to seek advice, and to
revise, are all repeated. On a request for more about style
follows a discussion of words, simple and compound, proper and
figurative, new and old. Finally the company joins in citing
many examples.
Having run out of headings, Tomitano thus runs down. He had not in the
least profited by the revival of Cicero and Quintilian.
Renaissance Platonism, disputing Aristotle’s philosophy, attacked also
his rhetoric. Francesco Patrizzi (1529-1597) published in his youth a
collection of ten vernacular dialogues on rhetoric (_Della retorica,
dieci dialoghi_, Venice, 1552), “in which,” the sub-title adds, “the talk
is of the art of oratory, with reasons impugning the opinion held of it
by ancient writers.” The Platonic dialogue, followed superficially, is
quite beyond Patrizzi’s achievement. Discussing oratory (I) at large, he
goes on to its materials (II, III, IV), its ornaments (V), its divisions
(VI), the quality of the orator (VII), the art of oratory (VIII), the
perfect rhetoric (IX), and rhetorical amplification (X). Evidently
neither a logical division nor a sequence, these categories are rather
successive openings for attack. Patrizzi appears not only as a Platonist,
but as an anti-Aristotelian. His main quarrels are with the scope of
Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_, with the doctrine of imitation, and with making
rhetoric an art.
As to scope and materials Aristotle is inconsistent. He says
both that the orator has no material and that he has all
materials (25). Why, then, did he spend most of his _Rhetoric_
on teaching the materials, slighting the ends, the ideas,
the forms, the instruments, and omitting _status_? [The
misinterpretation amounts to gross misstatement.] Perhaps we
lack any clear definition of the orator because professors
insist on including under a single word all sorts of discourse
(27). Even the oratorical ornaments are not peculiar to the
orator. His materials are the same as the economist’s, the
historian’s, the poet’s (37). Having given oratory so much
scope, how can Aristotle restrict it to three kinds? (60).
[Evidently superficial, this is rather quarrel and quibble than
refutation.]
As to imitation, Patrizzi holds that a painter represents
not his conception (_concetto_), but the objects themselves
[a heresy that reappeared as lately as Ruskin’s “pathetic
fallacy”]. Taking no pains to understand what the Aristotelian
imitation means, and ignoring the obvious fact that it is
applied to poetic, he thus dismisses it by denial.
Similarly he finds that rhetoric is not an art because Plato
says it is merely a skill (_peritia_).
The significance of this work is that in 1552 a Venetian seeking
recognition at twenty-two could use some distinguished names in dialogues
smartly rapping Aristotle, and even find a publisher.
The English rhetoric of Thomas Wilson (_The art of rhetorique, for the
use of all such as are studious of eloquence, set forth in English_,
London, 1553 [reprinted down to 1593; ed. G. H. Mair, Oxford, 1909])
covers the ancient scheme practically, using Cicero and Quintilian as
well as the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_, and deriving much from Erasmus.
The _Partitiones oratoriae_ (Venice and Paris, 1558) of Jacopo
Brocardo is exactly described by its sub-title as _elegans et
dilucida paraphrasis_ of Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_. Now translating, now
paraphrasing, it provides in its marginal headings a sufficient table of
contents.
But the revival of the full classical tradition is most obvious in the
comprehensive Italian rhetoric of Bartolomeo Cavalcanti (_La retorica_,
1555; second edition, Venice, 1558/9, reprinted Pesaro, 1574). Through
563 closely printed pages this is strictly and consistently a rhetoric
of the classical character and scope. The exceptional avoidance of
confusion with poetic appears in the bare mention of Vergil and in the
ousting of Petrarch from his monopoly as exemplar of everything desirable
in prose as well as in verse. Plato is rare; Plutarch, rarer. The main
body of analyzed examples is from the orations of Cicero. Demosthenes is
only less frequent. From Livy and Thucydides the examples are usually
of the imaginary harangues to troops. All the examples that are not
themselves Italian are translated. Hermogenes is cited some half-dozen
times; Quintilian, twice as often; but the main source of doctrine is
the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle and, next to that, his Logic. The book is
constantly and consistently Aristotelian.
Instead of devoting himself after the Renaissance habit mainly
to style, Cavalcanti gives it only one of his seven books
(V). All the rest are spent on composition. Book I is a lucid
survey of the field; II shows the ways of _inventio_ in each
of the three types of oratory; III deals with argument; IV,
with appeal to emotion and to moral habit; V, besides the
usual lists of figures, has an unusually definite treatment
of sentence management (_compositio_) and a meager summary of
_dispositio_; VI presents the typical parts of an oration,
avoiding the common confusion of _narratio_ (statement of
the facts) with narrative; VII deals with confirmation and
conclusion. Its incidental recurrence to _dispositio_ is again
vague. Cavalcanti had excuse enough in the ancient tradition,
which is generally weakest in its counsels for sequence.
Fortunately Cavalcanti’s own plan is clear and fairly progressive; and
his adjustment to his own time appears in the prominence given to the
third of the ancient types of oratory, such speeches on occasion as were
the main Renaissance field. His defect is the common Renaissance vice
of diffuseness. Beyond its intrinsic value Cavalcanti’s _Retorica_ has
historical significance. It gave the wider audience a just and distinct
view of classical rhetoric.
The sixteenth century closed with the full classical doctrine operative
in the _Ratio studiorum_ and in the _Rhetoric_ of Soarez.