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.