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recover a complete picture of the court-life of the time, to observe how many of the uses of books like Il Cortegiano, Guevara's Libro Aureo, the Arcadia, and Euphues were oral rather than literary. It is probable that these books and there is no reason why we should not add Ariosto's and Spenser's epics-were habitually read aloud in assemblies of which we can now form but a faint picture in our minds, and were indeed composed chiefly with a view to such performance. When we add that solitary reading with the eye was only beginning to be a customary form of entertainment, we are prepared to understand why the literary education of the Renaissance was almost wholly conducted by means of the practise of oratory.

The various forms of prose-style that resulted from this training need not be distinguished here. They were as various, of course, as the elements of the literary tradition in which the Renaissance was living. They were partly (indeed chiefly) medieval, partly classical, partly popular or folk forms. But it is enough for our present purpose to observe that all of them, by whatever channels they had come to the culture of the sixteenth century, had their ultimate origin in the Gorgianic, or Isocratean type of oratory that we have been discussing in the preceding section. That this is true of the style taught by the orthodox humanists is well-known; their aim was to teach their pupils to "write Cicero." But it is also true of the many kinds of style due to the survival of medieval educational customs and social modes: the forms of preaching-style, for instance, that were prevalent until after the middle of the century, both in Latin and the vernacular; the style employed in letters composed for social display or amusement; the aureate style affected by those accustomed to Renaissance courtly ceremony, as in the show-speeches of knights in tournaments, or in begging or complimentary addresses to sovereigns; and the literary cultismo practised in many moral treatises and romances, as by Guevara, Sidney, and Lyly. However unclassical all these may be in their effect upon our ears and taste, they have one character in common: they are all arrived at by the elaboration of the "schemes," or ✓ figures of sound, that have been described as the chief ornaments of the Isocratean oratory. And that is all that is necessary in order to fix them in their place in the one great European tradition of oratorical style.

Against the literary tyranny of this tradition, and more particn

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larly against its sixteenth-century efflorescence, the representatives of the modern spirit of progress were in revolt during the last quarter of the century. The temporary unities of the Renaissance were evidently breaking up; and the literary customs that had flowered upon them responded immediately to the tokens of their decay. The historian versed in the poetry of this period can detect the coming of the severer air of the seventeenth century in the new distaste that declares itself everywhere for the copious and flowing style of Ariosto and Spenser, and the " tedious uniformity" of Petrarcanism: the student of prose-style is made aware of it at an even earlier date by the eager malice with which some of the new leaders recognize the artificiality of the oratorical customs of their time.

It was Muret, it seems, that remarkable prophet of seventeenthcentury ideas, who first tossed this straw into the wind. In one of the latest and boldest of his academic discourses he asserts that the reasons for the practise of oratory in the time of his rhetorical predecessors, Bembo and Sadoleto, are no longer of any effect in the present age, because the real concerns of political life, and even the most important legal questions, are no longer decided in the public audience-chambers of the senates and courts, but in the private cabinets of ministers of state and in the intimacy of conversation." It was a cynical observation, perhaps, but a true one, justifying Machiavelli's wonderful realism at last, and foretelling the Richelieus, Bacons, and Cecils of a later generation.

Like his fellows in the new rationalism Muret arrived at his ideas by the first-hand study of facts. But he was like them too in that he desired to support his case by classical authority. The source of the passage just alluded to seems to be the discussion at the opening of the Rhetoric in which Aristotle explains that the justification of oratory is to be found in the imperfection and weakness of judgment characteristic of an uneducated public, incapable of distinguishing truth from error by the tedious processes of reason. Aristotle was perhaps the only ancient author whose authority was great enough to stand against that of Cicero on a question of this kind, and this famous statement in the

"Oration of 1582, introducing his course on the Epistolae ad Atticum; see also his double oration of 1580, defending himself for the public teaching of Tacitus, which had made him the object of open attack and secret intrigue.

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Rhetoric was eagerly seized on by the anti-oratorical critics of the seventeenth century: its echoes are heard from Muret and Bacom to Pascal and Arnauld. But the same idea came to the AntiCiceronian leaders from other ancient sources; and it is to be observed that they find a more specific appropriateness to the circumstances of their own time in the magnificent description of the decline of Roman oratory during the Empire which Tacitus puts into the mouth of Maternus in his Dialogue." This passage played a great part in forming Muret's ideas; but the first clear intimation of its vital relation to modern life is found in Montaigne's essay on The Vanity of Words (1, 51). After some introductory words suggested by the Gorgias of Plato, and the passage of Aristotle already mentioned, Montaigne goes on to say that oratory has flourished most in states where "the vulgar, the ignorant, or the populace have had all power, as in Rhodes, Athens, and Rome," and in periods of turmoil and civil strife, as at Rome during the Republic; " even as a rank, free, and untamed soil," he continues, "beareth the rankest and strongest weeds.

Whereby it seemeth that those commonweals which depend of an absolute monarch have less need of it than others. For that foolishness and facility which is found in the common multitude, and which doth subject the same to be managed, persuaded, and led by the ears by the sweetalluring and sense-entrancing sound of this harmony, without duly weighing, knowing, or considering the truth of things by the force of reason: this facility and easy yielding, I say, is not so easily found in one only ruler, and it is more easy to warrant him from the impression of this poison by good institution and sound counsel.

Is he looking back toward the Roman Empire or forward to the régime of absolutism beginning to be established in his own time? One cannot tell. In the literature of the period that was then beginning these two historical phenomena are always presenting themselves side by side. For example, in a passage of Etienne Pasquier, plainly suggested by the same discourse in Tacitus' dialogue: "Tels fanfares sont propres, en une democratie, a un orateur en tout voue et ententif a la surprise du peuple par doux

"Chapters 36-41. Rigault, La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, Chapter 1, has made an admirable use of this dialogue as one of the starting-points in antiquity of the modern idea of progress. An interesting paper might be written on the effect of the Anti-Ciceronian agitation on the growth of this idea.

traits et emmiellement de sa rhetorique: Ce qui ne se presenta onc entre nous.” 15

Political motives, however, were not the ones that weighed most with the Anti-Ciceronian leaders. Their scientific interests and/ above all their univeral preoccupation with moral questions played a still greater part in determining their rhetorical program. The old claims of philosophy to precedence over formal rhetoric, long ago asserted by Plato, are revived by them in much the old terms, and the only justification they will admit for the study of style is that it may assist in the attainment of the knowledge of oneself and of nature. "The art of writing and the art of managing one's life are one and the same thing" is the motto of Montaigne and all his followers. "As for me," writes Lipsius to Montaigne in 1588, "I mightily scorn all those external and polite kinds of studies, whether philosophical or literary, and indeed every kind of knowledge that is not directed by prudence and judgment to the end of teaching the conduct of life." 16 Bacon deprecates the harsh treatment of rhetoric by Plato and labors its justification in the Advancement of Learning; but he treats it as a subordinate part of dialectic or logic, as Aristotle does, and in certain portions of its subject-matter as identical with moral or political philosophy." Le Mothe le Vayer is more express and clear than any of his predecessors. They have all praised the new genres, the letter and

Works, Amsterdam ed. of 1723, 1, 2 (ed. Feugère, Letter 1). Andreas Schott develops at length the relation between the decline of oratory and the political conditions at the downfall of the Republic, in the prefatory letter (to Lipsius) of his edition of the elder Seneca.

"Epp. Misc., II, 41.

"Book II (De Augmentis Scientiarum, VI, chap. 3). "For although in true value it is inferior to wisdom, . . . yet with people it is the more mighty." Its function is "to contract a confederacy between the Reason and Imagination against the Affections"; and again: "Logic handleth reason exact and in truth, and Rhetoric handleth it as it is planted in popular opinions and manners." The chief defect that he notes in the study of rhetoric is that too little attention has been paid to the study of private modes of discourse. In this art orators are likely to be defective, "whilst by the observing their well-graced forms of speech they lose the volubility (i. e., the subtlety or flexibility) of application." He then proceeds to supply this defect in part by making a collection of aphorisms and antitheses on the moral and political life of man, which he greatly extended in the De Augmentis, observing that whether this belongs to politics (prudential wisdom) or to rhetoric is a question of no importance.

the essay; but he professes at the beginning of his discussion of rhetoric 1 to treat of written style alone, la rhetorique des livres, a style to be read, not heard: all that has to do with speaking he repudiates.

This is the general attitude of the leaders of opinion in the first half of the century. In the second half it is not changed, but, on the contrary, is more clearly defined. Bayle speaks of the faux éclat of oratory. "Ces messieurs la (les orateurs) ne se soucient guère d'éclairer l'esprit. . . ils vont droit au coeur, et non pas droit a l'entendement: ils tachent d'exciter l'amour, la haine, la colère,” Bayle displays the scorn and intolerance that have always been characteristic of the scientific rationalist; but with proper deductions his opinions may be taken as characteristic of the age of La Bruyère, Arnauld, Fénelon, and Malebranche, of the Port-Royal community and the Royal Society of London. The temporary success of Puritanism and Quietism, the rapid progress of scientific method, and the diffusion of Cartesian ideas, all in their different ways helped to create a taste for a bare and level prose-style adapted merely to the exact portrayal of things as they are. The severest theorists indeed can hardly be brought to recognize a difference between logic and rhetoric; while even the most liberal would exclude the characteristic beauties of oratorical form from the legitimate resources of literary art. Persuasion is indeed the object of rhetoric. But the legitimate means of attaining this end, they constantly assert, is not by the sensuous appeal of oratorical rhythm, but, on the contrary, by portraying in one's style exactly those athletic movements of the mind by which it arrives at a sense of reality and the true knowledge of itself and the world.20 Fénelon is the harshest critic of Isocrates and his

"De P'Eloquence Françoise (Works, IV, Paris, 1684), pp. 4-7. He also has a treatise Sur la Composition et sur la Lecture des Livres (Works, vol. x). Whether a work had ever been written before on this subject I cannot say.

19 Oeuvres Diverses, m, 178. Compare same, 1, 645, vi; and his Diction naire, s. v. Pitiscus, A.

"La principale partie de l'éloquence consiste à concevoir fortement les choses et a les exprimer en sorte qu'on en porte dans l'esprit des auditeurs une image vive et lumineuse, qui ne présente pas seulement les choses toute nues, mais aussi les mouvements avec lesquels on les conçoit." Arnauld, Logique, ш, chap. 9. Compare Fénelon, Dialogues sur l'Eloquence II: "Toute l'éloquence se réduit à prouver, à peindre et à toucher." And again: "La vive peinture des choses est comme l'âme de l'éloquence."

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