TREATISE ON RHETORIC, LITERALLY TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK, WITH COPIOUS NOTES. AN ANALYSIS OF ARISTOTLE'S RHETORIC, BY THOMAS HOBBES, OF MALMSBURY. TO THE READER. IN this second edition, the translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric has been again carefully compared with the Greek, and revised and corrected throughout. Numerous explanatory and illustrative notes have also been added; as well as a marginal analysis, which it is presumed will be found of much service to the reader. The famous Thomas Hobbes' Brief of the Art of Rhetorick,"containing in substance all that Aristotle hath written in his three books on that subject," and forming the best summary of this noble science, has been again reprinted from the scarce edition published at London in 1681. A body of Analytical Questions, for self-examination, has also been appended. ̧ With these improvements, the Publisher confidently hopes that the present volume will be found to contain, not only the most faithful version of the Rhetoric of Aristotle, but the best helps for the due understanding and retaining the sense thereof. Oxford, November, 1832. ARISTOTLE'S TREATISE ON RHETORIC. BOOK I. CHAP. I. That Rhetoric, like Logic, is conversant with no definite class of subjects; that it is useful; and that its business is not absolutely to persuade, but to recognise topics fitted to persuade. RHETORIC is the counterpart of logic; since both 1. Rhetoric corresponds are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is to Logic. the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all 2. men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to im a Aristotle appears to have contemplated a much greater variety of occasions for the exercise of his 'Propu, than we consider proper to that ill-defined art, or habit, or faculty, vaguely called rhetoric. In fact, according to him, any man who attempts to persuade another, under whatever circumstances, and with whatever object, may be said to exercise ῥητορική. b Muretus explains the passage as conveying a censure on Plato, who extolled logic, but compared rhetoric to cookery-ooжоinTiкй. He therefore would have it convey this meaning, Rhetoric is the counterpart, not of cookery, as Plato asserts, but of his own favourite science, dialectics." See also note u, p. 22. Sir P. Sidney, arguing that all arts are but attempts to methodise natural subjects, says, that "the rhetorician and logician, considering what in nature will soonest prove and persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which are still compressed within the circle of a question, according to the proposed matter." Defense of Poetry. B |