Page:Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke - 1899.djvu/30

 28 THE ARTE OR CRAFTE OF RHETHORYKE

Cox is thus, it will be seen, little concerned with the theory of rhetoric. His aim is to tell very plainly the manner of the putting together (the "Invention ") of orations of the several kinds then recognized by the rhetoricians. Every point is illustrated by an example. We are told in a given situation what is the leading idea pertinent thereto which it is incumbent on the orator to bring for- ward. Most of these leading cases are drawn from Cicero ; others from Livy, Sallust, and the like. Then we are shown how Cicero or another actually did put his oration together. The whole method is that of the Ciceronians and the Renaissance educators simplified and put in the vernacular for the use of those who cannot use Latin texts and manuals. Fifty years later the same method without sim- plification or vernacularization is still in use in the English univer- sities, where the orations of Cicero continue to serve as models in the teaching of rhetoric.

Cox's work, then, is designed as a schoolbook and as an ele- mentary introduction for those who have missed the advantages of a scholastic training. His plan is restricted to the treatment of invention and the formal ordering of speech, for that once mastered, "there is no very great maystry to come by the resydue, " and it is in this that the public speaking of the day is particularly defi- cient. Questions of style must be postponed to a later generation, after the matter of structure has been mastered. And, indeed, by the time of Sir Thomas Wilson in 1553 the question of style has begun to assert itself, until with the Elizabethans it is the question of questions. Furthermore, if this work, "the fyrste assay of my pore and symple wyt," 1 find favor, the author promises "to endight other werkes both in this facultye and other." 2 Inasmuch as the Rhetoric passed to a second edition, 3 we may conclude that it met with success ; and probably the Erotemata Rhetorica upon which Cox was engaged in 1540 were designed as a part fulfillment of this promise.

1 By which phrase I take it that Cox means his first essay in English. He had already made at least two essays in Latin.

2 So in the " Conclusion " Cox similarly promises : " I will assay my selfe in the other partes, and so make and accomplysshe the hole werke."

3 Its extreme rarity today is probably accounted for by the fact that it was a schoolbook books, which so rapidly destroyed in use as they were, are the rarest of old books today.

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