Page:Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke - 1899.djvu/34

 32 THE ARTE OR CRAFTE OF RHETHORYKE

vse of all sue he as are studious of Eloquence, sette forth in English, by Thomas Wilson. Anno Domini, M.D.LIII. Rhetorics fol Mense lanuarij- 1 Wilson's work is much superior to lowing Cox. Cox in originality and scope. Wilson follows the Ciceronian tradition with more independence. He aims to cover the entire field of the older rhetorics, treating in order of Invention, Disposition, " Elocution " (Y. <?., Diction, or " an applying of apt wordes and sentences to the matter"), Memory, and "Utterance" (or "a framyng of the voyce, countenance, and gesture, after a comely maner"). The parts of an oration, too, from " the Enteraunce " to the Conclusion, are as in Cox and his predecessors ; and so are the sorts of ora- tory, " Oracion demonstrative," deliberative, and judicial. In his first and second books, except for greater amplification and a surer hand, Wilson's work differs little in structure and design from Cox's. The rest of the work, however, is entirely additional matter. And the chief interest of Wilson's Rhetoric is in his discussion of English style and diction in his third book. It is probable enough that Wilson may have seen Cox's book, but evidently he owes less to it than to their common sources. After Wilson, the emphasis in the popular rhetorics of the day is upon style and ornament, rather than upon structure and argument as with Cox and Wilson. No original work however is done until Ben Jonson's scholarship touches the subject in his Timber or Discoveries, and until Bacon, 2 in his Advancement of Learning, " stirs the earth a little about the roots of this science," reprehending " the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter," and uttering upon the rhetorical precept and practice of the preceding century, upon Car and Ascham, upon Sturmius and Erasmus, the trenchant comment that " the whole iaclina-

1 Also 1560, '62, '67, '69, '80, '84 and '85.

2 Advancement of Learning, Book I, chap, iv, 2. See especially Book II, chaps, xviii f. Bacon is the first to urge that rhetoric, or the theory of prose, is a fitter subject for the Quadrivium or graduate course than for the Trivium. See also Bacon's Antitheta. " Perhaps one of the most notable modern contributions to the art [of rhetoric] is the collection of commonplaces framed (in Latin) by Bacon .... He called them 'Antitheta.'" (Jebb, art. "Rhetoric," Encyd. Brit., ninth ed.)

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