Preserved in the compilations of later antiquity (such as the works of Donatus and Priscian and the celebrated allegorical tract of Marcianus Capella), and in the compendia of Bede, Rhabanus Maurus and others, the theory of ornament passed to the Middle Ages. Throughout this period Rhetoric, Grammar and Logic continued to form the trivium of the schools. The theory was to some extent favoured in mediæval times by the fact that writers and scholars made use of a dead language; this helped to reinforce the idea that beautiful form was not a spontaneous thing but consisted in an addition or embroidery. Under the Renaissance the theory continued to flourish and was revived by study of the best classical sources; to the works of Cicero were added the Institutiones of Quintilian and the Rhetoric of Aristotle, with the host of minor Latin and Greek rhetoricians, amongst whom was Hermogenes with his celebrated Ideas, brought into fashion by Giulio Camillo.[22]
Even those writers who dared to criticize the organism of ancient Rhetoric left the theory of ornament unassailed. Vives lamented over the "exaggerated subtlety of the Greeks" which had multiplied distinctions to infinity in this matter without diffusing light,[23] but he never took up a definite stand against the theory of ornament. Patrizzi was dissatisfied with the insufficient definition of ornament given by the ancients; but he asserted the existence of ornaments and metaphors as well as seven different modes of "conjoined speech,"—narrative, proof, amplification, diminution, ornament with its contrary, elevation and depression.[24] The school of Ramus continued to entrust Rhetoric with the "embellishment" of thought. Owing to the vast extension and intensification of life and literature in the sixteenth century, it would be easy to quote phrases, as we have done from ancient authors, asserting the strict dependence of speech upon the things it wishes to express, and lively attacks on pedants and pedantic forms and rules for beautiful speech. But what would be the use? The theory of ornament was always in the background, tacitly admitted as indisputable by all. Juan de Valdés, for instance, makes the following confession of stylistic faith: "Escribo como hablo; solamente tengo cuidado de usar de vocablos que sinifiquen bien lo que quiero decir, y dígolo cuanto más llanamente me es posible, porqué, á mi parecer, en ninguna lengua está bien la afectación." But Valdés also says that beautiful language consists "en que digais lo que quereis con las menos palabras que pudiéredes, de tal manera que ... no se pueda quitar ninguna sin ofender á la sentencia, ó al encarescimiento, ó á la elegancia."[25] Here it seems that amplification and elegance are conceived as extraneous to the meaning or content.—A gleam of truth is visible in Montaigne, who, confronted by the laboured categories into which rhetoricians divide ornament, observes: "Oyez dire Métonymie, Métaphore, Allégorie et aultres tels noms de la Grammaire; semble il pas qu'on signifie quelque forme de langage rare et pellegrin? Ce sont tiltres qui touchent le babil de vostre chambrière."[26] That is to say, they are anything but language remote from the primum se offerens ratio.
Reductio ad absurdum in the seventeenth century.
The impossibility of upholding the theory of ornament was first noticed during the decadence of Italian literature in the seventeenth century, when literary production became but a play of empty forms, and the convenient, long violated in practice, was abandoned and forgotten even in theory, and came to be looked on as a limit arbitrarily imposed on the fundamental principle of ornamentation. The opponents of that style loaded with conceits which is known as "secentismo" from its prevalence in the seventeenth century (Matteo Pellegrini, Orsi and others) felt the viciousness of the literary production of their day; they were aware that decadence was due to the fact that literature was no longer the serious expression of a content; but they were embarrassed by the reasoning of the champions of bad taste, who were able to demonstrate that the whole business conformed in every particular with the literary theory of ornament, the common ground of both parties. In vain did the former appeal to the "convenient," the "moderate," the "avoidance of affectation," to ornament as "condiment, not food," and all the other weapons which had sufficed in times when healthy literary production and sound æsthetic taste had automatically corrected faulty theory: the other party replied, there was no reason to be sparing in use of ornament when it lay in masses ready to hand, or to avoid an ostentatious display of wit when one had an inexhaustible supply.[27]
Polemic concerning the theory of ornament.
The same reaction against the abuse of ornament, against "Spanish and Italian conceits" (whose supporters had been Gracian in Spain and Tesauro in Italy), took place in France. "... Laissez à l'Italie De tous ces faux brillants l'éclatante folie"; "Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement. Et les mots, pour le dire, arrivent aisément."[28] Among the sharpest critics of conceits was the Jesuit Bouhours, already quoted, author of the Manière de bien penser dans les œuvres d'esprit. The rhetorical forms were the subject of warm controversy. Orsi, on national grounds the opponent of Bouhours (1703), asserted that all the ornamental devices of wit rested on a middle term and could be reduced to a rhetorical syllogism, and that wit consists of a truth which appears false or a falsehood which appears true.[29] If this controversy produced no great scientific result at the time, at least it prepared the mind for greater liberty; and, as we have remarked elsewhere,[30] it may have influenced Vico, who, in framing his new concept of poetical imagination, recognized that it necessitated a wholesale reconstruction of the theory of rhetoric and the conclusion that its figures and tropes are not "caprices of pleasure" but "necessities of the human mind."[31]
Du Marsais and metaphor.