We find the theory of rhetorical ornament jealously kept intact by Baumgarten and Meier, while in France it was as vigorously assailed by César Chesneau du Marsais, who published in 1730 a treatise on Tropes (the seventh part of his General Grammar)[32] wherein he develops, on the subject of metaphor, the observation already made by Montaigne: indeed he was perhaps inspired by Montaigne, although he does not mention his name. Du Marsais remarks that it is said that figures are modes of speech and turns of expression removed from the ordinary and common; which is an empty phrase, as good as saying "the figured differs from the non-figured and figures are figures and not non-figures." On the other hand it is wholly untrue that figures are removed from ordinary speech, for "nothing is more natural, ordinary and common than figures: more figures of speech are used in the town square on a market-day than in many days of academical discussion"; and no speech, however short, can be composed entirely of non-figurative expressions. And Du Marsais gives instances of quite obvious and spontaneous expressions in which Rhetoric cannot refuse to recognize the figures of apostrophe, congeries, interrogation, ellipsis, prosopopœia: "The apostles were persecuted and suffered their persecutions with patience. What can be more natural than the description given by St. Paul? Maledicimur et benedicimus; persecutionem patimur et sustinemus; blasphemamur et obsecramus. Yet the apostle makes use of a fine figure of antithesis; cursing is the opposite to blessing; persecution to endurance; blasphemy to prayer." But further, the very language of the figure is figured, since it is a metaphor.—But after such acute observations, Du Marsais ends by himself becoming confused and defines figures as "manners of speech differing from others in a particular modification by which it is possible to reduce each one to a species apart, and give a more lively, noble or pleasing effect than can be gained by a manner of speech expressing the same content of thought without such particular modification."[33]
Psychological interpretation.
But the psychological interpretation of figures of speech, the first stage towards their æsthetic criticism, was not allowed to drop here. In his Elements of Criticism, Home says that he had long questioned whether that part of Rhetoric concerning figures might not be reduced to rational principles, and had finally discovered that figures consist in the passional element;[34] he set himself therefore to analyse prosopopœia, apostrophe and hyperbole in the light of the passional faculty. From Du Marsais and Home is derived everything of value in the Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres of Hugh Blair, professor at Edinburgh University from 1759 onwards;[35] published in book form, these lectures had an immense vogue in all the schools of Europe including those of Italy, and replaced advantageously, by their "reason and good sense," works of a much cruder type. Blair defined figures in general as "language suggested by imagination or passion."[36] Similar ideas were promulgated in France by Marmontel in his Elements of Literature.[37] In Italy Cesarotti was contrasting the logical element or "cypher-terms" of language with the rhetorical element or "figure-terms," and rational eloquence with imaginative eloquence.[38] Beccaria, though a shrewd psychological analyst, held to the view of literary style as "accessory ideas or feelings added to the principal in any discourse"; that is, he failed to free himself from the distinction between the intellectual form intended for the expression of the principal ideas, and the literary form, modifying the first by the addition of accessory ideas.[39] In Germany an effort was made by Herder to interpret tropes and metaphors as Vico had done, that is to say as essential to primitive language and poetry.
Romanticism and Rhetoric. Present day.
Romanticism was the ruin of the theory of ornament, and caused it practically to be thrown on the scrap-heap, but it cannot be said to have gone under for good or to have been superseded by a new and accurately stated theory. The chief philosophers of Æsthetic (not only Kant, who as we know remained in bondage to the mechanical and ornamental theory; not only Herder, whose knowledge of art seems to have been confined to a little music and a great deal of rhetoric; but such romantic philosophers as Schelling, Solger and Hegel) still retained the sections devoted to metaphor, trope and allegory for tradition's sake, without severe scrutiny. Italian Romanticism with Manzoni at its head destroyed the belief in beautiful and elegant words, and dealt a blow at Rhetoric: but was it killed by the stroke? Apparently not, judging by the concessions unconsciously made by the scholastic treatise-writer Ruggero Bonghi, whose Critical Letters assert the existence of two styles or forms, which at bottom are nothing else than the plain and the ornate.[40] German schools of philology have pretty generally accepted the stylistic theory of Gröber, who divides style into logical (objective) and affective (subjective):[41] an ancient error masked by terminology borrowed from the psychological philosophy in fashion at modern universities. In the same spirit a recent writer rechristens the rhetorical doctrine of tropes and figures by the title "Doctrine of the Forms of Æsthetic Apperception," and divides them into the four categories (the ancient wealth of categories reduced to a paltry four!) of personification, metaphor, antithesis, and symbol.[42] Biese has devoted an entire book to metaphor; but one searches it in vain for a serious æsthetic analysis of this category.[43]
The best scientific criticism of the theory of ornament is found scattered throughout the writings of De Sanctis, who when lecturing on rhetoric preached what he called anti-rhetoric.[44] But even here the criticism is not conducted from a strictly systematic point of view. It seems to us that the true criticism should be deduced negatively from the very nature of æsthetic activity, which does not lend itself to partition; there is no such thing as activity type a or type b, nor can the same concept be expressed now in one way, now in another. Such is the only way of abolishing the double monster of bare form which is, no one knows how, deprived of imagination, and ornate form which contains, no one knows how, an addition on the side of imagination.[45]
[1] For Gorgias' saying see Aristotle, Rhet. iii. ch. 18.
[2] Cicero, Orat. ad Brut., introd.
[3] Quintilian, Inst. orat. xii. c. i.