Following this lead, Thomas Wilson, the English rhetorician and statesman, defines logic and rhetoric as follows:
Logic is occupied about all matters, and doeth plainlie and nakedly set forth with apt wordes the sum of things, by way of argumentation. Rhetorike useth gaie painted sentences, and setteth forthe those matters with freshe colours and goodly ornaments, and that at large.[[139]]
According to Agricola and Wilson logic has supplanted rhetoric in finding all possible means of persuasion in any subject. Following Peter Ramus,[[140]] Wilson finds that logic has two parts: judicium, "Framyng of thinges aptlie together, and knittyng words for the purpose accordynglie," and inventio, "Findyng out matter, and searchyng stuffe agreable to the cause."[[141]] Hermagoras and others had in antiquity considered judicium, or judgment, as a part of rhetoric,[[142]] although Quintilian thought it less a part of rhetoric than necessary to all parts.[[143]] Inventio, of course, has always been the most important part of rhetoric. This same carrying over of the content of classical rhetoric into logic is further illustrated by Abraham Fraunce, who divides his Lawiers Logic (1588) into two parts: invention and disposition.
2. The Persistence of the Mediaeval Tradition of Rhetoric
But while the survival of the mediaeval notion that rhetoric was concerned mainly with style thus gave over in the English Renaissance inventio and dispositio to logic, there naturally remained nothing of classical rhetoric but elocutio and pronuntiatio. A brief survey of the English rhetorics of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries will show that this was the case. Richard Sherry devotes an entire book to style in his "Treatise of Schemes and Tropes" (1550).[[144]] He begins by defining "eloquucion, the third part of Rhetoric," as the dressing up of thought. Rhetoric to him had not in theory become style, but style is the only part which he finds interesting enough to treat. His schemes and tropes are of course the rhetorical figures; but let him explain them in his own artless way. "A scheme is the fashion of a word, sayyng or sentence, otherwyse wrytten or spoken then after the vulgar and comon usage. A trope is a movynge and changynge of a worde or sentence, from thyr owne significacion into another which may agree with it by a similitude." Henry Peacham's Garden of Eloquence, Conteyning the Figures of Grammer and Rhetoric (1577) likewise deals only with the rhetorical figures.
In the anonymous, The Artes of Logike and Rhetorike (1584),[[145]] rhetoric is denned as "an arte of speaking finelie. It hath two parts, garnishing of speach, called Eloqution, and garnishing of the manner of utterance, called Pronunciation."[[146]] Thus by definition rhetoric includes only style and delivery. Under garnishing of speech the author treats only the rhetorical figures. This restriction of style to figures is characteristic. The rhythm of prose upon which classical treatises on style lavished such enthusiastic pains is practically ignored in those English treatises. The comma, colon, and periodus which to classical authors signified rhythmical units in the sentence movement had already come to mean to most people only marks of punctuation.[[147]] Garnishing of utterance Fenner does not discuss at all.
In The Arcadian Rhetorike (1588), Abraham Fraunce treats both. "Rhetorike," he says, "is an Art of Speaking. It hath two parts, Eloqution and Pronuntiation. Eloqution is the first part of Rhetorike, concerning the ordering and trimming of speech. It hath two parts, Congruity and Braverie." Congruity (as pertaining more to grammar) he does not discuss. "Braverie of speach consisteth of tropes or turnings, and in figures or fashionings."[[148]] The remainder of the first book deals with meter and verse forms, baldly of prose rhythm, epizeuxis, conceited verses, and various rhetorical figures. The second book deals with the voice and gestures. This rhetoric of Fraunce's, then, complements his Lawiers Logike of the same year, the latter dealing with the finding out and arrangement of arguments in a speech, and the former with style and delivery. Rhetoric is thus concerned only with stylistic artifice in verse as well as in prose.
The same tradition is upheld by Charles Butler, who in his Latin school rhetoric (1600) defines rhetoric as the art of ornate speech and divides it into elocutio, a discussion of the tropes and figures, and pronuntiatio, the use of voice and gesture.[[149]] And John Barton is worse. In his Art of Rhetorick (1634) he says:
Rhetorick is the skill of using daintie words, and comely deliverie, whereby to work upon men's affections. It hath two parts, adornation and action. Adornation consisteth in the sweetness of the phrase, and is seen in tropes and figures.
He continues: