“Q. What is Rhetoric? A. The science of speaking well. Q. What is an orator? A. A good man skilled in speaking. Q. What is the duty of an orator? A. To speak well in civil cases. Q. What is his end? A. To persuade so far as the condition of things and persons allows.”
And so forth—the writer proceeding by the simple method of throwing into catechism-form the same kind of dictionary matter which we have just noticed, sometimes with very odd effect, as in Quæ est anæschyntos?—a question which, if Mrs. Quickly had heard it and had understood Greek, would doubtless have made her adjust to the occasion her objection to “Jenny’s case.” The thing, though curious, drags Rhetoric farther out of its proper course than ever, and one perhaps at no time feels more inclined to join in the contempt of scholastic methods, mistaken as one knows it to be, than when reading such questions as—Assumpta qualitas facit statum? and the rest of this liturgy of abracadabra in catechetical form. In no rhetorical treatise, indeed, is the question of style so unceremoniously ignored. A long handling of the staseis is followed by shorter ones of other technical divisions, “Elocution” receiving the most perfunctory treatment possible (though with a certain practicality). How are you to acquire diction? By reading, speaking, hearing others speak, and inventing new words (which must not be done too often). Put your long words last; but begin a sentence if you can with a long syllable, and do not keep too many short ones, or too many monosyllables, together; avoid archaisms; and attend to such minute, but in at least some cases arbitrary, rules as the following[[441]]:—
“Let your construction be more frequently round than flat; let it not gape with too frequent collision of vowels, especially long ones; nor be rough with the conflict of two consonants; let not many monosyllables be joined together; let there be no great stretch of short syllables nor many long ones; let not the first syllable of a word be the same as the last of the word before, nor let the two together make any awkward compound; let not the oration be deformed by many thin[[442]] words or vast syllables; and let not many genitive plurals come together.”[[443]]
Cautions, it will be observed, sometimes judicious, sometimes capricious, but never reasoned.
The commentary of Marius Victorinus on Cicero’s Rhetoric is the longest of all these treatises. It contains a great deal of |Marius Victorinus on Cicero.| matter, and there is no discoverable reason why it should not have contained a great deal more. For the very first note on Cicero’s words, “I have thought to myself of this often and very much,” is as follows: “If there be only one of these, it does not indicate a sufficiently lengthy cogitation. For we may frequently think of a thing, but immediately desist from the thinking. We may also think long upon a thing, but do it only on a single day. He therefore has properly joined the two, and said: ‘Often and much have I thought to myself on this.’ And because a thing ought not to be published unless it be certain and the result of deliberation, he rightly says: ‘I thought of this to myself.’”
All this is exceedingly true; but it is also exceedingly trivial. And the second is like unto it. Bonine an mali plus attulerit hominibus et civitatibus sc. eloquentia: “The cause of his deliberation is not whether eloquence be good or bad, but whether it have more of good or of bad in it. The order of the words, however, is not unimportant, for he might have said, ‘of bad or of good.’ But Cicero stuck to the nature of eloquence, which, when it first began, did good to men, for it brought them together. But later, when it was depraved by the ingenuity of bad men, it hurt the republic very much. So he arranged the words in the proper order in saying Bonine, &c. The republic consists of two parts, private and public—that is to say, of men and states. We may notice this also in the Verrines, how Cicero always defends either men or cities.”
A man who is content to write like this need never stop while paper, pen, and ink hold out, or till the kindness of nature, or the impatience of men, puts an end to his life. Sometimes the comment is not quite so nugatory, especially when Victorinus illustrates the differences between Cicero and Hermagoras. But he seldom even approaches literary criticism.
The rest, save one, may be almost silence. The ambitiously entitled Institutiones Oratoriæ of Sulpicius Victor is incomplete. |Others.| What we have of it follows the usual order of “states” narration, &c., with some, but only a few, peculiarities. Most of the other articles are both meagre and late. Emporius deals with ethopœia, the Commonplace, and one or two other matters. There is a Latin version of the Progymnasmata of Hermogenes. The probably spurious Principia Rhetorices, attributed to St Augustine, are at least commended by his name, yet hardly by anything else; and the same may be said in lesser degree of the Compendium of Cassiodorus.[[444]] The verses of Rufinus, on the rhythms suitable to oratory, have more interest. And so we may come to Martianus.
Inferior as Latin criticism, on the Rhetorical side, is in comparison with Greek, it is not fanciful to say that it ends with a better note, though a quaint and fantastic one. The later stages in Greek, as we have seen, were mere arid technicalities or idle epideictic—ghosts of things no longer alive, and never perhaps alive with the best kind of life. What followed in the Byzantine age had at best the character of literary research. Such a book as that of Photius, invaluable as it is to us, has no life-promise in it, either as regards its own generation or for the future.
On the contrary, there is much of both, as we look back on it, in the eccentric treatise on the Marriage of Philology and |Martianus Capella.| Mercury, by Martianus Capella.[[445]] Of the author and date of the book we know, with accuracy, hardly anything at all. His full name appears to have been Martianus Minneius Felix Capella, and he is described as a Carthaginian. His date is much contested, as well as his religion, his occupations, and other things which no mortal need trouble himself about; while this date, which is of some importance, cannot be adjusted very exactly. There is, however, not very much dispute that it must have been somewhere in the fifth century. “Before 439” is all that his latest editor, Eyssenhardt, will say.