In the third volume we return to comparatively original work, with Hermogenes once more at the head of the authors. |The "Art" of Hermogenes.| We have left the vestibule—the Progymnasmata—and are now in the main courts of pure Rhetoric herself. Much more than half the volume is occupied by the four divisions of the master’s Technic: the first of “Staseis,” the second, in four parts, of “Inventions,” the third of “Ideas,” and the fourth of “Cleverness[[136]] of Method.” One synopsis of about a hundred pages, an anonymous epitome of fifty, with eleven shorter epitomes, and other tractates, scarcely averaging a dozen pages each, complete the volume.
There is no doubt that the manual of Hermogenes is the text-book of later Greek Rhetoric. Five mortal volumes of Walz, one of nearly nine hundred pages, are occupied by scholia upon it, two of these being devoted to the Staseis alone; and it seems to have been the model subject even of those who did not ostensibly range themselves as its commentators. The book of the Staseis, which produced fifteen hundred pages of extant and printed commentary, has itself but fifty or sixty, the great bulk of the treatise being contained under the heads of “Inventions” and “Ideas.” There is a table of contents, but it may be feared that this will be of but partial service to any one not acquainted with the technicalities of the subject. Others may indeed be relieved by the names of well-known Greek orators and historians, who appear to be discussed under “Ideas,” and even by those of some commonly known Figures in the last division. But on the whole Terminology revels in all her wildest Greek luxuriance. Hypodiæresis and Prodiegesis guard the labyrinth with Antenclema and Procatastasis[[137]] ready at hand; more familiar words have obviously assumed new senses; and it is not even the very easiest thing to acquire a distinct and satisfactory idea of the connotation of the great section-headings themselves, while, when that idea is at last attained, we may find that it is for our special purpose irrelevant, or nearly so.
The best instance stands, at the very threshold of the investigation, in the very name of those Staseis which, as we have seen, attracted the commentators as a candle does flies. Στάσις is a term which appears impossible to translate into any single English word, even in that legal vocabulary to which (far more than to anything having to do with literature) it really belongs. Its Latin equivalent is status or constitutio:[[138]] M. Egger renders it in French as état de cause; Liddell and Scott do not attempt to render it at all; but it and its Latin equivalents have been variously translated as “state of the case,” “issue,” “point.” Sometimes it seems as if it might be not impossibly translated “plea.” Hermogenes (who plunges at once, after his fashion, into a wilderness of the most wiredrawn distinctions) gives no general definition, but says that στάσις ὁρικὴ is “the search for a name for a thing,” and instances the case of a man who has stolen the private property of a priest. Is this Sacrilege or Theft? The opening for hair-splitting which such an inquiry gives is, of course, a very wide one, and Hermogenes simply revels in the indulgence thereof. But for us there is hardly a blade of pasture in the field on which centuries of commentators browsed so greedily.
Εὑρέσις again may be “for thoughts.” Again we can find no single word for them, how much less for such niceties as procatastasis and prodiegesis? The term covers the additions to the case introduced by the speaker’s own invention, and ranges over a vast variety of subtleties, ending with a treatment of some Figures. The examination of “Ideas”[[139]] shifts to the qualities of the speech or speaker—clearness, purity, dignity, energy, brilliancy, and very many others, ending with that survey of great speakers and writers which has been noted. And finally the treatise on “Cleverness of method” contains, not only more figures, but a profusion of mostly brief and rather desultory cautions. Throughout the book the author seems in a sort of paroxysm of distinction and nomenclature: he is always striving to make out some one thing to be at least two things, and to fit each of the two with some technological form.
We turn, naturally enough, to the dealings with great writers mentioned above to see what this method, of analysis pushed to the verge of mania, will give us. They are very short—not in all filling twenty pages—and, as we might have expected, they contain little more than simple reference to the technicalities on which so much time has been spent. Literary criticism, in short, becomes a form of chemical analysis. We all know how this runs, as posted up, say, outside the walls of a pump-room. The water contains iron so many grains, sulphur so much, chlorine so much, nitrates a trace, and so forth. So here. Lysias has moderate ἐπιμέλια, only a trace of γοργότης, a certain amount of περιβολή κατ’ ἔννοιαν, but hardly any of it κατὰ μέθοδον, very little that is axiomatic, but a great deal of cleverness of method. On the other hand, Isæus has a great deal of γοργότης,[[140]] more abundant ἐπιμέλεια, and so with other things. He is not so good as Demosthenes (who, be it observed, is Hermogenes' ideal), but much better than Lysias, though he has not so much clearness of method, yet still a good deal. Of the historians, Xenophon is very particularly ἀφελὴς and also “sweet,” &c., &c.
Perhaps the following sentence may serve as well as any other as an example of the method of Hermogenes. It is from the fourth chapter of the third book, περὶ εὑρέσεων:—
“Since many have set out many things about epicheiremes[[141]] and have spent much speech on this, and nobody has been able to bring it home to the mind clearly, I shall endeavour, as clearly as I can, to decide what is the invention of the epicheireme which constructs the kephalaion or the lusis, and what the invention of the ergasia which constructs the epicheireme, and what the invention of the enthymeme which constructs the ergasia.” I quote this with none of that ignorant scorn of terminology, as such, which authorities so different as Hamilton and Mill have justly denounced in reference to the common eighteenth-century judgments of the schoolmen. But it will be obvious to anybody that this kind of writing tends to the construction of a sort of spider’s web of words, the symmetry and exactness of construction whereof are in inverse ratio to substance and practical use. It may catch flies; it undoubtedly gives a sense of ingenuity and mastery to the spider. But it has extremely little sweetness: it rather obstructs the light: and it is not capable of being put (for it will not even staunch wounds) to any of those practical purposes which objects possessing very little sweetness, and no light at all, not unfrequently subserve.
We shall still have something to say of Hermogenes when we come to the conclusion of this Rhetorical matter; but for the |Other “Arts,” &c.| present it is necessary to pass on to the writers associated with him in this third volume of Walz. The Art of Rhetoric of Rufus, whose age and identity are quite unknown, is a very brief and rather slight skeleton, with classifications, definitions of terms, and a few examples. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is the addition of a fourth kind—historic—to the usual three—forensic, and symbouleutic, and epideictic. The very common habit, to which reference has been already made, of taking examples almost indiscriminately from orators and historians, has evidently a logical connection (whether of cause or effect) with this. An anonymous “Synopsis” is busied with Hermogenes only. Joseph the Rhacendyte, who seems to have been a thirteenth-century man and a native of the “little isle” of Ithaca, is much fuller, has written an argument of his book in about 150 iambic trimeters, of a kind which would bring severe tribulation on the British schoolboy, and is noteworthy (though he would be more so if it were not for his late day) because he has evidently reached the stage where Rhetoric is recognised as the Art of Literature. His chapter-headings have the curious confusion and jumble which characterises much, if not most, Rhetoric since the strict oratorical side was lost sight of,—he has one on epistolary writing, one even on verse: and from several points of view his interest is not infinitesimal. It is very far from superfluous to note, though it may be impossible to discuss in detail, the significance of the fact that while another Anonym gives us four parts of a perfect speech—proem, diegesis, agon, and epilogue, a third notes eight parts of rhetorical speech—conception, style, figure, method, clause, composition, punctuation, and rhythm.
For, arbitrary and “cross,” in the technical sense, as these divisions are (and as, it may be noted in passing, are all subsequent attempts to produce things of the same kind), they testify to a salutary sense of dissatisfaction. They make tacit or more than tacit acknowledgment that something must be put in the place of the old, defunct, purely oratorical Rhetoric—nay, that that Rhetoric itself was incomplete, and would have needed extension even if it had not been defunct of its old office. Of still further Anonyms one (only partly given in Walz) is interesting because it attempts a kind of historical introduction; another is couched in “political” (accent-scanned) verses, with curious refrains in the different sections, and with odd prose insertions, as are the acknowledged epitomes of Tzetzes and Psellus. The remainder of the volume consists of a brief dictionary of figures, a treatise of some interest on “Rhetorical Metres” by a certain Castor, and a brief ecthesis or exposition of rhetoric generally.
The enormous collection of the scholia on Hermogenes fortunately requires no detailed notice.[[142]] At most could we pick out a few isolated passages bearing more or less directly on our subject, and even these would be of scarcely any value, seeing that the authorship and date of most of them are quite unknown, and that hardly any can be said to possess that intrinsic literary interest which might make questions of date and authorship unimportant.