This is a transfer of the content of rhetoric to poetic, but poetic
remains an art of imitation. Imaginative realization of the life of man
would be incomplete if the characters in a narrative or in a drama did not
use the same rhetorical art as do the characters of actual life. The poets
justly carry over rhetoric when the scene demands it, and have often
proved themselves excellent rhetoricians. Quintilian praises the
peroration of Priam's speech begging Achilles for the body of Hector,[78]
and Cicero gives a rhetorical analysis of the speech of the old man in the
_Andria_ of Terence, where the arrangement is especially appropriate to
the character of the speaker.[79] Norden, therefore, seems to go too far
in giving this as an example of contamination of poetic by rhetoric.[80]
Dante remains an excellent poet when he puts into the mouth of Virgil that
persuasive speech to Cato in the first canto of the _Purgatorio_. Antony's
speech in _Julius Caesar_ is the best known modern example of the
legitimate place of rhetoric in poetic.



5. Poetic as Part of Rhetoric


Just as rhetoric is justly carried over into poetic when in the
realization of a character or situation a speech must be made or conduct
rationalized, so poetic is constantly utilized by the orator. Public
speech would be less persuasive if the characteristic imaginative
qualities of poetic were excluded. The ideas and propositions of rhetoric
would most ineffectually reach an audience if they were not made vivid.
That rhetoric is not thus made synonymous with poetic is due to the fact
that in rhetoric the images exist to illuminate the concept, while in