shares a line with Virgil. The main concern is with the devices used by
the poets to cloak truth under the veil of allegory. Rhetoric is an
adjunct of the poet.

my mayster Lydgate veryfyde
The depured rethoryke in Englysh language;
To make our tongue so clerely puryfyed
That the vyle termes should nothing arage
As like a pye to chatter in a cage,
But for to speke with rethoryke formally.[136]

In a word, the whole traditional division of rhetoric is transferred to
poetry, and at the same time both rhetoric and poetic are limited to the
single part which they have in common--diction. The style cultivated by
this focus is ornamental and elaborate. If Lydgate or Hawes had believed
that rhetoric included more than aureate language, surely the scope of
their treatises would have afforded them opportunity to correct this
impression. Each of them is endeavoring to present a compendium of
universal knowledge according to the conventional analysis of the seven
liberal arts. Illustrative details might be omitted, but not important
sections of the subject matter.

The meanings of words change, and with such changes we have no quarrel. It
is important, however, that we should know what the English middle ages
meant by rhetoric if we are to appreciate how powerful was the tradition
of the middle ages and in what direction it influenced the literary
criticism of the English renaissance. To resume, the middle ages thought
of poetry as being composed of two elements: a profitable subject matter
(_doctrina_), and style (_eloquentia_). The profitable subject matter was
theoretically supplied by the allegory. This will be discussed in the