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