III. BOOK tempted and effected, while I have been contented with plain matters of fact:" or, "How much would he have boasted, if, instead of feeble conjectures, he could have advanced substantial proofs like mine!" or, in the way of simple interrogation, "What has he shown? What have I not demonstrated?" In any of these figured modes of speech, the peroration may be couched; or, as before said, in the bare recapitulation of the adversary's arguments and our own. The end of the whole ought to be free from conjunctions, to make the hearers aware that our discourse is at its close. " I have spoken; you have heard; the whole matter is before you: I now wait your decision." 139 139 Almost the precise words in which Lysias concludes his plead ings against Eratosthenes. See my "Translation of Lysias," &e. p. 280. APPENDIX. 457 Aristotle's Rhetoric, a model for philosophical treatises on the Rhetoric, phical trea arts. According to Aristotle, philosophy consists in the in- Aristotle's vestigation of causes, to which inquiry the present a model for treatise is chiefly directed. The author's drift is, to obtain philosoa principle, and to demonstrate its power. When this tises on the is done clearly and convincingly, in the simplest cases, and with regard to objects the most familiar, he often leaves its operation to be extended, by the reader's reflection, to examples more alluring, and to matters more complicated. The "Art of Rhetoric," is therefore a didactic work; and, in this view, is a model of the best manner, in which all practical arts, founded in nature, are to be either improved or explained. Men are naturally rhetoricians; but how is this natural aptitude to be converted into art? By observing when a speaker or writer has happened to attain his aim, and then tracing to the general principles of human nature the causes of his success, that, from the knowledge of these causes, rules may be derived productive of like success in all similar cases. To be sound and right, art must thus be built on the broad basis of experience, to the rejection of all narrow notions, all pre-conceived judgements, and all priori reasonings. By adherence the most scrupulous to this inductive method, Aristotle's Rhetoric threw into the back-ground ceding and the flimsy theories of Gorgias, Pamphilus, Callippus, Comparison of it with pre subsequent works on the same subject. and all preceding writers on the same art. Cicero says, that it had done this so completely in his time, that the use of those writers was totally superseded, and that no scholar thought of having recourse to any of them, but applied to Aristotle solely 1; and this decided superiority over all his precursors, procured for him the utmost reverence from all succeeding writers, Greek and Roman, on what they deemed the same important subject. The most copious of the Greeks was Dionysius of Halicarnassus, though most of his works are now reduced to mere fragments. 2 He extols Aristotle for his perspicuity and energy; and for qualities which this rhetorician equally admired - his sweetness and elegance. Quintilian, a critic equally judicious, regards the Stagirite as the prince of philosophers; and knows not what part of his character most to admire, the extent and variety of his knowledge, the multiplicity of his writings, the acuteness of his inventions, the suavity and brightness of his diction. 4 But of all his eulogists, 1 Cicero de Invent. Rhetor. l. ii. c. 2. • The most complete of his works is the treatise De Structura Nominum-The collocation of words in reference to harmony, of which I have spoken in my History of Ancient Greece, P. i. vol. i. c. 5. p. 239, et seq. 6th edit. 3 Εξετασις των Αρχαιων, p. 70. Edit. Sylburg. * Conf. Quintilian. Inst. Orator. 1. i. c. 1. 1. x. c. 1.,, L. xii. c. 11. |