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CHAP. books, inscribed to Theodectes, which are here

I.

Analysis of the Rhetoric to

translated.

The Rhetoric inscribed to Alexander was written by Anaximenes, of Lampsacus: it has little of Aristotle's depth or precision, and was edited in the body of his ample but ill-digested remains, to supply the place of his lost treatise that bore the same title: every thing of value in it is contained in the Rhetoric to Theodectes.

Of this inestimable work, the greater part turns on the three kinds of oratory first disTheodec- tinguished in Athens, but which retain, and must

tes.

ever retain, their distinct place and character in all free states, indeed in all civilized countries. These are the deliberative and the judicial, words which sufficiently explain themselves; and that called demonstrative, because principally intended for demonstration or show, the display of high intellectual powers, the exhibition of generous and lofty sentiments.

The business of all oratory is to instruct or to persuade; but each of the three kinds has its distinct office and its peculiar end. The deliberative is employed in exhorting to certain measures, or in restraining from them; the judicial in accusation or defence; the demonstrative in praise or blame. Of the deliberative, the end is utility; it bears a reference to the present: of the judicial, the end is justice; it bears a reference to things past: of the demonstrative, which has not any appropriate time, the end is honour and glory. Each kind

• Quintilian, Inst. Orator. l. iii. c. 4. Dionys. Halicarn. Epist. ad Ammæum. Compare History of Ancient Greece, p. ii. c. ix.

I.

of oratory is considered by Aristotle apart, and CHAP. its rules are explained under the separate heads of thought, diction, and arrangement, or method; an explanation equally evincing the vast reach of his invention, and the unerring solidity of his judgment. Boileau, himself so much distinguished by this faculty, that a cautious distributor of praise says emphatically", that "Boileau " will seldom be found mistaken," declares that he had learned more from Aristotle's Rhetoric, than from all the other books he had ever read in his life. This eulogy is hyperbolical, but expressive of that deep sense of gratitude, in which Horace, the precursor and the model of Boileau, would heartily have joined; for none ever turned the Rhetoric to better account than Horace, in his Satires, Epistles, and especially in his Art of Poetry.

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In treating the subject of deliberative elo- Deliberaquence, Aristotle takes an extensive view of the tive elowide variety of discussions occupying senates and assemblies. He does not consider a commonwealth as a machine ingeniously contrived for multiplying riches; much less as a mere engine of war. He contemplates national prosperity under every possible aspect ; divides it into its in. tegral parts; resolves these parts into their constituent elements, and from this complete analysis deduces those topics of argument which may be successfully employed in every subject of political debate.

quence.

'Johnson, in his Life of Dryden.

• Pour moi J'avoue franchement que sa lecture m'a plus profité' que tout ce que j'ai jamais lû en ma vie.

CHAP.

I.

Judicial eloquence.

The same process he pursues in treating the eloquence of the bar, whose end is justice. This bulwark of social life he examines and decomposes with singular perspicuity; distinguishing natural justice from that depending on positive institution, and from both of them, equity, the corrective of justice, which looks with an eye of compassion on human frailty, duly discriminating between errors and accidents on one hand, and errors and crimes on the other: errors that are committed without any pravity of purpose, and crimes that originate in willing villany; to which latter class, Aristotle refers the gratification of all inordinate and odious passions. He then explains the difference between public and private delinquency; and observes that in both, it is indispensable that terms should be clearly defined, in order to understand precisely what constitutes theft, murder, adultery, sacrilege, and treason; for in all crimes, the intention of the mind is the main point, not the external act: since the intention constitutes the whole turpitude of the transgression, andmusttherefore be always implied in the term by which the crime is denoted. Upon these and similar distinctions, containing the germ and more than the germ of the highest perfection to which jurisprudence ever can be carried, Aristotle builds the art of inventing those topics and arguments by which advocates may plead persuasively, and omit nothing calculated to prove that they have justice on their side.

Demonstrative eloquence may be supposed, in modern times, to have ceased. Whether destined embraces to entertainment merely, or to entertainment

Demonstrative eloquence

history.

I.

mixed with instruction, it was confined to the CHAP. Olympic and other public solemnities, to which nothing parallel now exists in the world. But it should be remembered that, before the invention of printing, such rehearsals were essential to the wide and speedy diffusion of works courting celebrity. Herodotus thus read his account of the Persian expedition, at the Olympic games, where Thucydides, then in early youth, wept mingled tears of wonder and emulation. And " with what other voice, but that of demonstrative eloquence, is history, as contra-distinguished from the compilement of annals; history, the witness of time, the light of truth, the guide of life, to be delivered down from age to age, and transmitted with unimpaired effect, to the latest posterity?" Are men deserving of remembrance, that have not been distinguished by energy either in good or in evil? Can actions, entitled neither to praise nor to blame, be held worthy of commemoration? The document is taken from history, if stripped of its moral tendency, if it does not in particular describe generous and noble feelings, and by describing, inspire them. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that, in later times, a cold sceptical philosophy has infected the warmer regions of history: and writers, learned, elegant, and acute, have not exerted their highest powers in holding up good and great men to admiration, or in loading contrary characters with infamy. By a pretended balance of virtues and defects, by refined conjectures, by gratuitous suppositions,

Historia vero testis temporum, &c. Cicero de Oratore, l. ii. c. 9.

I.

CHAP. and sometimes by penetrating too audaciously into the hidden secrets of the heart, they would have laboured in vain to abolish the unalterable distinctions of things, but they have succeeded, in some degree, in placing historical characters more nearly on the same level. The contrary of this was the aim of an author, than whom none better understood the chief ends and uses of history. The actions of his patriots and heroes will live through all time, and keep alive for ever the flame of glory and of virtue. But the same author is not sparing in severity of censure; for he had observed " that by strong delineations of guilt and of misery, men are as powerfully restrained within the bounds of duty, as by the most engaging pictures of virtue and of happiness.10

Dependence of

oratory on the passions.

Aristotle does not agitate what should seem to have become already a trite question, whether an orator must of necessity be a good man. But he maintains that he should appear to his hearers both able and willing to serve them, and should give them a favourable impression of himself, by assuming at least the semblance of virtue, and by touching their feelings in the way most favourable to his cause. It becomes necessary, therefore, to enter into an examination of the

passions, in which disquisition Aristotle shows Aristotle's the deepest insight into human nature. He them. begins, as usual, with definitions, carefully col

account of

lected from observation; and from them educes the causes, circumstances, and events, in which the various passions originate; the persons most likely to be actuated by them, and also the per10 Plutarch in Demetrio sub initio.

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