bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for the effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our feet, but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add defiance: and tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his followers, whose condemnation is pronounced. So far my king and master; so much my office."1

44. A short step brings the writer from prose like this to downright blank verse :—

(6) "Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back, And tell thy king I do not seek him now;

But could be willing to march on to Calais
Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth,
Though 'tis no wisdom to confess so much
Unto an enemy of craft and vantage,

My people are with sickness much enfeebled;
My numbers lessened, and those few I have
Almost no better than so many French;

Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald,

I thought upon one pair of English legs

Did march three Frenchmen. Yet, forgive me, God,

That I do brag thus! This your air of France

Hath blown that vice in me; I must repent.

Go therefore, tell thy master here I am;
My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk,
My army but a weak and sickly guard ;

Yet, God before, tell him we will come on,

Though France himself and such another neighbour
Stand in our way. There's for thy labour, Montjoy.
Go, bid thy master well advise himself:

If we may pass, we will; if we be hinder'd,
We shall your tawny ground with your red blood
Discolour and so, Montjoy, fare you well.

The sum of all our answer is but this:
We would not seek a battle, as we are ;

Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it:

1Shakspere, Henry V., III. vi. 125-145.-This passage can actually be arranged in blank verse, and is so arranged in the surreptitious Quartos and by Pope in his Edition. (See the Cambridge Edition.)

2 Id. ib., III. vi. 148-175.—A fuller discussion of rhythm in Prose will be found in 158 (2), (3), below.

teach men how to find something to say on any subject? In other words, can it teach men the methods by which they must proceed in their search after the matter of a composition? No one pretends to-day that Rhetoric ought to make a man a Johannes Factotum (Greene's phrase for a Jack of all Trades), any more than that Rhetoric ought to furnish the words, constructions, and other instruments of speech needed by a writer. The assertion is only that, just as, in Style, Rhetoric teaches rules that determine the Form of a composition, so, in Invention, it teaches rules that determine its Content. In each department, of course, it leaves the writer to apply the rules to the special cases that arise in the course of his work; the art being no more under obligations to supply the matter of discourse than to supply the needed forms of expression. It is quite a different thing, however, to say that Rhetoric has for the thought to be expressed rules quite analogous to those which it has for the expression of the thought.

28. That Rhetoric can determine such rules, and that it has, therefore, a department of Invention, is best shown by the fact that such rules exist. The very books which declare most positively that Rhetoric teaches only Style, contain rules that are certainly not laws of Style, and which must therefore belong to a second department of the art, by whatever name it may be known. Further, while Rhetoric is, indeed, the art of communication, and goes to its nomothetical sciences for underlying principles, yet its laws are its own, and would never have been determined by the sciences. The truths of Logic, etc., are as true in one mind as in two; but there can be no communication, unless there are a speaker and a hearer. Thus, Logic classifies arguments, but Rhetoric lays down laws that direct the writer in his choice of both the class of arguments and the particular arguments of their class that will best work conviction under certain varying circumstances. Yet these laws are not laws of Form: they are laws by which Persuasion may be the more easily accomplished.

29. The question raised here is not merely one of name. The point is not, Shall Rhetoric have one department or two? but, shall the office of Rhetoric be limited to the giving of form to thought already discovered? The rules of Rhetoric may, indeed, be all included under one head; but, in that case, either the definition of Style must be materially modified, or both names, Style and Invention, must be abandoned.

By

be taken away, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have no certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and learned men will be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theatre for the contention of politics. Party and faction will be cherished in the places consecrated to piety and learning. These consequences are neither remote nor possible only. They are certain and immediate. * * * It was for many and obvious reasons most anxiously desired, that the question of the power of the legislature over this charter should have been finally decided in the state court. An earnest hope was entertained that the judges of that court might have viewed the case in the light favorable to the rights of the trustees. That hope has failed. It is here, that those rights are now to be maintained, or they are prostrated forever. Omnia alia perfugia bonorum, subsidia, consilia, auxilia, jura ceciderunt. Quem enim alium appellem? quem obtester? quem implorem? Nisi hoc loco, nisi apud vos, nisi per vos, judices, salutem nostram, quae spe exigua extremaque pendet, tenuerimus; nihil est præterea quo confugere possimus.”

46. In another form-that given by Prof. Chauncey A. Goodrich to Rufus Choate-this extract is even more oratorical. Mr. Choate quotes it in his Discourse Commemorative of Daniel Webster, before the Dartmouth College Alumni Society, July 27, 1853:—1

"The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some moments silent before the Court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the Chief Justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus :

“This, sir, is my case! It is the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every Eleemosynary Institution throughout our country-of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more. It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property

1 The author's attention was called to this varying form of Webster's peroration by his friend and colleague Prof. Francis A. Jackson, who also loaned him an original copy of Choate's Discourse.

ing to say," runs the epigram, "say it." At the same time, the laws of Form are simpler than those of thought; and, for this reason, they may properly be presented first. Part I. of this volume will therefore treat of Style, Part II. of Invention. A preparatory topic, the Kinds of Discourse, will occupy a concluding chapter of this Introduction.

33. The full analysis and classification of the kinds of compositions belongs, perhaps, to Literature rather than to Rhetoric; but the instructor in Rhetoric can not assume that his students are conversant with it: he may rather assume that they know nothing about it; and, hence, since some knowledge of it is essential for them, he must supply at least an outline. Nor can there be any serious impropriety in his doing SO. At several points in the exhibition of his subject, brief summaries or classifications that properly belong to other branches of knowledge must be inserted for the information of his readers. Of course, such summaries should be given only when they are plainly necessary, and should be kept within narrow bounds; but they can not be wholly excluded. Indeed, many works of Rhetoric contain nearly complete systems of Grammar, Logic, etc.; while other works make these systems nearly the whole of Rhetoric, carrying them to an illogical extreme.

VI.

THE KINDS OF DISCOURSE.

34. Compositions may be distinguished,

1. With respect to Form,' as (a) VERSE, (b) PROSE; 2. With respect to Intrinsic Character, as (a) ORATORY, (b) REPRESENTATIVE DISCOURSE, (c) ROMANCE, (d) POETRY;

3. With respect to Purpose, or End in View, as (a) EXPLANATORY, (b) ARGUMENTATIVE, (c) EXCITATORY, and (d) PERSUASIVE DISCOURse.

35. These divisions, it will be observed, are not branches of a single classiñcation, but three distinct classifications each with its own principle of division (fundamentum divisionis). The same composition, therefore, may be assigned a place under each classification, or even belong in part to one, in part to another head of the same classification. Thus, Macaulay's England or Motley's Dutch Republic is plainly of classes 1 (b), 2 (b), and 3 (a); Webster's Argument in the Dartmouth College Case, 1 (b), 2 (a), and 3 (d), except in certain passages, in which Mr. Webster now turns historian, 3 (a), now argues his points, 3 (b), and again advocates his cause by an appeal to the feelings, 3 (c).

I. COMPOSITIONS WITH RESPECT TO FORM.

36. (a) VERSE is distinguished from PROSE by having (1) Rhythm, (2) Metre. RHYTHM is the regular recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables, any prescribed combination of these syllables constituting a Foot. METRE is the arrangement of feet into lines or verses, each of which has a given number of feet of a certain rhythm. A VERSE, therefore, is any fixed number of accented and unaccented syllables. It is generally printed or written in the middle of the page, and with a

11. e., rhythm and metre. The word is used here in a narrow sense.