here made the simple desire is, that student and teacher look at them, give them all possible verification of trial and example, and see if they are not so. One thing further also: that as the upshot of all and each it may be seen how great a thing it is, how truly a matter of ordered art, yet withal how simple and business-like, to write. There is only one name to give to the point of view thus brought to light. It is the literary. Rhetoric is literature, taken in its details and impulses, literature in the making. Whatever is implied in this the present work frankly accepts. standard is literary; it is concerned, as real authorship must be, not with a mere grammatical apparatus or with Huxley's logic engine, but with the whole man, his outfit of conviction and emotion, imagination and will, translating himself, as it were, into vital and ordered utterance. It is in this whole man that the technique of the art has its roots. Begun as a revision of the author's Practical Elements of Rhetoric, the work, as thus contemplated, was seen to be, almost from the outset, so truly a new treatment of the subject that the decision was made to issue it as a new work, of which the other is merely the basis. The exposition is throughout subjected to a restatement for which the author can think of no word so fitting as reproportioned; it is brought by its terms and ordering more into the line of scientific literary study as it is pursued to-day and into more rigid consistency with itself. To give in any detail the changes from the former work would serve no useful purpose here. A few of the more salient ones may be mentioned. What was before given in chapters and occasional subdividing sections now appears in books and chapters, the latter being numbered continuously through the volume. Chapters viii. and ix. cover substantially the ground formerly entitled Fundamental Processes. Chapter vii., on Rhythm, is nearly all new. The substance of the chapter formerly entitled Reproduction of the Thought of Others is incorporated with Chapter xvi., as Exposition of the Symbols of Things. The subject of Persuasion now appears, under the heading Oratory, in connection with its controlling literary type, Argumentation. Whether these changes will all justify themselves is a question that must be left to the judgment of those who have used the older book; they seem to come in the way of the reproportioning which the subject has undergone. The additional matter furnished by the numerous corroborative footnotes will, it is hoped, be of service to those teachers and students who desire further rhetorical reading. Of the value of these notes such names as Earle, Pater, Stevenson, Bagehot, De Quincey, are a sufficient guarantee. No voluminous reading of this kind, of course, can be given; but many wise and weighty remarks from critics of recognized authority are thus gathered from widely scattered sources and made available in connection with the principles to which they apply. The body of these appended readings is especially indicated, at the end of the book, in the Directory of Authors Quoted. This book, as is intimated above, is contemplated only as part of a rhetorical apparatus, the laboratory manual on which other lines of work are founded. For the praxis work of composition, and for more extended study of models than the examples furnish, the present volume has no room. It is the author's intention, in due time, to publish in a companion volume what is here lacking. In the reading of the proofs the author has had, and hereby thankfully acknowledges, the much-valued assistance of Professor William B. Cairns, whose suggestions have been carefully weighed and generally followed, though, as sometimes the casting-vote went adversely, no responsibility for mistakes or imperfections should be laid to his charge. AMHERST, March 4, 1901. |