CHAPTER V

THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF RHETORIC

Criticism is inevitably a part of teaching. The teacher’s holding up of models involves both analysis of them and appreciation. The differentiation of the critic from the teacher is roughly that his judgments are not applied immediately to tasks of composition, that he rather defines or extends theory than promotes practise. His estimate of the professional writer is not directly brought to bear on the advancement of the amateur. He stops with appreciation; the teacher tries to carry this over into imitation. But the differentiation of the two functions has never been complete; and in classical times it went only a little way. Quintilian, who was typically the teacher, is included with respect in histories of criticism. Dionysius of Halicarnassus classifies his acute appreciations of orators and poets under text-book headings, and puts forth his treatise on style, as does the great unknown “On the Sublime,” for instruction. Both are what we now call critics. The classification of Dionysius does not hinder his critical appreciation; the classification of the great unknown merges into a kindling enthusiasm.

Probably most of the literary criticism current in the last years of the Republic and the first centuries of the Roman Empire came from grammarians and rhetoricians.[1] It is worth while, nevertheless, to consider separately from the manuals and methods of instruction those treatises which were written rather to educate appreciation than to further the tasks of the schools. Outstanding among these are the _Brutus_ of Cicero and the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus; but the two most specific and significant in doctrine are the ones mentioned above: Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Sentences (_De Compositione Verborum_), and the unknown author on the Heightening of Language (_De Sublimitate_). In some respects complementary, the two together offer a clear view of style in the classical conception.

A. DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS ON SENTENCES

The most specific and systematic rhetorical treatise of Dionysius[1a] deals with sentence movement, or _compositio_[2] (see pages 25, 53, 67, 79). This, he makes bold to say in his second paragraph,[3] is the aspect of composition most profitable for the study of youth.

There is need ... of oversight and guidance ... for a choice of words at once pure and noble ... and a sentence movement combining charm with dignity.... The chief heads under which I propose to treat the subject are the following: what is the nature of sentence movement and what force it has; what are its aims and how it attains them; what are its generic varieties, and what is the distinctive feature of each, and which of them I believe to be best; and still further, what is that poetical something, both pleasant on the tongue and sweet to the ear, which naturally accompanies the sentence movement of prose, and wherein lies the force of that poetical method which imitates unpoetical speech and succeeds thoroughly in the imitation, and by what method each of these two may be attained.[4]

Sentence movement, moreover, Dionysius thinks to be more important than the choice of words.[5] He supports this assertion first by analyzing a passage from the _Odyssey_.[6]

Everybody would, I am sure, testify that these lines cast a spell of enchantment on the ear, and rank second to no poetry whatsoever, however exquisite it may be. But what is the secret of their fascination, and what causes them to be what they are? Is it the choice of words or the sentence movement? No one will say “the choice”; of that I am convinced. For the diction consists, warp and woof, of the most ordinary, the humblest words, such as might have been used off-hand by a farmer, a seaman, an artisan, or anybody else who takes no account of elegant speech. You have only to break up the meter, and these same lines seem commonplace and unworthy of admiration. For they contain neither noble metaphors nor _hypallages_ nor _catachreses_ nor any other figurative language; nor yet many unusual terms, nor foreign or new-coined words. What alternative, then, is left but to attribute the beauty of the style to the sentence movement?

In like manner he urges concerning a passage from Herodotus:[7]

Here again no one can say that the grace of the style is due to the impressiveness and the dignity of the words. These have not been picked and chosen with studious care; they are simply the labels affixed to things by Nature. Indeed, it would perhaps have been out of place to use other and grander words. I take it, in fact, to be always necessary, whenever ideas are expressed in proper and appropriate language, that no word should be more dignified than the nature of the ideas. That there is no stately or grandiose word in the present passage, any one who likes may prove by simply changing the harmony. There are many similar passages in this author, from which it can be seen that the fascination of his style does not after all lie in the beauty of the words, but in their combination.

Not content with analysis, Dionysius proceeds[8] to enforce his point by garbling. Fine passages of verse and of prose, without any change of words, are dislocated to show that their force resides not in these words taken singly, but in the sentence order, or movement. The method is ingenious. It is even telling. Any teacher who shall thus put side by side a fine passage of English prose and the same words in a different order will make his students aware of literary effects to which they should not remain deaf.[9] The connotation of pace and tune may be further exemplified by comparing, for instance, a tale of Chaucer’s with the version made by Dryden.[10]

The method is interesting, striking, to some extent revealing. What does it reveal? That suggestiveness is not only through the imagery of single words, but through their sound in combination; that a large part of the connotation which we call style is sentence pace. This is generally so little discerned that Dionysius may be pardoned for magnifying it; and he further guards himself by recording his intention of writing a treatise also on the choice of words. Occupied in the present treatise exclusively with their combination, he naturally brings out the importance of this as vividly as possible. Is the effectiveness of style in the choice of words, or in their combination? Here he seems to answer, “In their combination.”[11]

But effectiveness of expression resides primarily in neither _electio_ nor _compositio_, secondarily in both. Primarily it is the writer’s keen sense of the ways of nature and of man, his receptivity and insight. Then it is concrete expression, the choice of words of sensation, the speaking in terms of light, sound, color, motion, attitude, gesture. Such words, whether figurative in the technical sense or literal, may be called imagery. Or, in other fields of composition, it is an illuminating precision. Finally, that effectiveness which we call style comes from apt and beautiful rhythms, from that _compositio_ which is the subject of this treatise. In a word, style is a complex. That _compositio_ is an important element Dionysius does well to show, for this is not obvious and is commonly neglected; but that _compositio_ is _the_ cause, or even that it is generally more important than the other elements, can hardly be demonstrated. Undoubtedly Homer’s verse weaves much of his spell;[12] but surely his words, though often, as Dionysius says, ordinary, have none the less that specific concreteness which characteristically makes epic vivid. In the following passage that he quotes from Herodotus, where the separable charm of the sentence movement is made more obvious by playing as it were in the wrong _tempo_, he might claim even more. Surely the dialogue method is important for vividness and economy, and this too is a matter of _compositio_. But is the _compositio_, for all its charm, the main cause? Who shall determine? The impression is a complex in which each element counts—the choice of details, the choice of words, the arrangement or movement—and in which we can hardly assign an exact proportion to any one. Certainly the beat and tune of prose are part of its connotation, its effect on the reader. Doubtless also—though here we lack scientific analysis to confirm our impression[13]—they are demanded subconsciously by the composing emotion of the author as he speaks or writes. Nevertheless Dionysius is an early instance of a danger lurking in statistical analysis of literature, perhaps also of a danger lurking in the treatment of style—much more of a single element of style—as a separate entity. Being a teacher, Dionysius doubtless thought that there was little danger in over-emphasizing the importance of pace with young students. They are too likely to be quite unaware of it to be corrupted by pedagogical exaggeration.

That “thin and bloodless talk” with which Cicero[14] taxes the philosophers Dionysius thinks to be due to defective _compositio_.

The main difference between poet and poet, orator and orator, is in aptness of sentence movement. Almost all the ancients gave this much study; and consequently their poems, their songs, and their discourses are things of beauty. But among their successors, with few exceptions, this was no longer so. In time it was at last entirely forgotten; and no one thought it to be indispensable or even contributory to beauty of discourse.[15]

Having established the importance of adapting sentence movement, Dionysius proceeds to show that such adaptation is little hindered by _a priori_ consideration of logic.

I used to think that we ought to follow nature as far as possible in adjusting the parts of a discourse ... for instance, to put nouns before verbs ... the essential before its modifiers.... This idea is plausible; but I came to think it was not true.[16]

Does Dionysius mean that logic offers no norm for the order of words?[17] Hardly. Rather he shows by his instances that word order has little to do with philosophical or logical classification. The order in a given sentence is not determined abstractly by the logical idea of putting the subject before the predicate, or the substance before the accident. It is guided partly by rhythm; and it is widely variable.

The variability that he shows in the Greek word order is wider than in English. In both languages it is controlled by usage, by what is habitual and therefore expected; and this fact seems to be ignored by Dionysius. Even a Greek could not shape a sentence at his own will without reference to the habit of the language. But in this respect Greek usage, because the Greek could rely on showing sentence relations by inflection, was less restrictive than English usage. For English, then, it is not true to say that there is no sentence norm, no normal or natural order. That the norm is not determined by logic in the sense of abstract analysis is true for either, or any, language; but in modern languages, much more than in Greek, it is restricted by usage. Every careful translator has found his efforts to convey Greek style hampered by the inferior variability of modern sentence habits. Taken more generally, however, the contention of Dionysius is sound and suggestive. It is that the order of words in a sentence is not predetermined by logic, that it is freely adaptable, and that this adaptation constitutes a large element in effectiveness.

Having thus vindicated the right of the speaker or writer to deal with the order of his words artistically, unfettered by logic, Dionysius proceeds to inquire in what artistic shaping consists.

The functions of _compositio_ [the tasks of sentence movement] seem to me to be three: (1) to discern what goes naturally with what to make a beautiful and satisfying combination; (2) to know how to make systematically out of these potential agreements a better harmony; (3) if revision is still necessary, whether abridgement, expansion, or alteration, to know how to work out the adaptation as the potential values demand. The scope of each of these I will explain more clearly by using certain analogies from the industrial arts with which all are familiar: house-building, ship-building, and the like. When a builder has provided himself with the material from which he intends to construct a house—stones, timbers, tiling, and all the rest—he then puts together the structure from these, studying the following three things: what stone, timber, and brick can be united with what other stone, timber, and brick; next, how each piece of the material that is being so united should be set, and on which of its faces; thirdly, if anything fits badly, how that particular thing can be chipped and trimmed and made to fit exactly. And the shipwright proceeds in just the same way. So, I say, they also should work whose task is to compose sentences well.[18]

To simplify the language of Dionysius by borrowing from music a metaphor which, though it does not cover his whole intention, is true so far as it goes, the three tasks of the shaper of sentences are: (1) to hear the tune, (2) to follow the tune, (3) to correct the tune. The first depends on the speaker’s awareness, his sensitiveness to words; the second depends on his technical ability to carry out what is thus suggested, to sustain and enhance; the third, more specifically technical, is to revise in detail.

On its face this division is new. Not only has it nothing to do with other divisions which apply to style in general, being limited to sentence movement, but it also differs from earlier divisions of this item by being synthetic. Its point of view is not that of a critic analyzing what has been already composed, but of a speaker or writer composing. It is practical.

Is it practicable? At the very outset of the exposition the analogy of the building arts is disconcerting. Even when allowances are made for the strict limitation to building, the exclusion of all that we now call architecture, the description still seems hardly exact. And, its exactness assumed, is it applicable? Is the analogy sound? Both the _Rhetoric_ and the _Poetic_ of Aristotle in speaking of sentences generally avoid analogies from the static arts. The _Poetic_ even rules them out at the start by its classification of the arts; and Aristotle’s analogies for sentences are drawn not from building, but from walking, running, and breathing.[19] Dionysius both assumes and asserts the same point of view: “The science of public speaking is, after all, a sort of musical science, differing from vocal and instrumental music in degree, not in kind.”[20] And generally his discussion, like Aristotle’s, is in terms of rhythm. Why, then, this analogy with arts that Aristotle regarded as lying in quite another field? The famous analogy in the _De Sublimitate_[21] of building with solid blocks is not, in its context, so remarkable; for it is applied less restrictively to _compositio_. Is a shaper of sentences like a builder?

Is he like a builder in the process that Dionysius puts first, the discerning of inherent compatibilities in his material? The question is not of the subject-matter or conception of a whole work, but of component parts or details. Doubtless an author may be somewhat vaguely considered as discerning potentialities in this material; but what is the material? Is it words in the sense that the builder’s is stone or wood? Can an author find inherent compatibility in words as a builder in the strength, texture, shape, or color of his stone? His material is ideas and images. His choice of particular words for these is doubtless affected by connotations of sound;[22] but must it not be primarily suggested and finally determined by the sense? Can word combinations be considered as in themselves beautiful and satisfying, as really having compatibilities of sound? An author who followed Dionysius literally might launch himself into mellifluous nonsense. Dionysius is speaking figuratively; but is his figure really suggestive? We may well remember that more modern analogies drawn from the static arts of mass and line have been misleading for the consecutive art of words.

The distinction between Dionysius’s two remaining items may seem slight until we remember that the division is not analytical into elements, but synthetic into processes that are consecutive in time. Given the primary and general equipment of sensitiveness, the writer may enhance while he is writing and then afterward revise. In fact, there is a typical difference between following the flow of thought and imagery and sound, and then correcting it, between composing and revising. That the two should be distinct, and that both should be guided partly by sound, is counsel practically helpful.

In fact, once he proceeds to apply his second and third headings in detail, Dionysius is more convincing. The righting[23] of a sentence by transposing phrases or clauses is in practise, and should be in theory, a first counsel of sentence emphasis. A defect of modern text-books is to set forth this important process as if it were purely logical. Dionysius follows the ancient tradition in making it rhythmical; and he also clarifies it by specific instances. He proceeds[24] to the varying of the rhythm by lengthening or shortening. Here his preoccupation with rhythm tends to obscure other considerations. That a sentence is a logical unit, and that a given statement is left single or combined with its neighbor according to its logical bearing on the whole passage,[25] he seems to ignore or take for granted. Again, the lengthening of a clause to fill out the rhythm risks bombast. On the other hand, some of the additions that he quotes as unnecessary to the idea are not superfluous for the image; their value is not mainly rhythmical. But so far as it goes this chapter is suggestive.

Distinguishing[26] charm (ἡδονή) from beauty (τὸ καλόν), Dionysius finds[27] that they arise from four qualities: melody, rhythm, variety, aptness. Melody is an affair of pitch and inflection. The passage,[28] besides being a precious hint as to the Greek scale, is a useful reminder that English—and especially American—speech too often ignores variety of pitch. Similarly the treatment of rhythm as quantitative[29] should remind us that in our own habit it is predominantly accentual. These differences in habit of speech, while they suggest resources unused, should none the less warn us against transferring the distinctions and counsels of Dionysius bodily from Greek to English. Of those that are equally applicable to both languages is the general advice[30] to seek variety and aptness less in the choice of words, where there can be little latitude, than in their combination. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that aptness of style, though abstractly it includes precision and imagery in the single word, is more largely than most of us realize an effect of rhythm, and that variety, except when in oral utterance it includes pitch, consists in rhythm exclusively.

Distinguishing[31] the letters as vowels or consonants, Dionysius finds Greek speech sounds to be neither more nor less than twenty-four. His phonetic analysis of these is specifically according to the position of the vocal organs in utterance. The following discussion[32] of the quality of syllables in combination, of effects hard, smooth, or sweet in sound apart from sense, is doctrine oftener accepted as an idea than tested.[33]

Syllables, which are combinations or interweavings of letters, preserve at once both the individual properties of each component and the joint properties of all, which spring from their fusion and juxtaposition. The sounds thus formed are soft or hard, smooth or rough, sweet to the ear or harsh to it; they make us pull a wry face, or cause our mouths to water, or bring about any of the countless other physical conditions that are possible.

These facts the greatest poets and prose-writers have carefully noted, and not only do they carefully arrange their words and weave them into appropriate patterns, but often, with curious and loving skill, they adapt the very syllables and letters to the emotions which they wish to represent.

[Passages from Homer are quoted as examples.]

Such lines are to be found without number in Homer, representing length of time, hugeness of body, stress of emotion, immobility of position, or similar effects, simply by the manipulation of the syllables. Conversely others are framed to give the impression of abruptness, speed, hurry, and the like.[34]

That such associations are natural is obvious, Dionysius thinks, from onomatopœia, the earliest and simplest form of sound-connotation in words. But he does not shrink from pushing his doctrine far beyond this to the conclusion that sound effects both subtle and various may be achieved, and should be consciously sought, by literary art.

The conclusion is inevitable, that style is beautiful when it contains beautiful words, that beauty of words is due to beautiful syllables and letters, that language is rendered charming by the things that charm the ear in virtue of affinities in words, syllables, and letters....

If, then, it were possible that all the parts of speech by which a given subject is to be expressed should be euphonious and elegant, it would be madness to seek out inferior ones. But if this be out of the question, as in many cases it is, then we must endeavor to mask the natural defects of the inferior letters by interweaving and mingling and juxtaposition.[35]

The following instances of poetic effects gained by apt combinations of proper names that have no such suggestions singly will remind English readers of certain sonorous passages in Milton.[36]

That the connotation of such combinations is due to their syllabic quality, however, as distinct from their rhythm, Dionysius hardly succeeds in establishing. The doctrine is flatly denied by Lewis.

A certain learned and well-known student of verse says that (for example) gutturals and sibilants express “amazement, affright, indignation, contempt,” and he cites as an illustration a passage from Paradise Lost.

Out of my sight, thou serpent; that name best Befits thee with him leagued, thyself as false And hateful; nothing wants but that thy shape Like his and color serpentine may show Thy inward fraud.

One objection to this kind of doctrine is that it makes people think they have no ear for verse, for after careful reading they are still uncertain whether they can detect the effect described. Another objection to it is that it is not true. Compare with the lines quoted this little song from Browning’s Pippa Passes:

The year’s at the spring, And day’s at the morn; Morning’s at seven; The hill-side’s dew-pearled; The lark’s on the wing; The snail’s on the thorn; God’s in his heaven— All’s right with the world.

This is shorter by four syllables than the passage from Milton, but it has the same number of gutturals and two more sibilants; yet fancy describing it as an expression of “amazement, affright, indignation, contempt!”

For another illustration, in one of the standard manuals of versification it is pointed out that the surd mutes (p, k, t) “help to convey the idea of littleness, delicacy, and sprightliness,” and that the short vowel i is fitted to express “joy, gaiety, triviality, rapid movement, and physical littleness.” To illustrate both assertions, Mercutio’s account of Queen Mab is cited:

She comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone, ... Drawn by a team of little atomies.

Here the effect is perhaps easier to recognize, and even an obtuse reader thinks he follows the reasoning; but compare Browning’s lines:

The wroth sea’s waves are edged With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate.

The “bitten lip” has as many surd mutes and short i’s as the “little atomies”; but it fails to express sprightliness, gaiety, or triviality....

The fact is, of course, that all this analysis of sounds proceeds upon a false assumption. When you say Titan you mean something big, and when you say tittle you mean something small; but it is not the sound of either word that means either bigness or littleness, it is the sense. If you put together a great many similar consonants in one sentence, they will attract special attention to the words in which they occur, and the significance of those words, whatever it may be, is thereby intensified; but whether the words are “a team of little atomies” or “a triumphant terrible Titan,” it is not the sound of the consonants that makes the significance.[37]

Rhythm is discussed in the same order, first[38] by classifying feet as iambs, trochees, dactyls, etc., then[39] by analyzing their effects singly and in combination. “A simple rhythm or foot has not less than two syllables nor more than three.”[40] This is commonly accepted for meter; but does it hold for the rhythms of prose? Moreover that the foot is the rhythmical unit, whether in Greek or in other languages, is oftener assumed than proved. Rhythmical effects, in English at least, seem to be not so much of feet as of measures, whether verses or clauses. Unless the foot is actually a unit, for the composer or for the hearer—and this is at least doubtful—such analysis as that of a noble passage from the funeral speech in the second book of Thucydides[41] lays too much stress on the components—spondees, anapests, etc.—and not enough on the _compositio_, or pace of the sentence. By way of contrast to Thucydides, Plato, and Demosthenes, Dionysius pillories Hegesias of Magnesia.[42]

Variety of rhythm[43] is discussed more generally, without instances, and as an introduction to rhythm in prose.

Prose diction has full liberty and permission to diversify the _compositio_ by whatever changes it pleases. A style is finest of all when it has the most frequent rests and changes of harmony; when one thing is said within a period, another without it; when one period is formed by the interweaving of a larger number of clauses, another by that of a smaller; when among the clauses themselves one is short, another longer, one roughly wrought, another more finished; when the rhythms take now one form, now another, and the figures are of all kinds, and the voice-pitches—the so-called “accents”—are various, and skillfully avoid satiety.[44]

Aptness,[45] or appropriateness to the actors and the action, is analyzed rather as imitative smoothness or roughness in detail than as the speed of the whole stanza or paragraph. Dionysius says nothing, for instance, of the staccato effect of frequent predication. His text is the famous stone of Sisyphus from the eleventh book of the _Odyssey_.

Finally[46] Dionysius classifies sentence movement into three typical modes:[47] the rough (αὐστηρά), the smooth (γλαφυρά) or florid (ἀνθηρά), and the blended (εὔκρατος). Certain accidental likenesses to the familiar threefold classification of style[48] should not obscure the fact that we have here something different, a classification not of style in general, but of _compositio_. The first mode Dionysius defines as seeking rather the force of each part than the harmony of the whole. The words stand out separately, without fear of hiatus or other clashing of sounds, and without care for periods.[49] The aim is rather a direct stirring of emotion (πάθος) than a pervasive suggestion of character (ἦθος). This sterner, elder mode, quite different from “the showy and decorative prettiness of our day,”[50] he exemplifies, with his usual minute analysis, from Pindar and Thucydides. The second, or smooth mode[51] is periodic in its sentences and nicely articulated in its clauses and phrases.

It tries to combine and interweave its component parts, and thus give, as far as possible, the effect of one continuous utterance. This result is produced by so nicely adjusting the junctures that they admit no appreciable time-interval between the words.[52]

Aiming at the easiest transitions within the period, it is careful to distinguish between periods. The parts coalesce; the units stand out.[53] This is in line with the doctrine of Aristotle,[54] and is admirably exemplified by the practise of Cicero. Dionysius’s instances are Sappho and Isocrates. The third, or blended mode[55] Dionysius labors in vain to distinguish from the other two. Ingenious as are his analyses of the three modes, even sometimes suggestive, they fail to establish the reality of the classification. We can discern in the distinction between his first two a carrying out—perhaps an undue extension—of Aristotle’s distinction between the unperiodic style and the periodic.[56] His third mode seems to be not a mode at all, but merely a reminder that neither of the other two can be used exclusively or pushed to excess.

As to the distinction of prose rhythms from verse[57] Dionysius quotes with approval Aristotle’s dictum[58] that prose should be rhythmical without becoming metrical. It seems plain none the less that his own taste is for rather marked rhythms even in prose, and that he would encourage students to go a long way toward meter. Before he closes his book upon this consideration, he raises quite frankly the question of how far its analyses have practical value.

I have a presentiment that an onslaught will be made on these statements by people who are destitute of general culture and practise the mechanical parts of rhetoric unmethodically and unscientifically.... Their argument will doubtless be: “Was Demosthenes, then, so poor a creature that, whenever he was writing his speeches, he would work in meters and rhythms after the fashion of clay-modellers, and would try to fit his clauses into these moulds, shifting the words to and fro, keeping an anxious eye on his longs and shorts, and fretting himself about cases of nouns, moods of verbs, and all the accidents of the parts of speech? So great a man would be a fool indeed were he to stoop to all this niggling and peddling.” If they scoff and jeer in these or similar terms, they may easily be countered by the following reply: “First, it is not surprising after all that a man who is held to deserve a greater reputation than any of his predecessors who were distinguished for eloquence was anxious, when composing eternal works and submitting himself to the scrutiny of all-testing envy and time, not to admit either subject or words at random, and to attend carefully to both arrangements of ideas and beauty of words: particularly as the authors of that day were producing discourses which suggested not writing, but carving and chasing—those I mean of the sophists Isocrates and Plato.... What wonder, then, if Demosthenes also was careful to secure euphony and melody and to employ no random or untested word or thought?”[59]

The defense is sufficient abstractly, though it does not quite meet the fact that in practise both teachers and students of rhetoric have not infrequently frittered away much time in minute analysis of _compositio_. Such analysis easily becomes over-minute, easily deviates from the paramount consideration of the idea or the image. That it is properly the work of revision, not of the first draft, Dionysius often implies, but might well have stated explicitly. So applied, given common sense and the honest determination to say what one means, analysis of prose rhythms is distinctly valuable and often necessary.

FOOT-NOTES:

[1] For Cicero, see Chapter III, for Quintilian and Tacitus, Chapter IV; for Dio Chrysostom and Apuleius, Chapter VIII.

[1a] For biography and bibliography of Dionysius see Roberts, W. Rhys, _Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Three Literary Letters_, Cambridge, 1901, pages 1-50, 209-219. To the latter should be added: Egger, Max, _Essai sur la critique littéraire et la rhétorique chez les grecs au siècle d’Auguste_, Paris, 1902; Mætzke, Karl, _De D. H. Isocratis imitatore_, Wratislaw, 1906; Kremer, Emil, _Ueber das rhetorische system des D. von H._, Strassburg, 1907; Geigenmüller, Paul, _Quæstiones Dionysianæ de vocabulis artis criticæ_, Leipzig, 1908; Nassal, Franz, _Æsthetisch-rhetorische Beziehungen zwischen D. von H. und Cicero_, Tübingen, 1910; Hubbell, H. M., _The Influence of Isocrates on Cicero, Dionysius, and Aristides_, Yale University Press, 1914.

The best edition of the _De compositione verborum_ is that by Roberts, W. Rhys, _Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Literary Composition_ (text, introduction, translation, notes, glossary, appendices), London, 1910. A current summary of the _De compositione_ will be found in Roberts, _Three Literary Letters_, pages 8-19; a more detailed summary, with a tabular analysis, in his edition, pages 1-10; a commented summary in Egger, pages 67-111.

The rhetorical system of Dionysius is tabulated from all his works by Ammon, George, _De D. H. librorum rhetoricorum fontibus_, Monachii, 1889. In English equivalents, the pertinent parts of his analysis are as follows:

A. subject-matter I. investigation (inventio) selection (iudicium) II. arrangement (dispositio) 1. division 2. order 3. revision and elaboration B. style I. choice of words (electio) 1. precision 2. imagery II. sentence movement (compositio) 1. nature 2. force 3. processes a. in phrases b. in clauses c. in periods 4. charm and beauty a. melody b. rhythm c. variety d. aptness 5. kinds a. strong b. smooth c. blended 6. verse and prose

Kremer (see above), whose analysis, though less detailed, is substantially the same, collates from all the writings of Dionysius his doctrine on the several topics and gives foot-note references to Aristotle, Cicero, and others.

Nassal (see above), pointing out that Dionysius and Cicero agree strikingly in many points, argues that they have for common source in these cases a Greek treatise written during the years between the time of the _Lysias_ of Dionysius and of the _De Oratore_ of Cicero and the time of the Demosthenes of _Dionysius_ and of the _Orator_ of Cicero, and that this common source is very probably Cæcilius of Calacte.

Geigenmueller (see above) supplies a collation of critical terms with valuable comparisons.

Nassal (page 11) quotes from Doxopater a definition of rhetoric ascribed to Dionysius: “Rhetoric is the artistic mastery of persuasive discourse in communal affairs, having as its end to speak well.” (Usener, Fragment I.) The definition is sound and striking, but for the lame and impotent concluding phrase. As reported by Maximus Planudes (quoted by Ammon, page 1), the definition is substantially the same, but has amplified this concluding phrase with a clumsy twist from Aristotle. Whether the definition belongs to Dionysius or not, the tradition shows his fame as a rhetorician.

[2] That it deals with this exclusively, not with composition in general, is clear from both the Greek title and the Latin. The terms σύνθεσις and _compositio_ are technically specific. They do not mean style in general, which in the classical treatises includes also choice of single words (ἐκλογή, _electio_). Much less do they mean _composition_ in our larger modern sense, for which the ancient term is _dispositio_, _collocatio_, or more generally οἰκονομία. Dionysius makes the distinction quite clear at the opening of his treatise, and holds to it throughout. In this sense is to be taken the title of the admirable translation of Rhys Roberts, _Literary Composition_, as is shown by his rendering elsewhere _The Arrangement of Words_ (page 8 of his edition of _Three Literary Letters_).

[3] i. 66. The Roman numerals in these foot-notes refer to chapters; the Arabic, to the pages of the Rhys Roberts text. The Rhys Roberts translation is used with modifications.

[4] i. 68-70.

[5] iii. 74.

[6] iii. 76-78 (Odyssey, xvi. 1-16).

[7] iii. 84 (Herodotus i. 8-10).

[8] iv. 84.

[9] See, for example, my _Writing and Speaking_, pages 376-378; _College Composition_, pages 184-188.

[10] That this sort of analysis may be carried even further is suggested by R. L. Stevenson’s _Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature_, which is partly along the lines followed by Dionysius.

[11] That this is generally more important he explicitly affirms in his _Demosthenes_, chapter li. Reviewing the traditional five parts of rhetoric, he puts οἰκονομία (_dispositio_) above εὕρεσις (_inventio_), and σύνθεσις (_compositio_) above ἐκλογή (_electio_).

[12] Rhys Roberts’s use of imitative renderings to make this point is of course necessary; but readers unfamiliar with Greek rhythms should beware of inferences based on an assumption of equivalence between Greek metrical habits and English.

[13] This is the contention of Stevenson in _Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature_.

[14] _De Oratore_, I. xiii. 57.

[15] iv. 92.

[16] v. 98.

[17] Henri Weil’s classic essay on the order of words in the ancient languages has been translated into English by C. W. Super, Boston, 1887. The rationale of word-order is discussed in Spencer’s _Philosophy of Style_.

[18] vi. 104.

[19] See above, pages 28, 29.

[20] xi. 124.

[21] Section x.

[22] See above, page 60 and foot-note 95.

[23] vii.

[24] ix.

[25] See my _College Composition_, page 69.

[26] x. The same distinction is made in his _Demosthenes_, xlvii.

[27] xi.

[28] xi. 126.

[29] xi. 128.

[30] xii. 130.

[31] xiv.

[32] xv-xvi.

[33] In English it is urged specifically by Stevenson in _Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature_.

[34] xv. 154-156.

[35] xvi. 160, 166.

[36] It may remind some elder readers also of a story once current concerning a pious old lady who in reading her Bible found emotional satisfaction in the “blessed word Mesopotamia.”

[37] Charlton M. Lewis, _The Principles of English Verse_, New York, 1906, page 131.

[38] xvii.

[39] xviii.

[40] xvii. 176.

[41] xviii. 178.

[42] Stevenson makes similar use of Macaulay.

[43] xix.

[44] xix. 196.

[45] τὸ πρέπον, xx.

[46] xxi.

[47] Dionysius uses the same classification in his _Demosthenes_, xxxvi.

[48] See above, page 56.

[49] xxii. 212. One thinks of Carlyle.

[50] xxii. 216.

[51] xxiii.

[52] xxiii. 234.

[53] xxiii. 236.

[54] _Rhetoric_ III. ix. 1409 a. See above, page 28. Aristotle’s εὐσύνοπτος may have suggested the περίοπτος of Dionysius.

[55] xxiv.

[56] _Rhetoric_, _ibid._

[57] xxv, xxvi.

[58] _Rhetoric_, III. viii. 1408 b. See above, page 26.

[59] xxv. 262.

B. THE GREAT UNKNOWN ON IMAGINATIVE DICTION

“Longinus on the Sublime”[1] will for many years continue to name the most captivating of ancient treatises, though its author, whoever he was, was not the rhetorician Longinus, and though its subject is wider than our word _sublime_. The Latin _sublimitas_ translates precisely enough the ὕψος of the Greek title; but our words _sublime_ and _sublimity_ are reserved for special application to such lofty passages as we quote from Dante and Milton. Sappho’s love poem, quoted by the author as a typical instance, though we feel at once its vivid beauty, we should not call sublime. The Greek word is more general. Meaning literally height, it includes in this treatise all such effects of style as lift us, as move us beyond comprehension or assent to sympathy or resolve. But though the meaning is clear, an equivalent English term is still to seek. _Elevation_ has unfortunate suggestions of the rhetorical; _height_ is too vague; _heightening_, though nearer, is not generally used in this sense. Falling back on such a periphrasis as _heightening of style_, we become aware that our word _style_, as used generally and untechnically, is not far from the author’s intention. Though in text-books and works of criticism it is often extended, in ordinary parlance it means that very heightening, or lift, which is discussed by the Great Unknown. So we shall convey his intention as fairly as seems feasible by translating his title _Style_.

In the following digest Roman numerals indicate the chapters, or sections.

_The heights of style are such passages as please always and please all._

(i) The heights of authorship are seen in eminence and excellence of words. Experience in subject-matter (_inventio_) and cogency of order (_dispositio_) are effects of the whole; but the orator’s power flashes in his happy moments of style (_elocutio_). (ii) Nor because we see genius here are we to think that style is beyond art. (iii, iv) [Contrast] the turgid, the pretty, the frigid, (v) faults arising from the search for novelties. (vi) Though judgment of style is the final fruit of much experience, we must attempt definition of heightening. (vii) Count those passages wholly beautiful and true instances of the heights of style which please always and please all.

_The first source of height in style is intellectual power of conception._

(viii) Of such heightening (1) the first and strongest source is intellectual power of conception; (2) the second, emotion. These are native; the remaining three are acquired: (3) handling of figures, (4) noble diction, and (5), what includes the other two, sentence movement (_compositio_). (ix) The force of the first (i.e., conception), and also its waning, we feel in Homer, whose _Odyssey_ lapses into narrative from the dramatic power of the _Iliad_. (x) The realization of this first source in actual composition means compression, the bringing together of significances with no insignificances to interrupt. (xi) Oratorical amplification, which is complementary to this, of itself never rises to the heights. (xii) Heightening of style is single and intensive, as in poetry or in the orations of Demosthenes; amplification is iterative and extensive, as in Plato or Cicero. (xiii) Plato, however, shows the way to mastery—imitation, (xiv) a way which even we may follow.

_The second source is emotion._ (This is not treated here in its place as a separate section, but is implied throughout what follows.)

_The third source is handling of figures._

(xv) For weight, grandeur, and energy the right language is imagery. In oratory the purpose of this typically is intellectual; in poetry, emotional; but oratory too may use it for emotional effect. [xvi-xxix. Discussion of figures.] (xxx-xxxi) Beautiful words are essentially the light of thought; and homely words have their expressiveness. (xxxii) Abundance of figurative language may proceed from emotion and kindle it. Even extended and detailed metaphor may be stimulating.

_The fourth source, noble diction, means more than constant excellence._

(xxxiii) Better eminence with some faults than a lower plane without them: Homer than Apollonius, Archilochus than Eratosthenes, Pindar than Bacchylides, Sophocles than Ion, (xxxiv) Demosthenes than Hyperides, (xxxv) Plato than Lysias, and, in general, force than elegance. (xxxvi) But though the achievement due to art is typically that of the lower plane, the success of never failing, the assurance of technical mastery, still this does not make art the less important. [xxxvii-xxxviii. Further on figures: metaphor, hyperbole.]

_The fifth source is sentence movement (compositio)._

(xxxxix) The fifth of the elements that combine to give height is _compositio_. Having already in two other treatises gone exhaustively into the theory of _compositio_, I will treat it here only in general. The pervasive emotional effect of rhythm need only be insisted on; it is too evident to require proof. (xl) That it is separately distinguishable as a cause of heightening can be seen in many authors, most strikingly in Euripides, who is a poet rather of _compositio_ than of thought. (xli-xlii) Conversely, a wrong rhythm may drag down or distract, (xliii) as may also a descriptive detail that interrupts or jars.

_That orators rarely attain the heights of style means that they live unworthily._

(xliv) Why have we now few authors that reach the heights? Is the cause political, the decay of democracy? Rather it is moral; it is our materialism.

Compared with the orderly _a priori_ progress of Dionysius, this treatment seems at once less systematic; and though the manuscripts show gaps, some apparently of considerable length, we have enough of the treatise to conclude that the whole was rather suggestive than logically divided and consecutive. But through it all runs the controlling idea that the higher reaches of style are, in cause and in effect, imaginative. Discussing oratory, the author is all the while drawing instances from poetry; and this means more than in the treatise of Dionysius. The scope is larger. Not only does he range far beyond _compositio_, which occupies only five of his chapters; he is looking in general less to technic and more to motive. What lifts the orator, and makes him lift his hearers, is first intellectual power of conception, then emotional power of sympathy. These are the springs. They work out in imaginative diction and rhythmical pace; but that few orators lift us by these means is due fundamentally to a general lack of idealism.

The contribution, then, of this unknown critic consists in illuminating the bearing of poetic on rhetoric, the importance of imaginative realization even for purposes of persuasion. The distinction between rhetoric and poetic he never blurs; in fact he contrasts the two explicitly; but he brings out, more clearly than any other ancient author, their interdependence.

First, he precludes any undue separation of thought from emotion by making conception, in Homer as well as in Demosthenes, intellectual. His word νόησις reminds one that Aristotle conversely brings rhetoric into poetic by making thought, διάνοια,[2] one of the elements of tragedy. Then further he shows throughout that style at its height, in Demosthenes as well as in Homer, is imaginative realization, that where we feel ὕψος, _sublimitas_, even in the field of rhetoric, we find the typical language of poetic. Such passages, he says in his first chapter, do not merely persuade us; they carry us out of ourselves.

This is clearest in chapters x-xv, which show how power of conception works out in the typical movement (x) of poetic, then (xi-xiv) in that of rhetoric, and then (xv) in their common ground of diction. These chapters, the core of the treatise, confirm by artistic divination the philosophical analysis of Aristotle, and range beyond diction into composition. How, he inquires, are we to lift oratory to the heights? Even as Sappho, he answers, makes us in a single poem feel love; that is, by selecting those characteristic actions which are most salient and gathering them into a single body. “Do you not marvel how she seeks to gather soul and body into one, hearing and tongue, eyes and mien, all dispersed and strangers before?”[3] Poetry gives us the truth of life by bringing into organic continuity what is revealing and significant. What life disperses and interrupts, poetry focuses and brings into emotional sequence and momentum. Its essential processes are to realize these saliences imaginatively and to unify them. “It is survey of the high points, and composition (σύνταξις) for unity.”[4] A simple modern instance is Browning’s “Meeting at Night.”

This, the treatise goes on (xi-xii), is the typical method of poetic. The parallel (σύνεδρος) method of rhetoric is the converse; it is amplification. Poetry suggests in a flash; oratory iterates and enlarges. The one is intensive; the other, extensive. The one is compressed; the other, cumulative. Now none of the many and well-known means of amplification is self-sufficient. They all fall short without what we have called heightening. True, amplification and height of style may seem (xii) to amount to the same thing, since the object of both is by definition to invest the subject with greatness; but they differ in method.

Height means direct lift (δίαρμα); amplification implies multitude. Therefore the former is often in a single idea (νόημα), whereas the latter always implies quantity and abundance.... So Cicero differs from Demosthenes in grand passages. The [force of the] one is in sheer height; of the other, in volume.... The fire of the one is like lightning ... of the other, like a conflagration.[5]

So much for height as proceeding from the whole conception and movement. To return now to diction:

Weight, grandeur, and energy are furthermore most readily achieved by images (φαντασίαι), or, as some call them, bodyings-forth.... [By these terms are meant] specifically those cases in which, moved by enthusiasm and passion, you seem to see the things of which you speak, and to put them under the eyes of your hearers. As imagery means one thing with the orators and another with the poets, you must have observed that with the latter its function is vivid suggestion; with the former, precision.[6] Nevertheless both uses of imagery appeal to emotion. [Euripides in a passage quoted from _Orestes_, 255] saw the Furies himself, and what was imaged in his mind he almost compelled his hearers to see. [In another passage, from the lost _Phaëthon_] would you not say that the soul of the writer mounts the car with the driver, takes the risk with him, and with the horses has wings?[7]

Imaginative diction, then, is not primarily a trick of words; it is a visualizing habit of thought. It is sympathetic insight, even to the extent of feeling with Phaëthon’s horses their wings.

[In poetry imagery may even range beyond what is convincing;] but in oratory it is always best when it holds to reality and verisimilitude (ἔμπρακτον καὶ ἐνάληθες).... What, then, can the image do in oratory? Much else, doubtless, it can add to speeches in energy and emotion; but infused into arguments drawn directly from facts it not only persuades the hearer, but also makes him its slave. [Instances from Demosthenes and Hyperides] While he is arguing from the facts, the orator has expressed them in images. He has given his very premise (λῆμμα) a force beyond persuasion. As by a law of nature, in all such cases we always hear the stronger. So we are drawn away from the argumentative [value] to that which is imaginatively striking, in which the facts [as mere evidence] disappear in excess of light.[8]

Imaginative realization of facts, the author is saying, which is essentially poetic, has its use also in rhetoric. That use is normally intellectual, for precision, for making an idea luminous. But there is a further use that is emotional. Besides making ideas clear, imagery in oratory, as well as in poetry, makes facts live. Thus it is not merely stylistic beauty; it has its function at the very base of oratory, in the subject-matter, in the very facts. Make the audience visualize these facts, see them, hear them, live in them by imagination, and you have done something more effective than marshaling them as evidence and urging your inferences. By the imaginative illusion of actuality the audience is not merely convinced; it is captured. In such passages, rather than in reasoning, oratory reaches its heights.[9]

The following chapters (xvi-xxxviii) on figures, carrying into detail the fundamental principle of imaginative realization, are handled less originally and less suggestively than the principle itself. Perhaps we are the less patient with the details of imagery because we have been made to see vividly the scope of imagination. Classification of imagery, which seems inevitably to produce the most tedious chapters in rhetorics, lacks for us moderns what is most characteristic of this ardent and original spirit, constructive suggestion. But at least he abstains from carrying it into minute analysis. Even these his most technical chapters are illuminated by that genius for appreciation which brought together one of the most significant of all collections of literary models. His own style, too, flashes in memorable sentences:

A figure seems best when it is not noticed as a figure (xvii).

What is hurried and roughened by emotion, if you smooth out to a level by conjunctions, loses its spur and fire (xxi).

Beautiful words are essentially the very light of thought (xxx).

Occasional oratory (ἐπιδεικτικός) being recognized by the ancients as the most literary of the three fields,[10] one might expect this treatise to dwell on it especially. But the author’s object is not special; it is general. This and the contagion of his enthusiasm have made his book, ever since its recovery in the Renaissance,[11] a powerful influence. Its promotive quality sets it above the schematic analysis of even so discerning a critic as Dionysius. Milton must have felt in it his own creative attitude toward reading. Nor does it need to dwell on the school of Isocrates when its own most characteristic passages have themselves the very mood and method of occasional oratory.

What, then, did those immortals see who reached at the greatest things in writing and scorned unvarying nicety? Besides many other things, this, that nature meant us men to be no low species nor ignoble; but leading us, as into a great pageant, into life and the whole order of things, to be spectators of all that she shows and contestants eager for honor, she implanted forthwith in our souls invincible passion for all that is permanently great and in our eyes more divine.[12]

Where has been more nobly expressed the mainspring of interest in literature? Great authors satisfy our longing to enter the human scene fully, to experience vicariously and to share in imagination passions and deeds greater than those of our every day. They touch the heights of style who know the heights of life. To bring oratory into this company is at once to claim for it literary height and to insist on the relation of rhetoric to morality. The moral implications of rhetoric are stressed again in the last chapter (xliv) that remains. Aristotle had recognized them explicitly. St. Augustine, at the end of the ancient world, must reaffirm them for Christian preaching. But against the sophistic that had always threatened this ideal no antidote is more effective than the great unknown’s sense of mission.

Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric determines its function. Cicero dignifies even its conventional tasks as training for leadership. Quintilian surveys it as a comprehensive pedagogy. Dionysius analyzes its art. But the great unknown moves us to share that art ourselves.

FOOT-NOTES:

[1] The edition of W. Rhys Roberts (Cambridge, 1899; second edition, 1907), bearing this traditional title, has, besides text and translation, an introduction on the authorship, contents, and character, and several valuable appendices: A. textual; B. linguistic (beginning this scholar’s collation of Greek rhetorical terms); C. literary (with a table of contents and a list of quotations located and arranged alphabetically by authors); D. bibliographical.

Other modern English translations are: by H. L. Havell, with an introduction by Andrew Lang (London, 1890; reprinted by Lane Cooper in _Theories of Style_, New York, 1907); by A. O. Prickard, with a brief introductory essay on the authorship and character, a digest by chapters, and four appendices: I. Specimen Passages Translated from Greek Writers of the Roman Empire on Literary Criticism; II. The Treatise on Sublimity and Latin Critics; III. Passages Translated from Bishop Lowth’s Oxford Lectures on Hebrew Poetry; IV. Additional Note on Paraphones.

[2] _Poetic_, 1450 a.

[3] x.

[4] xi, at the end. The ἐκεῖνο of this parenthesis in xi refers to x.

[5] xii. A similar comparison is made by Quintilian, X. i. 106.

[6] In English the familiar contrast is between Shakspere’s figures and Bacon’s.

[7] xv.

[8] xv.

[9] The bearing of delivery on this, of the art of the actor on the art of the orator, is glanced at in the opening chapter of Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_, Book III (see above, page 24), a meager passage illumined by this doctrine of the Great Unknown.

[10] Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, III. xii. 1414 a. See the discussion of this passage above, page 33.

[11] See the bibliography in the edition of Rhys Roberts.

[12] xxxv. Beside this may be set for contrast the bitter satire of Lucian’s _Rhetorum præceptor_, which declares the practical equipment for success in oratory to be effrontery, a loud voice, a store of strange words, stock allusions, and sheer gab.