Narration, Argument, Subsidiary Remarks, and the Peroration. A better division it would be hard to find, either in the days when great elaboration has been studied, as in New England in the last century, for example, or in the less formal age in which we are living. The Proem, as the word signifies, is an opening strain, giving the pitch of the piece. The Narration was a plain statement of facts and circumstances; the Argument was a fair induction from those facts.

Subsidiary

Remarks gathered up the reasons which were auxiliary and additional, and the Peroration was a persuasive and fitting close to the whole. Thus early did rhetoric formulate itself into a inethod which, with some artificial deviations, has through all the centuries preserved its essential character. This circumstance is also an early testimony to the truth that the science of speaking is based upon common laws of our nature, the same unchanging fact from age to age.

One most interesting feature of the beginning of the art is to be noticed here, that is, that its origin was intensely practical. It was not "art for art's sake," as the modern phrase goes, but for the sake of rightful possession of lands and houses and homes. Unlike the arts of music and painting it did not attempt to please for the sake of giving pleasure. It was simply and professedly for regaining what had been wrongfully alienated. The very divisions which Corax established grew up from a perception of that form of conviction and persuasion which is most effective with the reasonable mind. Facts were established, and then the legitimate deduction of moral obligation was drawn. It is the same practical

necessity that has prevailed in the making of much of the best literature, both in prose and verse-Shakespeare writing for his daily bread and to purchase Stratford New Place; Scott throwing off page after page of manuscript to purchase Abbotsford or to discharge a debt of honor; and so, if the secret could be discovered, of many an ancient and many a modern classic.

The impression which is left by this earliest record of methodical oratory, so far as it can be gathered from fragmentary memorials, is, that while there must have been speaking men in all antiquity, like Aaron at the court of Pharaoh, there was in this fifth century before our era, in a Grecian province, and as the fruit of prolonged literary cultivation, a sudden development of forensic oratory, due largely to an unexpected acquisition of freedom-the essential condition of genuine eloquence. Before this time oratory had a somewhat irregular character and a natural and spontaneous utterance, as is indicated by the very uniformity of the speeches which Thucydides puts into the mouths of his generals; but now oratory is reduced to a system, for practical purposes, and begins to have the scientific characteristics which poetry and narrative prose had already acquired.

T

III.

PROFESSIONAL SPEECH-WRITERS.

`HE demand for forensic argument, which was created by litigation consequent upon the return of landholders who had been exiled, was met at an early day by men who made the composition of legal arguments a bus

Corax instructed citizens of Syracuse in the general principles of forensics, but it naturally followed that some preferred to have arguments written out for them by another and to pay for the service, perhaps with a goodly share of the restored estate, rather than to learn the five principles and construct a brief. This substituted argumentation was an early example of division of labor, and an indication of the advance of civilization.

Only a few, however, became famous in this department of vicarious composition. Of these ANTIPHON is the first, 480 B. C. He marks the transition from the technical to the practical stage of oratory, from the school of rhetoric to the court and the assembly. Four of his Tetralogies are extant, in which he formulates examples of prosecution and defence according to the almost uniform necessities of a large class of similar cases arising under the restoration of estates mentioned above, estates which had been alienated by Hiero, Gelo, and Thrasybulus. With a change of names and a filling in of blanks an argument could be put in a

client's

pos

In

session as readily as a deed or mortgage is now drawn in a lawyer's office. And, for all we know to the contrary, the furnished argument was as effective in the tribunals of Sicily as modern efforts are in our own courts. any case, it was a paying profession, which is the best proof at this distant day that this sort of composition and pleading by proxy answered an important purpose for the property-holder, besides encouraging several men of note to enter the profession.

Antiphon's strong point in argument was the topic of General Probability. "Is it likely that such and such a thing would have occurred?" "Would this little man have been likely to attack this big one; or if he did, would he not have known beforehand that the presumption would be against him?" This topic of general probability was the favorite weapon of the earliest Greek rhetoricians. Aristotle himself gives it an important place in his great treatise, in which he formulated the principles that had prevailed in the usage of the early

orators.

But Antiphon did not confine himself to the construction of legal arguments. He marks the first departure from the courts to the assembly, and becomes the founder of political oratory, with its cognate branch of legislative and deliberative discussion. Moreover, he reduced the art of public speaking to more definite rules than the five principles which Corax had inculcated, developing particularly, as has been mentioned, the doctrine of the probable. The strictness, however, with which he adhered to his vocation of writing and teaching is exemplified by the fact that while he composed many

speeches for others he never addressed the people himself until he made his own defence in the trial which resulted in his condemnation and death.

His style, as compared with those of other orators of his time, was rugged and sturdy, indicating that he was not a mere writing-master of rhetorical flourishes. Instead, he is dignified in diction, bold but not florid in imagery, with a weight and grandeur of thought which speak plainly for the character of the orator as a man.

In these years GORGIAS, 427 B. C., an orator and rhetorician, came to Athens from Leontini in Sicily to ask succor for the Leontines who had been attacked by the Syracusans. He captivated the Athenians by his eloquent appeals in which florid antithesis played an important part, and having gained such men as Alcibiades, Æschines, and Antisthenes for pupils and imitators, he set up a school of oratory at Athens. His methods dif

fered from those of his contemporaries in that he taught rhetoric by having prepared passages learned by heart. Diction was his principal object, without much reference to invention or arrangement of material. It is not strange that such attention to manner merely brought his art into temporary disrepute, and that Plato in his light treatment of rhetoricians should have chosen to give to the dialogue in which he does this the name of Gorgias, after this exponent of the new profession that was now springing up.

It may be observed here in regard to this new profession of oratory that, as in the case of other sciences, its principles were first evolved by practice and determined by the demands of different times and communi