John Milton at St. Paul’S School: A Study of Ancient Rhetoric in English Renaissance Education 9780231885034

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John^hCilton at St. PauPs School

T H E S C H O O L R O O M AS R E B U I L T A F T E R G R E A T F I R E OF I 6 6 6

THE

John zMilton at St. Paul\r School A STUDY OF A N C I E N T IN ENGLISH

RHETORIC

RENAISSANCE

EDUCATION

by Donald Lernen Clark PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

" .. .the childhood shews the man, As morning shews the day"

N E W YORK

·

C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS I 9 4 8

COPYRIGHT

1948

COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

P U B L I S H E D IN CREAT B R I T A I N AND INDIA B Y G E O F F R E Y OXFORD U N I V E R S I T Y

CUMBERLEGE

PRESS, LONDON AND B O M B A Y

M A N U F A C T U R E D IN T H E

U N I T E D STATES OF

AMERICA

TO

zJ&ary T^ead Qark

Preface HIS STUDY of J o h n Milton's education at St. Paul's School in London, which he attended until at the age of sixteen he matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, was begun as the first step towards understanding the influence which classical and post-classical rhetoric undoubtedly had on Milton as a great writer of poetry and prose in L a t i n and in English. Although a number of more or less relevant problems are touched on, rhetoric in its broadest classical sense as an essential attribute of a f r e e citizen in a civilized society remains the theme of the entire book. W h e n I first proposed to study the influence of ancient rhetoric on Milton's theory and practice of prose and poetry, I had just completed the manuscript, still unpublished, of The Teaching of Rhetoric in Greece and Rome. In this study I abandoned temporarily the main highway of rhetorical theory and philosophy which I had formerly followed in Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance ( 1 9 2 2 ) , and endeavored to reconstruct the everyday activities of the less philosophical schoolmasters, as reported by Suetonius, Seneca the E l d e r , and Quintilian, and satirized by Lucian, Petronius, and J u v e nal. Study of the manuals f o r theme writing, the Progymnasmata of the Greek schoolmasters Hermogenes and Aphthonius, told a revealing story to one who had been a lifelong teacher of rhetoric, author of textbooks, and editor of books of readings f o r Freshmen. H a v i n g also edited, f o r the Columbia edition, Milton's declamatory exercises which he composed at Cambridge, the Prolusiones Quaedam Oratoriae, I found that I possessed two bearings which enabled me to locate the port of entry through which ancient rhetoric passed into the alert mind of J o h n Milton. T h i s port of entry was the g r a m m a r school Milton attended as a boy.

viii

Preface

Hence in seeking to discover how ancient rhetoric influenced Milton I have begun at the beginning with his trivial education in the language arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic as he received it at St. Paul's School. In doing this I have first presented the known facts about the schoolboy Milton, so far as we can discover them from his own statements and from those who knew him. I have given an account of the school itself and of his schoolmasters. My main endeavor has been to reconstruct the course of study which he most probably followed and to describe the textbooks of grammar and rhetoric which he studied and memorized and the classical authors he imitated in the themes he wrote in Latin and Greek prose and verse. The texts of Milton I have taken from the Columbia edition with the permission of the Columbia University Press. Translations from Milton's Latin are for the most part from the same edition, but I have not hesitated to use the translations of others or to make my own when I thought it in the interest of accurate reporting. In quoting from other authors and documents it has pleased me to use texts and translations, so far as possible, that might have been accessible to Milton. Often, indeed, there are no others. If, like the dwarf in the ancient apologue, I have been enabled to see farther than some of my predecessors, it is because I sit upon the shoulders of giants who have prepared the way. I am especially happy to acknowledge my debt to three groups of scholars who have in one way or another made invaluable contributions to an understanding of Milton's schooling: the studies of James Holley Hanford and Ε. M . W . Tillyard on Milton's youth; those of Robert Barlow Gardiner and Michael F. J. McDonnell on the history of St. Paul's School; and those of T. W . Baldwin, Arthur F. Leach, and Foster Watson on the ways of English grammar schools. Sir Michael McDonnell has been especially generous in writing to me of his investigations of the Mercers' Records, recently opened to him.

Preface

ix

Here, too, I wish to express my thanks to the College Council of Trinity College, Cambridge, for permission to reproduce a part of their manuscript of "The Constant Method of Teaching in St. Paul's Schoole, London," and to the Trustees of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery for affording me opportunities of study and for permission to include in my chapter, "Milton's Schoolmasters," a great deal of material which first appeared in the Huntington Library Quarterly, February, 1946. Time for the completion of the manuscript was afforded by a fellowship awarded in 1944 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for which I am deeply grateful, and by a leave of absence granted me by the President and Trustees of Columbia University. M y studies at every step have been facilitated by Mary Isabel Fry, Constance M . Winchell, and Jean F. Macalister, the faithful and learned reference librarians at the Huntington Library and the Libraries of Columbia University. For generous assistance on seeing the book through the press I am greatly indebted to Muriel E . Kern and to the officers and editorial staff of the Columbia University Press. As I approach the pleasant obligation of acknowledging my various debts to my friends and fellow members of the community of scholars, I think first of Charles Sears Baldwin, of George Philip Krapp, and of Fred Newton Scott, great rhetoricians of the former age, who, when I was young, helped to guide my steps towards an understanding of the history and philosophy of the Gay Science. I think of William Peterfield Trent, who first introduced me to the qualities of Milton's mind. In the preparation of this present book I have received generous aid and warm encouragement from the late Hoyt Hudson, from George Sherburn, and from Richard McKeon. T o my colleagues at Columbia University, Harry Morgan Ayres, Oscar James Campbell, and Ernest Hunter Wright, I am beholden for much good advice, freely offered. Especially am I grateful to William Haller, whose wide and

χ

Preface

deep knowledge of Milton and his age has been generously put at my disposal on many a fishing trip, while the pickerel, uncaught, rejoiced at the prospect of so much authors' manuscript to furnish them with winding sheets for Lent. It is a pleasure publicly to thank my wife, M a r y Read Clark, who had also on a previous occasion helped me to see a child through school. DONALD LEMEN

Columbia University New York March, 1947

CLARK

Qontents 1.

THE

TRIVIUM

2.

M I L T O N AS A SCHOOLBOY

16

3.

ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL

33

4.

M I L T O N ' S SCHOOLMASTERS

65

5.

T H E COURSE OF STUDY AT ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL

100

6.

T E X T B O O K S FOR P R E C E P T S

131

7.

AUTHORS FOR I M I T A T I O N

152

8.

EXERCISES

185

9.

RETROSPECT

250

INDEX

253

FOR PRAXIS

3

John zJtCilton at St. PauPs School

ι. The Trivium

I

is COMMON KNOWLEDGE that Milton in his maturity was in fact, as well as in his own ideal of himself, an orator statesman whose privilege and duty it was to counsel and admonish the state. Areopagitica is not his only prose tract which has the form of a classical oration. If, unlike those other great orator statesmen, Demosthenes and Cicero, Milton did not address his audience with the impassioned spoken word, he was well aware that he had classical precedent in Isocrates, "who from his private house wrote that discourse to the Parlament of Athens," when he addressed his countrymen through the written word. N o less was he an orator statesman practicing rhetoric for the glory of truth and the honor of England when he wrote his Latin defenses against the foreign enemies of the Commonwealth. It was the orator statesman in Milton who aspired to write a poem "doctrinal and exemplary to a Nation." T h a t Milton should aspire to such literary and oratorical ideals as moved the orators and poets of antiquity is natural enough, for he had an early education very like their own. Indeed in Milton's boyhood formal education in the English grammar schools was as exclusively literary as formal education had been in the Roman schools of the first century. In Imperial Rome and in Renaissance England all seven of the Liberal Arts were honored as the basis of a liberal education, but in both periods the mathematical arts of the quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy) were honored more than taught. T h e core, flesh and skin of the educational apple were comprised in the linguistic arts of the trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic). Hence in Milton's boyhood his father might have boasted, quite correctly, T

4

The Triviutn

that he was giving his son a sound " t r i v i a l " education. 1 F o r St. Paul's School, which prepared M i l t o n f o r Cambridge, was as completely given over to the study of the trivium, in L a t i n and Greek, as was the grammar school Ovid attended in Rome. Milton read the same school authors, practiced the same imitative exercises of translation and paraphrase, and wrote and spoke themes on the same sort of assignments. T h a t Milton received such a grammar school education was the all but inevitable result of the Renaissance in England, f o r the Renaissance humanists, Erasmus, Colet, and L i l y , who organized the course of study f o r St. Paul's in process of bringing about a rebirth of classical culture through a renewed study of classical languages and literatures simultaneously brought about a rebirth of the classical educational system. T h i s humanistic education which he received at St. Paul's School had a profound influence on the mature Milton and contributed to making him what he became—a great man of the Renaissance. It was at St. Paul's School that he gained that command of Latin which he put to such noble use in the service of his country in his great defenses of English liberty. H e r e it was that he first learned to practice the rhetoric which, when he became a man, enabled him to control his thoughts f o r effective communication to the world. A t this school, happy in the literary studies afforded by academic leisure, he was encouraged to write verses in English as well as in the learned tongues. Indeed he was so happy in the congenial surroundings of his humanistic grammar school that he was well prepared to hate, as hate he thoroughly did, the medieval scholasticism of his university when he proceeded to Cambridge in 1 6 2 5 . Hence I shall proceed to give in some detail an account of the general theory and practice of G r a m m a r , Rhetoric, and 1 Under the title of " T h e T r i v i a l Education of John Milton" I presented to the meeting of the Modern Language Association in December, 1945, a summary of some of the material contained in this chapter and Chapter V.

The

Trivium

ζ

Logic, as taught in ancient and Renaissance grammar schools, to supply a frame of reference which will enable us to understand more fully the specific grammarschool education which Milton received in London during the eight or nine years which preceded his admission to college. A s we shall see, the semantic content of the terms "Grammar, Rhetoric, and L o g i c " shifted a good deal from time to time over the centuries. They have always had a tendency to cncroach on one another, to claim ever wider boundaries, and to occupy spheres of influence at the expense of their sister arts. But like the warring city-states of ancient Greece or the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the Heptarchy they were always aware of belonging to the same family. They are all arts of communication in language. They are all arts of thinking, speaking, reading, and writing. From the day Milton first learned his letters as a child until he received the degree of Master of Arts at the age of twenty-four he devoted his time and effort almost exclusively to the mastery of the arts of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic. Of these arts, Grammar has always been the first taught to little children after they have learned their letters and can read. In medieval and Renaissance allegorical representations Grammar is shown as a nurse giving suck to infants, as a schoolmistress threatening little children with a birch, or as a teacher opening with a key the narrow gate to the tower of knowledge so that little children may enter. 2 But in Milton's day, as in antiquity, the words "grammar" and "grammarian" embraced much more than they do today. Giving Suetonius, On Grammarians, as his source, Thomas Wise, in his Animadversions on Lillies Grammar or Lilly Scanned ( 1 6 2 5 ) says of a grammarian: Among the Ancients he was called Grammaticus, who did not onely teach how to speake a tongue well, but also did examine, and, discuss all the difficulties in Poets, Historians, Orators, Philosophers &c. hee that 2

Donald Lernen Clark, "Iconography of the Seven Liberal Arts," Stained Glass, Vol. X X I I I , No. 1 (Spring, 1933).

6

The

Trivium

taught the Elements of words, letters, was called Grammatista. Grammaticus with them was as much as Literatus, a learned scholar, or criticke, w h o m w e now call a philologer.*

T o be sure the g r a m m a r school in Suetonius' day as in M i l t o n ' s taught the elements of w o r d s and letters as well as explained the difficulties of the poets, historians, and orators, and a g r e a t deal more. In the passage which f o l l o w s the one which W i s e correctly summarizes, Suetonius a d d s : T h e grammarians of early days taught rhetoric as well, and w e have treatises from many men on both subjects. It was this custom, I think, which led those of later times also, although the two professions had now become distinct, nevertheless either to retain or to introduce certain kinds of exercises suited to the training of orators, such as problems, paraphrases, speeches, and character sketches; doubtless that they might not turn over their pupils to the rhetorician unprepared. 1

Quintilian 5 considered such teaching of rhetoric by the g r a m m a r teacher as an encroachment, but the customs of the English g r a m m a r school show that the encroachment had become a tradition. Such a grammaticus as D r . Gil, M i l t o n ' s H i g h M a s t e r , taught how to speak a tongue well, discussed the difficulties of the classical authors, and taught elementary exercises in rhetoric. A n interesting sidelight on the close resemblance of the E n g l i s h g r a m m a r school to its original, the Roman school of the grammaticus, is shown by the fact that neither, when first organized, was concerned with teaching the vernacular. T h e R o m a n boy studied Greek g r a m m a r , G r e e k writers, and w r o t e his elementary exercises in G r e e k . Only when the Roman grammaticus had acquired a classic Roman literature to teach, and large numbers of non-Latin speaking provincials to teach it to, did he begin to teach L a t i n g r a m m a r and discuss the difficulties of Virgil, H o r a c e , Cicero, and Sallust. L i k e w i s e the English boy in the humanistic g r a m m a r school w a s taught not English grammar but L a t i n . T h e poets dis3 4

W i s e , op. cit. (London, 1625), A 3 recto and verso. Plimpton copy. 6 II, i v , 1 - 3 . Suet. Gram. iv.

The

Trivium

7

cussed w e r e not E n g l i s h poets, but L a t i n and G r e e k poets. A s E n g l i s h poets began to produce a classical English literature, the study of E n g l i s h literature was gradually introduced into the school. D r . Gil, a leader in this movement, wrote an E n g l i s h g r a m m a r , the Logotiomia Anglica ( 1 6 1 9 ) , which explained E n g l i s h g r a m m a r and rhetoric, in L a t i n to be sure, but illustrated many of the beauties of the language with quotations f r o m Spenser, Sidney, and W i t h e r . B u t if in antiquity and in the Renaissance, G r a m m a r tended to encroach on rhetoric, so did rhetoric encroach on logic in antiquity and logic encroach on rhetoric in the Renaissance. F r o m the beginning there were three characteristic and divergent views on rhetoric. T h e r e was the moral philosophical view of P l a t o , who condemned rhetoric because it seemed to him to deal with appearances, opinion, and pleasure, whereas it ought to deal with reality, truth, and the g o o d l i f e . P l a t o thought that logic, as practiced in the dialectical disputations of the Socratic dialogs, w a s a guide to the attainment of truth. T h e n there w a s the philosophical scientific view of Aristotle, who endeavored to devise a theory of rhetoric without moral praise or blame f o r it. H e claimed a close kinship between rhetoric, the art of public speaking, and dialectic, the art of logical discussion. H e condemns teachers of rhetoric who devote themselves exclusively to appeals to the feelings and neglect the true constituents of the a r t — p e r s u a s i o n through an effort to use logical arguments. T h e r e was finally the practical educational view of the rhetoricians f r o m Isocrates to Cicero to Quintilian, who praised rhetoric, practiced it, and taught it as an essential attribute of the f r e e citizen. Isocrates p r e f e r r e d to call himself a philosopher rather than a rhetorician, and his school a school of philosophy. H e does not usually talk about " r h e t o r i c " but about " t h e a r t of discourse" 6 or the "philosophy of discourse." 7 T h e G r e e k w o r d translated as " d i s c o u r s e " is 9

Antid. 253.

7

Panegyr. 10.

8

The

Trivium

"logos," the word, speech, reason, whence the English word "logic" is derived. But Cicero is not afraid of "rhetoric" when he exclaims, "Behold, there arose Isocrates, the master of all rhetoricians, from whose school, as from the Horse of T r o y , none but leaders emerged." 8 The inclusive view of rhetoric maintained by Isocrates, Cicero, and Quintilian made its aim the training of the whole man for public aftairs. It was the aim Milton later adopted in his Of Education. Its noblest product was the orator statesman, who was to guide the state through reasoned and impassioned eloquence, not by arbitrary force, for the benefit of the commonwealth. Isocrates, the "Old man eloquent" of Milton's Tenth sonnet, was such an orator statesman; so was Cicero; so was John Milton when he published A Speech for the Liberty of Urtlicenc'd Printing called Areopagitica. An eloquent statement of the high value of eloquence is contained in Nicocles or The Cyprians, which Isocrates wrote as a prosopopoeia as though to be spoken by Nicocles, King of Cyprus, on the duties of the subject to his ruler. It is a companion piece to the speech by Isocrates called To Nicocles, on the duties of a king to his people, which Thomas Elyot published in English translation, as The Doctrinal of Princes ( 1 5 3 4 ) . A s a schoolboy at St. Paul's Milton would find both speeches in the small school library, in the edition of the complete works of Isocrates with a translation into Latin by Jerome W o l f , Basel, 1570. 9 I shall quote from Nicocles part of Isocrates' statement in the English translation made by Thomas Forrest and published in A Perfect Looking Glasse for all Estates ( 1 5 8 0 ) . T h e r e is no difference betwixt us & all other living creatures in any other qualitie: but onely in this, (the Studie of Eloquence) ; nay w e are surpassed of every of them, either in quicknesse or in strength or in any other gifte, which nature hath bestowed uppon us, but onely in 8

De orat., II, xxii, 94. •Isocrates Grate, cum castigat Wolphii. Robert Barlow Gardiner, The Admitsion Registers of St. Paul's School . . . (London, 1 8 8 1 ) , p. 451. Appendix I, " T h e School Library."

The

Trivium

9

that t h r o u g h this singular benefite, w e take advisementes and consultations of eche thing as w e l l present as past, as also to utter and to expresse to eche other our mindes and opinions, by the which particuler priviledge, w e doe not only varie and differ f r o m that brutische life, but also learne by good forecast to builde Cities, to make lawes, and to invent al A r t e s and trades of w e l l living, dooing nothing w h i c h may be accounted singuler and exquisite, but that Eloquence is the chiefest f u r t h e r e r of the same, in so much that nothing is broughte to passe w i t h o u t e her helpe, for it is she onely that ordaineth and appointeth a convenient and decent order to bee observed, both in thinges l a w f u l l or u n l a w f u l l , honest or dishonest, and in all causes whatsoever they be, for otherwise the society of mankinde could not be maintained. I t is she w h i c h reprooveth and correcteth the w i c k e d , incourageth and imboldeth the godly, instructeth the foolishe, craveth the counsell and judgement of the w i s e : dissolveth and dispatcheth all quarrells and controversies, and procureth the k n o w l e d g e and understanding of thinges u n k n o w n e . T h o s e reasons w h i c h w e use in our pleadinges to the pers w a d i n g of others, are also as common to us in our private deliberations and conferences, in so much as w e e j u d g e those men to be eloquent, w h i c h can discretly and orderly f r a m e their declamations before the people, as also w i t t i l y behave themselves in the consulting and deliberating of eche perticuler matter. F o r w e thinke it an especiall token of a good j u d g e m e n t & perfect brayne, to utter our wordes in decente and comelye order, and that faire and honest talke is a sure signe of a plaine and true meaning h e a r t : but to speake effectually of the f u l l force of this science, w e e shall finde nothing done w i t h reason which hath not been brought about by the helpe of Eloquence, so that she remaineth the chiefest guide of all our thoughts and deedes, being the only instrument of the wise and learned. N o w therefore as touching those men whose use it is to speake so reproachefully of the maisters of this arte, and of all such as shewe themselves studious in the k n o w l e d g e of good literature, t r u l y in my opinion they are as greatly to be hated and misliked, as are they w h i c h cursedly violate and spoyle the temples of the gods immortal. 1 0

It is this "Eloquence" which Isocrates describes so glowingly that was named Rhetoric by most other ancient speakers and writers. "Rhetoric," says Aristotle, "may be defined as the faculty of discovering all the possible means of persuasion in any subject." 1 1 T h e Ad Herennium defines the 10

11

Nicoclej, 5-9. Forrest, op. cit., 33 v . and 34 r. Huntington Library copy. Rhet. I, ii. Welldon's trans.

The

ΙΟ

Trivium

purpose of rhetoric as " s o to speak as to gain the assent of the audience as f a r as possible," 1 2 and Cicero says, " T h e office of the orator is to speak in a way adapted to win the assent of his audience." 1 3 Quintilian emphasizes persuasion less in defining rhetoric as " t h e art of effective public speech." 1 4 T h e L a t i n word translated as " s p e a k " in the foregoing definitions is "dicere," which, in rhetorical contexts, means the f o r m a l delivery of a speech or what we call in schools "public speaking." 1 5 T o these and to all other orators and rhetoricians of their age, rhetoric had five parts, which, in review, may be shown tabularly as follows, using the familiar Latin names: 1. Inventio. T h i s is the art of finding arguments in support of a speaker's position. Arguments adduced f r o m the testimony of witnesses or contracts were thought to lie outside the art of rhetoric but were, of course, used when available. T h e arguments considered to lie within the art of rhetoric were those based on the Topics or Commonplaces of rhetorical invention and on inductive and deductive reasoning. Such arguments were, of course, also taught by logic and hence their use in rhetoric might be considered as encroachments by teachers of logic. 2. Dispositio. T h i s is the art of arranging the arguments previously discovered or rhetorically "invented" into a sequence which would be most likely to rouse a reader's or hearer's interest, inform him of the issues, and persuade him of the truth or probability of the speaker's or writer's position. T h e conventional arrangement was to open with an exordium, which should render the audience attentive and friendly, continue with a narratio, or statement of facts colored to make them appear favorable to the speaker's side, proceed with a divisio, perhaps, to forecast the main points 12

13 14 Ad Heren. I, 2. Cicero, De orat. I, 138. Quint. II, x v , 38. A much fuller discussion of definitions of rhetoric in ancient tiroes and in the Renaissance than would be appropriate here is to be found in my Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance (New York, 1922), pp. 2 3 - 3 1 , 43-SS· 15

The

Trivium

II

the speaker planned to make, bring up the heavy artillery of confirmatio, or affirmative proof, and refutatio, or rebuttal, and wind up with a ringing peroratio. Clearly dispositio and inventio are the parts of classical rhetoric nearest related to the art of reasoning called dialectic or logic. They were, indeed, introduced into rhetoric from logic by Aristotle who quite sensibly thought the processes of reasoning were useful in the rhetorical discussion of probabilities as well as in scientific demonstrations of truth. 18 But, as we shall see, Logic reclaimed her own before Milton's school days had begun. 3. Elocutio. This is the art of clothing thoughts and feelings in language which is correct, appropriate, and pleasing. It involves choosing the best words and putting them in the best places. It is what we now call style, and in antiquity as today was thought to be common to prose and verse, to poetry and to oratory. Classical critics and teachers delighted to analyze the characteristics of style into categories much more elaborate and detailed than suits the modern taste. Renaissance teachers and writers followed the ancients enthusiastically. So when Richard Sherry wrote A Treatise of Schemes & Tropes ( 1 5 5 0 ) , he was following an ancient classification which Quintilian summarized and sanctioned. T h e following is the skeleton of Quintilian's summary. A trope is still what it used to be—a turning from a literal to a figurative meaning; metaphor, allegory, hyperbole are tropes. T h e schemes (σχήματα) are figures or patterns which depart somewhat from the everyday patterns of speech. They are of two kinds. T h e figures of thought (figurae sententiarum) include comparison, self-correction, paradox, and parody. T h e figures of language (figurae verborum) include antithesis, rhyme, repetition, and climax. 17 Quintilian concludes his discussion by saying, "With regard to the figures, I would add briefly that they adorn language if they are tactfully used, but they are exceedingly inept if they are immoderately 16

Rhet. I, i - 2 .

17

Quint., f o r tropes, V I I I , v i ; f o r figurae, I X , ii and iii.

12

The

Trivium

sought a f t e r . " M e n of the Renaissance delighted to adorn their persons with fine clothes and to clothe their thoughts with ornate language. Sometimes they sought immoderately a f t e r the schemes and tropes. 4. Pronuntiatio or actio. T h i s is the art of delivery in oral address. I t involves the arts of voice and gesture, common to orator and dramatic actor. It has little to do with the written w o r d except as the written word is read aloud (or read with the mind's e a r ) . It has much less to do with the rhetoric of the Renaissance than with the rhetoric of Greece and Rome, because in Greece and Rome words were spoken to be heard and in Renaissance Europe words were written to be printed to be read. 5. Memoria. T h e art of remembering the points a speaker wishes to make in an oral address was also peculiar to spoken oratory. I t received but slight attention in Rome and was all but forgotten in the Renaissance, and remembered by F a r n a by's friend Vossius only to be denied as a part of rhetoric at all. 1 8 L o n g before Milton's schooldays philosophers and logicians had pretty generally reclaimed inventio and dispositio f o r logic, leaving to rhetoric only elocutio and pronuntiatio,19 In the allegories L a d y Rhetoric lost her sword and shield and went armed only with crowns of laurel and sprays of flowers. When Milton attended St. Paul's School the most influential dialectition who had robbed rhetoric to pay logic was Petrus Ramus, whose philosophy of rhetoric and logic influenced Milton throughout his life. Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la R a m e e ) was associated with Audomari Talaeus (Omer T a l o n ) in the publication of two closely related works. T h e Rhetorica of Talaeus, published before 1 5 5 3 , was issued " e P . Rami . . . praelectionibus 18 G . J . Vossius, C o m m e n t a r i o r u m R h e t o r i c o r u m l i b r i sex ( 1 6 3 0 ) , I, i, 3 ; 4th ed., 1643, p. 6. 19 D . L . C l a r k , R h e t o r i c and P o e t r y , pp. 5 6 - ^ 1 .

The

Trivium

13

observata" in 1 5 7 9 . T h e Dialectica of Ramus was issued " A . Talaei praelectionibus illustrata" in 1 5 6 0 . The Rhetorica treated elocutio and pronuntiatio; The Dialectica treated inventio and judicium. It will be observed that the two taken together covered the ground usually covered in ancient rhetoric. This is also true of other Ramian treatises which were also published in pairs, as Abraham Fraunce, Lawiers Logike and Arcadian Rhetoric (both 1 5 8 8 ) and Dudley Fenner, The Artes of Logike and Rhetorike ( 1 5 8 4 ) . Milton's association with Ramist concepts of rhetoric and logic began, as we shall see, when as a schoolboy he memorized Talaeus' Rhetorica, or Butler's adaptation of it, as part of his regular work in the Fifth Form. Ramus's Scholae in liberales artes . . . (Basel, 1 5 7 8 ) was in the school library. Milton's own Art of Logic ( 1 6 7 2 ) is an expanded critical version of Ramus's Dialectica, with modifications. T h e modern reader will find that the most readily accessible approach to Ramian logic and rhetoric is Milton's version of the Dialectica, now published in the Columbia edition of Milton's works, with an English translation by Allan H . Gilbert, 20 from which I shall now quote briefly: Logic is the art of reasoning well [ars bene ratiocinandi]. In the same sense the word dialectic is often used. Logic however, that is the rational art, is so named from λόγοι, a word which in Greek means reason, the subject which logic takes for explanation. A n d to reason is to use the faculty of reason. In order to distinguish the perfection of the art from the imperfection of the natural faculty, the word well [bene], that is rightly, skilfully, promptly, is added to the definition. I have thought it proper to use the word logic 20

rather than, with

Joannis Miltoni Angli, Artis Logicae Plenior Imtitutio, ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata, Adjecta est Praxis Annalytiea & Petri Rami vita. Libri duobus. Londini, Imperials Spencer Hickman, Societatis Regalia Typography ad insigni Rosae in Caemeterio, D. Pauli. 1672. For more about Ramus see Perry Miller, The Ne