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After expatiating in a rhetorical strain on the eternal, universal, and absolutely unchangeable character of the law of Nature or Right Reason, he specifies the sense wherein the eternal moral obligations are independent of the will of God himself; it comes to this, that, although God makes all things and the relations between them, nothing is holy and good because he commands it, but he commands it because it is holy and good.
Its theology is wholly orthodox; its tone devotional, charitable, and hopeful; its confidence in religious truth, as taught both in Nature and revelation, complete; the illustrations often happy, but often too rhetorical; the science, as might be expected from this author, unimpeachable as regards matters of fact, discreet as to matters of opinion.
Did I rein in to wonder at the raised gates of Queen's, the twisted pillars of St. Mary's, the little shops, lighted with tapers? Did bull-pups snarl at me, or dons, with bent backs, acknowledge my salute? Any one who knows the place as it is, must see that such questions are purely rhetorical.
Cicero exiled himself from home, and during his absence in various lands passed not a day without a rhetorical exercise; seeking the masters who were most severe in criticism, as the surest means of leading him to the perfection at which he aimed. Such too was the education of their other great men.
This sounds like exaggerated and rhetorical language. It seems a strange use of words to say that the death of self is the life of the world. But consider how it was with this man Paul. He had been ambitious, sanguine, impetuous, and it had all come to nothing, and worse than nothing. He had been led to persecute the very faith which he had soon found to be God's truth.
In fact, perhaps rhetorical principles should be observed in argumentation more rigidly than elsewhere, for in the case of narration, description, or exposition, the reader or hearer, in an endeavor to derive pleasure or profit, is seeking the author, while in argumentation it is the author who is trying to force his ideas upon the audience.
Thus a rhetorical tradition of classical pedagogy, derived ultimately from Aristotle, and a poetical tradition of later classical drama, derived from Horace, coincide in the English renaissance. In The Epistle Dedicatory to the Shepheards Calender , for instance, E.K. praises Spenser for "his dewe observing of decorum everye where, in personages, in seasons, in matter, in speach."
Macaulay wrote some stirring ballad poetry, known as Lays of Ancient Rome, which gives a good picture of the proud Roman Republic in its valorous days. These ballads have something of Scott's healthy, manly ring. They contain rhetorical and martial stanzas, which are the delight of many boys; but they lack the spirituality and beauty that are necessary for great poetry. History of England.
This remark is no disparagement of Macaulay's genius, but a classification of it. We are interrogating our own impressions, and asking ourselves among what kind of writers he ought to be placed. Rhetoric is a good and worthy art, and rhetorical authors are often more useful, more instructive, more really respectable than poetical authors.
Moreover, the most important classical treatises on the theory of poetry by Aristotle and Longinus were almost unknown throughout the middle ages, and the rhetorical writings of Cicero and Quintilian were known only in fragments. The current rhetorical treatises of the middle ages were Cicero's De inventione, and the Ad Herennium.
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