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Probably the fact that Constantine had translated it led to its early printing, so that we have an edition of it published at Venice in 1492, and another at Lyons in 1523. During the Middle Ages the book was often spoken of as "Regalis Dispositio," the "Royal Disposition of Medicine."
Here the mnemonic system of "places," supposedly invented by Simonides, is explained obscurely. Even more obscure is its applicability to Hawes's subject. Of the 108 seven-line stanzas which Hawes devotes to rhetoric, 20 praise the poets; 7 define rhetoric; 13 explain inventio; 12, dispositio; 40, elocutio; 8, pronuntiatio; and 8, memoria. "Elocusyon," says Hawes, "exorneth the mater."
But while the survival of the mediaeval notion that rhetoric was concerned mainly with style thus gave over in the English Renaissance inventio and dispositio to logic, there naturally remained nothing of classical rhetoric but elocutio and pronuntiatio. A brief survey of the English rhetorics of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries will show that this was the case.
He may even have known that the fact of kingship had robbed rhetoric of its purpose. At any rate, his Disposicion is like the classical dispositio only in name, and again it is transferred from rhetoric to poetic. But whereas classical writers applied it to the orator's use of voice and gesture, Hawes applies it only to the poet's reading aloud.
Consequently, in a work which he significantly entitles De inventione dialectica, he defines logic as the art of speaking in a probable manner concerning any topic which can be treated in a speech. According to Agricola's scheme, rhetoric retains "elocutio," style; and logic carries over "inventio," as his title shows, and "dispositio."
The student had to know the differences between the various kinds of cases, demonstrativum, deliberativum and judiciale; he must know the proportionate value to the orator of inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio, and how to manage each; he must know how to apply inventio in each of the six divisions of the speech: exordium, narratio, divisio, confirmatio, confutatio, conclusio.
The kinds of argument treated in the classical rhetoric were two: the enthymeme, or rhetorical syllogism; and the rhetorical induction or example. In the practice of rhetoric inventio was thus the solidest and most important element. It included all of what to-day we might call "working up the case." Dispositio is the art of arranging the material gathered for presentation to an audience.
This analysis of rhetoric into inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio is to all intents and purposes universal in classical rhetoric and must be understood to give one a valid idea of its content.
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