CHAP. 111.] VALUE OP RHETORIC, AND ITS FUNCTIONS. '235 



.better, because they would tLen stand in less need of expe- 

 rience. , 



We must not omit that some men, rather ostentatious 

 than learned, have laboured about a certain method not de« 

 serving the name of a true method, as*being rather a kind 

 of imposture, which may nevertheless be acceptable to some 

 busy minds. This art so scatters the drops of the sciences, 

 that any pretender may misapply it for ostentation, with 

 some appearance of learning. Such was the art of LuUy, and 

 such the typocosmia cultivated by some ; for these are only 

 a collection of terms of art heaped together, to the end that 

 those who have them in readiness may seem to understand 

 the arts whereto the terms belong. Collections of this kind 

 are like a piece-broker's shop, where there are many slips, 

 but nothing of great value. And thu& much for the science 

 M^hich we call traditive Drudence.^ 



CHAPTER III. 



Tlie Grounds and Functions of Rhetoric. Three Appendices which 

 belong only to the Preparatory Part, viz., the Colours of Good and 

 Evil, both simple and composed ; the Antithesis of Things (the pro 

 and con. of General Questions) ; the Minor Forms of Speech (the 

 Elaboration of Exordiums, Perorations, and Leading Arguments). 



We next proceed to the doctrine of ornament in speech, 

 called by the name of rhetoric or oratory. This in itself is 

 certainly an excellent science, and has been laudably culti- 



* Concio, who preceded Bacon, anticipates, in his treatise "De 

 Methodo," many of the fundamental principles of the inductive logi- 

 cians, and discriminates many branches of analysis, which they confound. 

 Descartes, in his book on the same subject, has endeavoured to reduce 

 the whole business of method to four rules, which, however, are found in 

 the precepts of Aristotle. Johan. Beyer undertook to write upon thin 

 subject, in his *' Filum Labyrinthi," according to the design of Bacon, 

 but appears not to have understood the author, and has rather obscured 

 his doctrine than improved it. M. Tschirnhaus, however, has treated 

 the subject more suitably to its merit, in his " Medicina Mentis," men- 

 tioned above, in the note to § 2. A great variety of methods have been 

 Advanced by different authors, an ample catalogue of whom may be 

 found in Morhofs " Polyhist." torn. i. lib. ii. cap. 7t " De Methodii 

 Variis." Ed. 



