Rhetoric

In the passage cited above, Evelyn elaborates a distinction between praise of virtue and praise of fortune. The source of this distinction is probably Aristotle. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle distinguishes between the honor derived from external circumstances and the happiness that comes from the habit of virtue.^[2] Cicero expresses a similar idea in the De Inventione . "[It] is foolish to praise one's good fortune and arrogant to censure it, but praise of a man's mind is honourable and censure of it very effective." Years later, in the De Oratore Cicero lends a prescriptive emphasis to this idea when he observes that the orator engaged in praise may begin by mentioning the favors of fortune, but should conclude by commending the proper use of those favors.^[3] These related statements, which lie very close to the surface of Evelyn's panegyric, belong to the theory of demonstrative oratory. Evelyn advertises his debt to this branch of rhetoric when he later pauses to recollect "all partitions of the Demonstrative."^[4] Evelyn evidently saw a connection between the

"laws" of panegyric on the one hand, and the "partitions" of demonstrative oratory on the other. The first goal of this chapter is to determine as precisely as possible the nature of this connection.

According to Aristotle, who is usually cited as the authority for the division of oratory into three kinds, the demonstrative is concerned with praise and blame, its object being to assign honor or disgrace.^[5] The crucial difference between demonstrative and both deliberative and judicial oratory is that in the latter kinds the audience must make a decision on the basis of what is said. The deliberative (or political) speech usually requires a decision as to the expedience of a certain policy, while the judicial (or forensic) speech demands a decision of guilty or not guilty. Because the demonstrative (or epideictic) oration makes no such demands on its audience, it is considered by Aristotle, and later by Cicero, as a display piece designed mainly to please or to entertain.

It is for this reason that Cicero disdains the third branch of oratory and refuses to discuss it with patience in any of his treatises on rhetoric. He quickly dismisses the demonstrative from his discussion in the Orator, for example, because these orations "were produced as showpieces . . . for the pleasure they will give, a class comprising eulogies, descriptions, histories, and exhortations like the Panegyric of Isocrates, and similar orations by many of the Sophists . . . and all other speeches unconnected with battles of public life."^[6] For Cicero de-

monstrative oratory is an alien type, suitable for the Greeks perhaps, but out of place in the Forum.

The demonstrative nevertheless occupies an important place in the later tradition of Ciceronian rhetoric. This is true partly because Cicero's name was often linked to the influential Rhetorica ad Herennium .^[7] In this handbook the demonstrative does take a backseat to the other kinds of oratory, but it is not ignored or disdained. The author would divide this kind of speech into three parts, an exordium, divisio, and brief peroratio . He makes three "partitions" in the divisio : (i) external circumstances, (2) physical attributes, and (3) character. The first category includes such topics as ancestry, education, wealth, titles, and sources of power, while the second is concerned with the subject's agility, strength, beauty, and health. The third and most important part of the argument should focus on four cardinal virtues: wisdom (or prudence), fortitude, temperance, and justice. The topics thus defined in the Rhetorica ad Herennium are reiterated during the imperial period by Quintilian, who offers in addition two general (and more flexible) approaches to this kind of speech. One approach calls for the orator to proceed through a list of the subject's virtues, while the alternative is to allow these virtues to emerge from a chronological survey of the subject's life. To look ahead, in these two plans we have the outline for panegyric exposed by Swift and the theory of biography rejected by Boswell.^[8]

If the demonstrative, at least in its positive form of praise, has fallen out of favor for serious writers by the eighteenth century, it is nevertheless very popular and important during the English Renaissance. The rhetoric books published in England between 1550 and 1650 usually devote substantially more attention to the demonstrative than they do to the deliberative.^[9] This basic pattern is established by Thomas Wilson's English Arte of Rhetorique, published in 1553. Wilson, who does not share Cicero's contempt for the third branch, follows the Rhetorica ad Herennium quite closely in his discussion of the demonstrative, dividing the topics of praise into the traditional three categories, "fortune," "body," and "character."^[10] Adopting Quintilian's suggestion, moreover, Wilson recommends a biographical plan of organization, which he illustrates with a speech in praise of a "noble personage."^[11]

Although Wilson's focus on praise of a "noble personage" anticipates later dictionary definitions of "panegyric," Wilson does not use this term nor does he offer any details that would suggest interest in or knowledge of this particular type of speech. Later English rhetoricians, however, including Charles Butler, John Clarke, and John Newton, do list panegyric under the demonstrative heading. Although these writers apparently conceived

of panegyric as a subtype of demonstrative oratory, they do not bother to discuss the matter, probably because they could find no precedent for such discussion in either Cicero or Quintilian. If the "partitions" of demonstrative oratory can be adequately described from Roman sources, the "laws of Panegyric " must be sought elsewhere.

The theory of panegyric comes, in fact, from comparatively obscure Greek rhetorics of the second and third centuries A.D. Two such rhetorics stand out, one supposedly by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the other by Menander of Laodicea (sometimes distinguished as Menander Rhetor). Although these two authorities often appear side by side in Renaissance discussions of panegyric, the Dionysius rhetoric was probably the more influential, at least in England.^[12] This art of rhetoric, long attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus but now believed to have been written after his death, opens with a chapter devoted exclusively to panegyric.^[13] According to this author, a panegyric is a speech designed for a festival occasion, and it has six parts: (1) an opening prayer to the god or gods most closely connected with the particular festival, (2) praise of the city where the celebration is being held, (3) further consideration of the place, its myths, its agriculture, its weather, etc., (4) discussion of the contests being held, (5) celebration and elaboration on the nature of the victor's crown by ref-

erence to history and mythology, and (6) praise of the king, who is the judge of the festival contests.^[14] Although essentially an outline for a Greek festival oration, this prescription does include praise of the king.

Even so, however, Renaissance writers either discard or radically change the Greek theory of panegyric in order to bring it into more perfect agreement with Roman practice. Faced with the task of reconciling the theory of festival oratory with the practice of political eulogy, Renaissance rhetoricians nod respectfully in the direction of Dionysius and Menander, and then establish a new theoretical basis for panegyric by describing Pliny's address to Trajan.^[15]

In England a typical example of this approach is found in Thomas Farnaby's Index Rhetoricus et Oratorius (1625.) One of the most durable and popular rhetorics of the seventeenth century (it went through ten editions between 1625 and 1700), the Index Rhetoricus includes a useful and provocative discussion of panegyric. Farnaby initially defers to Greek authority, incorporating the above outline into his text and duly providing a shoulder note which refers the reader to the Dionysius rhetoric. Having done this much, Farnaby then abandons the outline in order to describe a different kind of panegyric, which he distinguishes as the panegyrica nova .^[16] The

basic difference between these two kinds of panegyric is the relative space devoted to praise of the king. Whereas the laus regis is simply an appendage to the old panegyric outlined first, it is central to the new panegyric as discussed by Farnaby. Although he says nothing about praise as a form of royal education, Farnaby does insist that the panegyrica nova functions as an exhortation to the people, urging them to "joy, obedience, and concord."^[17] In effect, Farnaby distinguishes Greek (old) and Roman (new) panegyric, and then assigns to the Roman form the Greek purpose. Like White Kennet sixty years later, Farnaby implies that the Roman form has, for all practical purposes, replaced the Greek, but one of those purposes remains national reconciliation. Something of Isocrates thus survives in the later tradition of panegyric dominated by Pliny.

By abstracting Farnaby's definition of the panegyrica nova, we can finally answer the question posed at the beginning of this chapter. According to the author of the Index Rhetoricus, the new panegyric begins with consideration of the public occasion at hand and then proceeds to praise the monarch "from the places of demonstrative [rhetoric]."^[18] Here, then, is the connection, assumed by Evelyn, between the "laws" of panegyric and the "partitions" of demonstrative oratory. The demonstrative topics are used to elaborate the laus regis . This at least is the theory. In practice, as the tradition of panegyrical oratory reveals, the laus regis depends not

only on the demonstrative but also on the deliberative branch of classical rhetoric.