TO THE SUCCESSION, NOW GOODLY IN NUMBER, OF THOSE WHO RECALL FROM THEIR COLLEGE DAYS THE ROOM WITH THE INSCRIPTION QVI NOVIT NEQVE ID QVOD PERINDE EST AC SI SENTIT EXPRIMIT · PREFACE. THE preface to the volume on which the present work is based, written nearly fourteen years ago, forecast and not inaptly characterized the purpose of this new venture, in its remark à propos of the old subject of rhetoric, that "old things, in proportion to their living value, need from time to time to be newly defined and distributed, their perspective and emphasis need to be freshly determined, to suit changing conditions of thought." The old subject is newer than it was then; its living value, in life no less than in school, more generally recognized. If along with this the conditions of its study have changed, one element of the change may particularly be noted the tendency to specialization which a deeper interest always brings. Rhetoric, in its higher reaches, is studied nowadays largely by topics and sections, in which single stages or processes of the art literary are taken up and by a kind of laboratory method carried, to any depth or minuteness desired. : A laboratory method, of whatever sort, is not absolutely empirical. Its essence is indeed observation, discovery, experiment; but in its outfit must also be included a laboratory manual, to direct and determine its lines of work. Special monographs and records of research have their place, but they do not take the place of this. There is needed, to cover the whole field, some treatise which, presenting the basal principles on a uniform scale and from one point of view, shall thereby exhibit also the mutual relations and proportions |