Excerpt from The Practical Elements of Rhetoric: With Illustrative Examples
A book on so old a subject as rhetoric can scarcely hope to give the world much that is new. But 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; this we find abundantly recognized in the subject before us, in the rapidly increasing number of text-books that are appearing. To which number the present volume presumes to add one; and in setting forth its aim and standard would select for remark a single word of its title, - the word practical.
By practical elements are here meant, broadly, those elements which may be applied, as the result of the teacher"s guidance, to the actual construction of literature. In this sense of the term, some elements of rhetoric, though very real and valuable, are not practical, because the ability to employ them cannot be imparted by teaching. They have to exist in the writer himself, in the peculiar, individual bent of his nature. No teacher or treatise, for instance, could ever endow the student with Milton"s sublimity, or with Sterne"s elusive wit, or with Bacon"s weighty sententiousness; and any attempt on the student"s part to work up these qualities by rule would be only a contortion. Other elements are not practical, because all that can be done with them is merely to discriminate and define them.
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