ABSTRACT
The Rule of Reason, issued six times before Wilson’s death, restates Aristotle’s and Cicero’s works on argumentative reasoning, though the book itself is structured like the theory of the Dutch humanist Agricola. Called ‘logic’ in the Renaissance, the subject is actually dialectic, the procedures of argumentation among experts. Rhetoric, for Wilson as for most humanists, was aimed at particular and more varied audiences. His Rhetorique was the first to encompass in English all five of the Ciceronian compositional procedures for reaching those audiences: invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory. But the book’s most important lesson is shown rather than talked about: Wilson gives practical demonstrations, in English, of Cicero’s personalism, the great orator’s emphasis on moral character in communication. Whether offering contemporary examples or discussing theory, the Rhetorique continually brings its reader into the presence of one speaking. Thus, in a sense, the entire book is a rhetorical act, an essay in ethos. It reveals the humanist mind in action, as a natural if only implicit consequence of discussing how to write for various audiences.
