John Barton's The Art of Rhetorick concisely and compleatly handled, exemplified out of holy Writ, and with a compendious and perspicuous Comment, fitted to the capacities of such as have had a smatch of learning, or are otherwise ingenious (1634), offers an example of what a religious schoolmaster of the early Stuart period felt useful both for colleagues and for the general reader insofar as that reader has had a "smatch of learning," as the title declares. Following the lead of the French philosopher and logician Pierre de La Ramée (known as Petrus Ramus) and his collaborator, the Irish-French rhetorician Omer Talon (known as Audomarus Talaeus), Barton covers only elocutio (ornamentaion or figures of speech) and pronuntatio (oratical delivery). His text provides an example of rhetorical preoccupations perhaps surprising to the modern eye; there is no attempt either to exalt or to analyze the power of figurative...