The characters are comparatively commonplace, the women especially being mere shadows; the motion is slow; and the inevitable passages of fine writing are, as the extolled soliloquy of Lioni, rather rhetorical than imaginative.

As has been shown in the preceding section of this study, the renaissance theory of poetry was rhetorical in its obsession with style, especially the figures of speech, in its abiding faith in the efficacy of rules; and in its belief that the poet, no less than the orator, is occupied with persuasion.

Thus Sidney and Jonson, the outstanding classicists in English renaissance criticism, exhibit to the highest degree the influence of the most rhetorical of Italian renaissance critics.

Now let's not get rhetorical with one another.