238 RHETORICA readings of a wide range of poems" but what she offers are read­ ings of details in passages, best grasped if the reader has nearby a copy of the poems from which the passages are drawn; and her "wide range" actually encompasses a scope of poetry and prose well beyond the writers named in her somewhat misleading title, per­ haps disappointing those readers expecting more concentration on the three poets while gratifying other readers seeking context. Finally, she slights the enthymeme, breezily conflating its characteristics with those of the syllogism; and it's improperly indexed, too. But these are minor matters, and they wither in the face of the importance of this book, the point of this review. If Sullivan's "ter­ rain" is vast, her browsing is neither aimless nor "sheeplike." Quite the reverse, she offers innovative, sustained, and illuminating rhetor­ ical analyses centering on a vital subject in our intellectual history: the conscience, once structured as a language and once considered dialogic in nature. Her effort "to read through the rhetoric" as well as her ability to share that knowledge with others teaches us much about our history and about our rhetoric, too. Thomas O. Sloane University of California, Berkeley Wendy Olmsted, Rhetoric: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006,157pp. ISBN 1405117737; Denis Donoghue, On Eloquence, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2008, 197pp. ISBN 0300125410 Wendy Olmsted's Rhetoric: An Historical Introduction is a welcome addi­ tion to this field of study. As the introduction explains, her book is distinctive because it understands that rhetoric is "a practical art of deliberation" that is best "taught and learned through historically specific examples of argument and interpretation" (p. 1). She explores how the art of deliberation changes across time, from Aristotle to Jane Austen, from Roman oratory to contem­ porary legal training in the U.S. This is a wide-ranging book. It offers case studies of thinkers and writers who represent the changing fortunes of this art, including Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, John Milton, and Jane Austen. In its exploration of more recent work, the book's emphasis is on expositors of the rhetorical tradition in the U.S., including Wayne C. Booth, Stephen Greenblatt, Eugene Garver, Danielle S. Allen, and Edward H. Levi. The focus of this study develops from Olmsted's longstanding interest in inventio. She begins by exploring how Cicero adapts Aristotle's rhetorical Reviews 239 categories, ethos, pathos and logos, to give greater prominence to sympathy, and she considers how Augustine uses techniques of rhetorical invention to serve the ends of biblical interpretation. All later writers are judged in the light of this early history: thus, Jane Austen's "skill" in defining the values that shape Anne Elliot s world in Persuasion, and which prevent her from being heard, are "understood in terms of the classical (Aristotelian and Ciceronian) emphasis on common beliefs as the premises for rhetorical arguments" (p. 98). In addition, Olmsted understands that works concerned with the theory of rhetoric are also "works of rhetoric" (p. 1). This is one of the strengths of this book, as well as one of its innovations: Olmsted offers genuinely insightful and thought-provoking readings of the different ways in which Cicero, Machiavelli, and Bacon "use rhetorical topics to teach their readers how to deliberate about particular ethical and political dilemmas" (p. 48) and to challenge the wav they think. Thus, Olmsted not only attends to Cicero's rhetorical writings, De inventione and De oratore, hut also explores the rhetoric of his philosophical work, namely De offieiis, and in so doing she breaks down easy assumptions about Cicero's idealism, and Machiavelli's opportunism. Two of the most important topoi that Cicero explores, for example, are the "honourable" and the "expedient." Much of De offieiis is concerned with the relationship be­ tween them. But his understanding of these terms, and their relationship to each other, varies as a result of the examples he offers. He offers no easy definitions, but rather requires the reader to deliberate, to work out how to behave honourablv and expediently in different situations. Machiavelli shares this strategv of exploring, developing and challenging commonplace thinking with...