1884 printing of the revised American edition of Bain's rhetorical manual focused on style, structure, and modes. The copyright page states it was registered in 1866. Alexander Bain had a Master of Arts and was Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen. It states an interest in methodizing instruction in english composition, stating that little can be done to cultivate students' fund of expression, but that they can be taught to discriminate between good and bad expression. Rhetoric is defined as "the means whereby language, spoken or written, may be rendered effective." The text is divided into two parts. Part one deals with composition in general, particularly figures of speech, qualities of style, the sentence, and the paragraph. Part two deal with five kinds or modes of composition: description, narration (historical composition), exposition (science), oratory (persuasion), and poetry. Its rules and principles are accompanied with examples from canonical texts. It also includes analyzed extracts in its appendix. Although it has not been digitzed, the Schultz Archive's hardcopy is the complete text. It is identical to the 1887 printing (that is digitzed), excepting paratextual advertisements.
