1876 printing of the 1876 copyrighted text. Original edition copyrighted 1860. The text is based on the idea that thought is the foundation of discourse and comes before considerations of form or style. This text is for less advanced pupils than the author's Elements of the Art of Rhetoric, and as such, includes summary statements of its principles. The revised edition has added a praxis of choice of words and their use in sentence-construction (to address students' troubles with grammar). It has also been changed to coincide with changes to the author's rhetoric elaborated in his The Art of Discourse. Part One, Invention, includes chapters on narration, description, division, partition, and confirmation. Part Two, Style, includes chapters on oral, suggestive, grammatical, subjective, and objective properties. Exercises appear throughout. The appendix includes over five hundred themes. The Schultz Archive's copy is roughly the complete text.