John’s work differs from the other three in specific application to _dictamen_.[28] The inclusion of _poetria_ and _dictamen_ in one treatise, though ill managed, is a practical adjustment to the teaching of the time. As taught, both were _rhetorica_, and both were confined within the single department anciently called _elocutio_. John begins, indeed, as Geoffrey does, with _inventio_; but his treatment of it[29] shows how faint in his time were even the echoes of its ancient function. Invoking for it simultaneously the “Ars poetica” and the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_, he first misapplies it to adaptation of style to person, occasion, etc., as in a letter—and as in the “three styles” of which Vergil is again made the exemplar! Then he perverts it to the search for appropriate proverbs, of which he provides a classified list for use in _dictamen_. His further applications show that _inventio_ in his practise is purely verbal and leads, as fatally as all other approaches, to the lists of figures. “Nor should it be forgotten,” he adds (897),[30] “that any theme (_materia_) can be expressed in six ways according to the six cases of the noun.” As if uneasy at the ancient application of the term, he appends a final section _De arte inveniendi materiam_, as a separate device for “boys wishing to amplify and vary a theme.” For example, in writing about a book they might find occasion for praise or blame in the efficient cause, i.e., in the writer; in the material cause, i.e., in parchment, ink, etc. This can hardly be the mere dotage of John the Englishman. It is a sharp reminder of the educational level of these manuals; and it shows that the old _inventio_ had departed from _rhetorica_.[31] Otherwise he could hardly go on (Chapter II): “After _inventio_ ... follows _electio_. Tully after _inventio_ puts _dispositio_, then the art of memorizing, and finally delivery; but, for writers of poetry or _dictamen_, after _inventio_ the useful art is that of choosing”! The choosing that he means is of the right style, “brief for affairs of the Curia (i.e., _dictamen_), diffuse for poetry” (897). Again he exemplifies by a specimen letter. _Memoria_ is considered merely as mnemonic; and the cardinal mnemonic is a diagram of the “three styles” (900), each with its proper furniture of persons and things occupying a segment of a circle, the _Rota Virgili_.[32] As in the other manuals, the “art of beginning” (905), though divided into several modes, has little to do with composition. A letter (907) may begin with a proverb, an example, a comparison, with _si_, or _cum_, or _dum_, or an ablative absolute. The “six parts of a discourse” (911) are summarily defined as by the ancients, but thereupon exemplified in seventy-eight elegiacs. As in the other manuals also, the art of concision (913) is mentioned; but the art of dilation (914) by figures is dilated.