So wide a demand would of itself have maintained schools of professional technic. But since the technic demanded preliminary general training, it became a development of _rhetorica_. Not only so; it divided with preaching the whole field of daily prose composition. In current application oral composition was preaching, written composition was _dictamen_. The two were the typical medieval fields for the ancient lore of persuasion. The manuals of _dictamen_ often begin by defining it in the general sense of writing.[14] Dividing all writing into (1) _metricum_, the ancient quantitative verse still taught as a branch of _grammatica_, (2) _rithmicum_, the accentual rimed verse of the hymns, and (3) _prosaicum_, they confine themselves to the third, and make it equivalent to letter-writing (_prosaicum vel epistolare_). To this they apply the current ancient authorities, _De inventione_ and _Ad Herennium_, adding for its maxims of aptness _Ars poetica_. The ampler manuals include the sacred list of figures obligatory in the _poetriæ_.[15] Otherwise the application of the ancient rhetoric is practical and pointed. For in fact the ancient lore was immediately and practically applicable. It did not, as in the _poetriæ_, have to be perverted. Of the traditional five parts of ancient rhetoric, _inventio_, _dispositio_, and _elocutio_, though not _pronuntiatio_ and _memoria_, bear directly on letters, whereas the first two have nothing properly to do with verse-writing. _Elocutio_ is applied practically by being focused on the cardinal ancient virtue of appropriateness; artistically, by elaborating _compositio_ as prose rhythm. Immediately adaptable were the five parts of a speech. The _exordium_ is always cardinal in a letter as _benevolentiæ captatio_. _Narratio_ applies exactly in its proper sense of statement of the facts. _Petitio_, though it has less scope, is quite pertinent. _Conclusio_, though varying most from its ancient function, has some general correspondence. In a word, the classical doctrine for the parts of a speech applied to a letter by mere reduction of scale. _Dictamen_ was equally practical in actual teaching. Besides giving exercises in correctness, it compelled attention to elegance. Its study of appropriateness was readily extended by such imaginary adaptations as were inculcated in the ancient _prosopopœia_, and thus provided in writing the kind of practise sought orally in the ancient _controversiæ_.[16] John of Garlandia’s confused combination of verse and prose in a single manual[17] is insufficient to prove that the two were often taught concurrently; and the higher tone of the _artes dictandi_ suggests that they were addressed to older pupils. B. DIGEST OF _CANDELABRUM_ I-V[18] Book I. Choice of Words, Rhythmical Composition of Sentences