Thomas Blount, Catholic, Royalist, lawyer, and antiquary, is known among scholars of rhetoric as the author of The Academie of Eloquence (1654). According to critic Wilbur Samuel Howell, Blount belongs to the so-called Neo-Ciceronian school of rhetoricians because his book combines the theories of both the Ramists (followers of French educational reformer Pierre de La Ramée) and the older Ciceronians (followers of the classical rhetorician Cicero). Blount's book is unusual, however, in that it combines three traditions in rhetoric: stylistic, formulary, and epistolary. Often criticized for his using, without acknowledgment, John Hoskyns's manuscript work "Direcõns for Speech and Style" (written circa 1599; not published until 1935), Blount deserves recognition not for the originality of his work but for the popularity it attained and the role it played in the rhetorical education of his society. He produced one of the most popular English rhetorics of the seventeenth century...