Angel Day's The English Secretary (1599) is not a collection of model letters but a rhetorical taxonomy that treats every epistolary move as a figure to be named and analyzed. In the excerpt of a dissuasive letter, Day inserts marginal labels—Antithesis, Metaphora, Anthypophora, Peroratiō, Epiphonema—directly into the prose, turning a father's plea against a forced marriage into a live demonstration of persuasive structure. The work is divided into two books: the first classifies letters by purpose (laudatory, deliberative, consolatory, etc.), the second covers judicial and familiar types, and a final treatise catalogues tropes and schemes. Day's method is pedagogical: he shows how to build an argument by naming its parts.

Rhetorical Labels as Instructional Scaffolding

Day's most striking authorial choice is the insertion of rhetorical terms as marginal or inline annotations within the model letters. In the dissuasive epistle to a father, the text reads: 'in steede of a louing and contented husbande, Metaphora. to giue her a withered olde Truncke.' The figure is named at the moment of its use, not explained in a separate glossary. This technique forces the reader to see the device as part of the argument's fabric. Similarly, Antithesis appears where the writer contrasts 'vertue' with 'vice,' and Anthypophora marks a rhetorical question. By embedding these labels, Day transforms the letter into a textbook, making the abstract scheme visible within a concrete social situation.

The Dissuasive Epistle: A Case Study in Emotional Argument

The longest excerpt presents a daughter's advocate arguing against a forced marriage. The letter's structure follows the classical parts of an oration: Narratio (the situation), Confirmatio (reasons), Confutatio (refutation), and Peroratio (conclusion). Day's labels guide the reader through these stages. The emotional appeal is intense: the father is told he will 'giue her (without the greater grace of God) and him both to the diuell.' The writer uses Synonymia—'you are become a chaungeling, you are no more the same, but another in qualitie, minde and operation'—to hammer home the moral decline. Day does not merely describe dissuasion; he enacts it with escalating urgency, showing how figures intensify persuasion.

Diction and the Rhetoric of Moral Contrast

Day's lexical choices consistently pair concrete nouns with abstract moral qualities. The forced husband is a 'withered olde Truncke' (a dead tree trunk) set against 'sweete and mutuall societie.' The daughter is not a person but a 'stone' if she lacks feeling. This pattern of metaphor—marriage as a 'breach,' authority as 'colour'—reveals Day's belief that vivid, physical language moves the will. The father's 'couetousnes' is a 'purchase' that buys no safety. Even in the reprehensory letter to a young gentleman, the contrast is drawn between 'tender yeares so towardlie giuen' and the present 'chaungeling.' Day's diction is never neutral; every noun and verb carries a judgment, and the rhetorical figures amplify that judgment into a structured appeal.

The Second Book and the Office of a Secretary

Beyond the first book's classification of letters by type (petitory, commendatory, consolatory, etc.), the second book addresses judicial epistles—expostulatory, invective, deprecatory—and ends with 'A Declaration of al such Tropes, Figures or Schemes.' This final treatise is not a separate appendix but the culmination of the method: after learning to write each kind of letter, the secretary must understand the figures that give it 'excellencie and ornament.' Day also includes a section on 'the partes, place and Office of a Secretarie,' framing the secretary as a professional who must master both ethics and eloquence. The table of contents lists twenty-two letter types, suggesting a comprehensive system for every social and legal occasion.

Day's manual rewards readers who attend to its margins as much as its main text. The rhetorical labels are not interruptions but the book's central argument: that effective letter-writing is a conscious art of deploying figures. To use The English Secretary as a reader, trace how each model letter embodies its named type, and notice where Day repeats a figure across different epistles. The work is best approached not as a historical curiosity but as a practical grammar of persuasion, one that assumes every letter is a performance of rhetorical skill.