Chapter ii,[46] after glancing at the fundamental virtue of lucidity,

considers the choice of words for appropriateness and for suggestiveness, i.e., for their connotation, and especially for the descriptive vividness of the concrete, as in metaphors. Chapter iii[47] deals with the inappropriateness arising from bad taste;[48] Chapter iv,[49] with the extension of metaphor into simile. Chapter v[50] passes from single words and phrases to their combination in clauses and sentences. The distinction is important, and is kept throughout the classical rhetoric from Aristotle down. The choice of words is ἐκλογή (_electio_); the shaping of clauses and sentences is σύνθεσις (_compositio_). Frequent translation of the latter by our English word _composition_, which has a meaning so much wider as to be quite different, misses the specific point of technic, and often makes the ancient writers say what they did not mean.[51]

As the primary virtue in the choice of words is precision, so the first consideration in their combination, says Aristotle, is purity, idiom, conformity to usage. This assured, the next considerations of movement in detail are dignity,[52] which he presents as mainly amplification, and appropriateness.[53] Appropriateness here is not merely of the single word, as in Chapters ii and iii, but of the movement, or pace. It is gauged both to the moral habit (ἦθος) of the audience and to the emotion (πάθος) of the occasion.

From this general idea of appropriate movement Aristotle passes[54] to specific consideration of rhythm with his oft-quoted dictum:

The order[55] of the diction must be neither metrical nor unrhythmical. The former, by seeming artificial, is unpersuasive and at the same time distracting. For it makes us think of recurrences and wait for them to come, as children anticipate the answer to the heralds’ “Whom does the freedman choose as his attorney? Cleon.” On the other hand, the unrhythmical is immeasurable, and a measure we must have, though not by metrical recurrence; for the boundless can be grasped neither by the ear nor by the mind. Now measure in the most general sense is number;[56] and number as applied to the order of the diction is rhythm, of which meters are sections. Rhythm, therefore, the speech must have, but not meter, or it will be a poem—rhythm not too nice, that is, not carried too far.

Of the three rhythms the heroic is solemn and lacking in prose harmony.[57] The iambic is the very diction of the crowd; i.e., it is heard oftener than any other measure in speech, and it lacks capacity to lift and startle. The trochaic[58] is too suggestive of comic dancing, as is evident in trochaic tetrameters, which are a skipping rhythm. There remains the pæan.

Having laid down the principle that prose movement should be rhythmical, but not metrical, why does Aristotle proceed immediately to discuss it in terms of meters? Simply, perhaps, because these terms are familiar and definite. How else, indeed, shall we speak of a particular movement specifically? Perhaps also because the consideration of the larger, freer rhythms of prose is best opened through the fixed rhythms of verse, i.e., because meter is the gateway to appreciation of rhythm, as poetry in a wider sense (see page 24) is the gateway to style in a wider sense. For us moderns it is the more significant that the classical doctrine of clauses and sentences deals so largely with rhythm, since our doctrine throws the emphasis on logic. That the σύνθεσις, or _compositio_, should be idiomatic, dignified, appropriate, Aristotle has urged briefly; that it should be rhythmical he proceeds to set forth in detail, consecutively showing how.[59]

Thus that the diction should be rhythmical, not unrhythmical, what rhythms make it rhythmical, and in what modes, has been set forth.

Now diction[60] [in its sentence-movement] is connected either loosely and only by conjunctions, as the preludes in the dithyrambs, or compactly, as the antistrophes of the old poets. The former movement is the old one, as in Herodotus; for, though once universal, it is now exceptional. By calling it loose I mean that it has no end in itself except as its subject-matter runs out. It is unsatisfying to the ear by its indefiniteness, since we all wish to glimpse the end. That [natural desire] is why [runners] lose wind and heart only at the goal. They do not give out before because they are looking ahead to the finish.

The loose movement, then, of diction is this; the compact, on the other hand, is the one by periods [or definite units]. By _period_ I mean a diction having a beginning and an end in itself and a length to be grasped as a whole. Such sentence-movement is both satisfying to the ear and easily followed by the mind;[61] _satisfying_ as being the opposite of endless and as giving the hearer the sense of always having hold of something, because something has always been ended by itself, whereas the unsatisfying is neither to see ahead nor to get through; _easily followed_, as being easily held in mind, and that because periodic diction has number, which is the chief aid to memory. That is why verses are more easily remembered than loose prose, because verse has number to measure it. The period should also be completed with the sense, not broken off....

A period[62] is either in members or simple. Composed in members, it is such a diction as makes a rounded whole and yet is distinct in its parts, and such as the breath will carry easily, not by [arbitrary] division, but as a whole. A member is one of its parts; and by simple period I mean a period of one member. Both members and periods should be neither curt[63] nor long. For short [members] often make the hearer stumble, since while he is still surging ahead, if he is pulled up by the stopping of the measure that he carries in his head as a guide, he must stumble as in a collision. Long [members] on the other hand make the hearer feel himself left behind, as by walking companions making the turn beyond the usual stretch.... Over-use of short members, since it precludes the periodic form, drags the hearer headlong.

In other words, the period is a sentence movement forecast and fulfilled by the speaker, divined and held by the hearer, as a definite rhythmical and logical unit. Its characteristic is that conclusiveness which satisfies at once ear and mind. In sound and in syntax it is the opposite of formless aggregation, of the addition of clause to clause as by afterthoughts. Forethought, indeed, is its very note. Thus its typical advantages are rather for oratory than for narrative. Oratory moves by grouping around ideas; narrative, by adding image to image. The style of Herodotus is in this sense aggregative. Its aim being to proceed not from idea to idea in thought, but from fact to fact in time, it is “loosely joined,” “running on,” without other rhythmical value than fluency. That Aristotle means to disparage Herodotus when he calls this movement old and unsatisfying need hardly be inferred. Old it is typically, the movement of all early prose, of Herodotus no more than of Froissart and Villani. Unsatisfying, unpleasing to the ear (ἀηδές) it is not—in its place; but its place is not in oratory, which demands definite measures to mark definite stages of thought. Otherwise the audience is frustrated and loses the way.

What Aristotle means by his comparison of the two movements is that the former is unsatisfying, not absolutely, but for the purposes of the latter, i.e., for oratory. This interpretation is confirmed by what he adds concerning the length of members, or clauses. That staccato habit of short statements which in oratory “drags the hearer headlong,”[64] unsatisfied and uncomprehending, may in narrative be actually superior. To drag the hearer headlong is sometimes precisely what a story-teller desires. Examples abound, for instance, in Victor Hugo, for whom this movement became a mannerism. Neither of the two sentence movements, which from the point of view of Aristotle’s time we may call the historical and the oratorical, has remained through the long development of prose quite the same. Narrative has developed in modern times a movement more and more consciously poetic, while history in our special modern sense has turned more and more to the conscious group-movement which he associated with oratory. To-day we see much the same difference between our prose fiction and our expository history that he saw between Herodotus and Demosthenes. But the change is in application, not in the movements themselves. It remains true, and important, that there is on the one hand a prose movement rhythmically and intellectually loose, indefinite, and current, and on the other hand a prose movement compact, conscious, concluded point by point. The latter, the periodic, remains the typical movement of public address; for the audience, in order to follow, in order “to have hold of something[65] and to get something done,” demands definite measures.[66]

Having laid down as fundamental the distinction between the two typical prose movements, Aristotle proceeds to details: the balance of member against member,[67] and the heightening of the individual member[68] by visualizing metaphor. His recurrence here to metaphor is unexpected, since he has discussed this already in Chapter ii[69] under the choice of words; but here something is added. The connotation of figurative language is explored further as a means to make a whole statement telling. Aristotle is inquiring how such pithy sayings as he has just exemplified in balance and antithesis are made forcible[70] by other means; and he implies that the process is essentially poetic, as being imaginative first in realization and secondly[71] in movement.

Imaginative realization in metaphor and simile is considered here as intellectual suggestion. As enthymemes, so metaphors and similes must steer between the obvious and the subtle. The best images, like the best enthymemes, stimulate the hearer to coöperate, to see the relation for himself.

As to sense such are the popular enthymemes; as to style [they are popular] if the order, or movement[72] is antithetical.... So for the terms; if metaphorical, they must be neither far-fetched, for then they are hard to grasp, nor trite, for then they stir no emotion; and besides [as to movement] they must put [the thing] before our eyes; for we must see it in action rather than in intention (happening rather than about to happen, present rather than future). The essential elements, then, are three: metaphor, antithesis, actuality.[73]

Numerous examples follow[74] of ἀστεῖα, or pithy sayings, and Chapter xi[75] expands

what is meant by “before our eyes” and how this is to be done. I mean that those passages put the thing before our eyes which show it in action.[76] For instance, to say that a good man is “square” is metaphor ... but it does not show him in action, whereas “in flowering vigor” does, and so does “at large.” And in “Straightway the Greeks with bounding feet” the “bounding” is at once actuality and metaphor.... In all these [instances from Homer] by being alive (living, organic) [the subject] seems to be in action.... They all make the subject moving and living; and actuality is movement.[77]

Aristotle’s recurrence, then, to metaphor in the midst of his doctrine of sentence movement is because metaphor has the wider implication. It may be more than a single vivid word; it should extend to a whole habit of realizing a thing in action; and this involves expression in a sentence movement that shall heighten the suggestion by its pace.

In like manner the recurrence to aptness, or adaptation, is not repetition. Chapters ii[78] and iii[79] deal with aptness of single words; chapter xii,[80] with aptness of sentence movement. From the general definition[81] of apt movement as adaptation both to the moral habit of the audience (ἦθος) and to the emotion of the occasion (πάθος)