diction, so as never to become obscure: if any one should attempt to supply what is wanting, it would seem to tend towards the superfluous, and not really to complete the ellipse. The variety of his figures is also one of his strongest points—not changing at once from simple usage, but forming themselves gently and from the beginning, so as neither to annoy with satiety nor to worry by overcrowding. In short, if any be set against him in the matter of historical composition, many even of the old classics[254] would be found his inferiors in _taxis_." Footnote 249: It is odd to find the hatred of the harmless necessary parenthesis, the delight of all full minds and quick wits, and the terror of the ignorant and slow, formulated so frequently by Photius. Footnote 250: τὸ λεῖον ἔχει τῷ μεγέθει συγκιρνάμενον. Footnote 251: εἰς τὸ πόῤῥω. Footnote 252: ἐναλλαγὴν συνήθους ὀνόματος. This is an acute criticism, and I do not, at the time of writing, remember that it had been anticipated. Undoubtedly most practitioners of ornate and unusual style do merely “give change for ordinary words,” that is to say, they think in these, and then just write something less usual in place of them. Footnote 253: ἰδιώταις Footnote 254: τῶν ἀρχαίων. Appian has earlier had less elaborate praise, as being terse and plain in phrase, as truth-loving as possible, an expounder of strategic methods, and very good indeed at raising the depressed spirit of an army, or soothing its excitement, and exhibiting passion by means of speeches. It is odd enough, after the exaltation of Arrian—a good writer but no marvel—to the skies, to come across the following brief and grudging estimate, inserted in the shortest of summaries, of a man of the highest genius like Herodotus. Photius here, as elsewhere, does justice to the Halicarnassian as a canon of Ionic. “But he employs all manner of old wives' fables and divagations, whereby an intellectual sweetness runs through him,[255] though these things sometimes obscure the comprehension of the history and efface its proper and corresponding type, since truth will not have her clearness clouded by myths, nor admit divagations (_parecbaseis_) further than is fitting.” This is rather dispiriting for the first really great writer whom we meet; and the long judgment upon Æschines, which follows shortly, makes little amends, because the orators had been criticised and characterised _ad nauseam_ for a thousand years. Later we have no ill criticism of Dion Cassius—indeed Photius seems more at ease with post-Christian writers, even if they be non-Christians, than with the classics proper, or ἀρχαῖοι as he calls them. The careful and somewhat artificial style of this historian, his imitation of Thucydides, and some other things, are well but briefly noted. Footnote 255: