This same common-sense, however, seldom deserted him, and it makes sometimes wholly for good, sometimes a little less [Sidenote: _Vocabulary—"Figures"._] so, throughout the treatise. At the very outset he commits himself to that definition of style as being first of all _clear_—as giving the meaning of the writer—which has so often captivated noble wits down to Coleridge’s time, and even since, but which yet is clearly wrong, for “two and two make four” is the _a per se_ of clearness, and there is uncommonly little style in it notwithstanding. That he himself saw this objection cannot be doubted, for he hastens to add[47] that it must be not only clear, but neither too low nor too far above the subject, thus producing a useful and perfectly just distinction between the styles of poetry and prose. And then he gives us, as he had done in the _Poetics_, one of those distinctions of his which are so valuable—the distinction of vocabulary into what is κύριον or current (which conduces to clearness), and what is ξένον or unfamiliar (which conduces to elevation). Let us note that this, like the ἁμαρτία theory in the _Poetics_, is one of Aristotle’s great critical achievements. But the note of greatness may perhaps be discovered less in the attention which from this point he begins to pay to Metaphor. Not of course that metaphor is not a very important thing; but that the example of ticking it off in this fashion with a name spread rapidly in Rhetoric, and became a mere nuisance. Even Quintilian, who spoke words of wit and sense about the Greek mania for baptising new Figures, submitted to them to some extent: and any one who wishes to appreciate the need of Butler’s jest to the effect that “all a rhetorician’s rules Teach nothing but to name his tools,” has no farther to look than to the portentous list at the end of Puttenham’s _Art of Poetry_. Footnote 47: He had earlier, in the most grudging context, admitted that _lexis_ gives _character_ to a speech, that συμβάλλεται πολλὰ πρὸς τὸ φανῆναι ποιόν τινα τὸν λόγον—a confession from which can be extracted, at least in germ, all that a very fanatic of style need contend for. Yet his cautions as to metaphors themselves, which he regards as the chief means of embellishment in prose, are perfectly just and sound. They must, he says, be selected with careful reference to the particular effect intended to be produced, be euphonious, not far-fetched, and drawn from beautiful objects.