In the chapter on Simile which follows there is much that is sensible, but nothing that is surprising—the relation of simile [Sidenote: _Simile._] and metaphor being the main point. One’s expectations are more raised in coming to the great subject of “purity” of style—"Hellenising," “writing Greek.” This phrase, in our author, is directed against something corresponding rather to the French “fautes de Français” than to our “not English,” having regard to the syntax, the sentence-building, [Sidenote: “_Purity._”] rather than to the actual diction. But it differs from both in having, like so much of his criticism, more to do with matter than form. In fact, it has been well observed that “Perspicuity” rather than “Purity” is really the subject of the chapter. It is, however, of great importance, and the next, on Elevation, or Grandeur, or Dignity, is [Sidenote: “_Elevation._”] of greater still. Some slight difficulty may occur at starting with the word thus variously rendered in English, ὄγκος. In its non-rhetorical use, the word (which strictly means “bulk,” with the added notion of weight) inclines rather to an unfavourable signification, often signifying “pretentiousness,” “pomposity”: it is sometimes used later in Rhetoric itself with such a meaning; and I think those who compare the earlier passage on Frigidity will be inclined to suspect that Aristotle himself was not using it entirely _honoris causa_. He gives, however, some hints for its attainment, and a bundle of instances, where our ignorance of the context makes the illustrative power somewhat small. Next we come to that quality of τὸ πρέπον, “the becoming,” “propriety,” which is commonly and not wrongly taken to be [Sidenote: _Propriety._] the special note of “classical” writing. And we have rules for its attainment, some ethical rather than æsthetic, some æsthetic enough but curiously arbitrary, as that unusual words are not appropriate _except to_ a person in a state of excitement. At the close there is an interesting glance at the irony of Gorgias and of Socrates. The next division is one of the very _apices_ of the whole. It deals with that subject of the rhythm of prose which, though [Sidenote: _Prose rhythm._] (as we see from Quintilian as well as from Aristotle) never neglected by the ancients, is one of the most difficult parts of their critical Rhetoric for us to understand, and (perhaps for that reason) has been, till the last hundred years or so, strangely neglected in the criticism of modern languages.