Nor, perhaps, ought we to be least grateful for the remarks on _lexis_—on poetic style proper. In details we may fail fully [Sidenote: _Of Poetic Diction._] to understand them, or, understanding, may disagree with them; and there is no doubt that they are somewhat tinged with that superior view of style, as something a little irrelevant, a little vulgar, which appears more fully in the _Rhetoric_, and which, while it has not entirely disappeared even at the present day, was naturally rife at a time fresh from the views, and still partly under the influence, of Socrates and Plato. Here once more we find those evidences of directness of grasp which are what we seek, especially in the main description of poetic style, as being on the one hand “clear,” and yet on the other not “low,” and in the further specification of the means by which these characteristics are to be secured. More particularly is this to be noticed in the indication of the ξένον—that is to say, the unfamiliar—as the means of avoiding “lowness.” Here from the very outset we see that Aristotle (as Dante far later did, and as Wordsworth later again did _not_) recognised the necessity of “Poetic diction,”—the necessity, that is to say, of causing a slight shock, a slight surprise, in order to bring about the poetic pleasure. And by the example which he gives of heightening and lowering the effect alternately, by substituting different words in the same general context, we see how accurately he had divined the importance of this diction, whether we may or may not think that the fact is quite consistent with his exaggerated view of Action. Aristotle’s verbal criticisms are never, as (to speak frankly) the verbal criticisms of the ancients too often are, mere _glossography_—mere dictionary work. They are invariably concerned with, and directed to, the literary value of the word, and that is what we have to look to.