The following chapters (xvi-xxxviii) on figures, carrying into detail the fundamental principle of imaginative realization, are handled less originally and less suggestively than the principle itself. Perhaps we are the less patient with the details of imagery because we have been made to see vividly the scope of imagination. Classification of imagery, which seems inevitably to produce the most tedious chapters in rhetorics, lacks for us moderns what is most characteristic of this ardent and original spirit, constructive suggestion. But at least he abstains from carrying it into minute analysis. Even these his most technical chapters are illuminated by that genius for appreciation which brought together one of the most significant of all collections of literary models. His own style, too, flashes in memorable sentences: A figure seems best when it is not noticed as a figure (xvii). What is hurried and roughened by emotion, if you smooth out to a level by conjunctions, loses its spur and fire (xxi). Beautiful words are essentially the very light of thought (xxx). Occasional oratory (ἐπιδεικτικός) being recognized by the ancients as the most literary of the three fields,[10] one might expect this treatise to dwell on it especially. But the author’s object is not special; it is general. This and the contagion of his enthusiasm have made his book, ever since its recovery in the Renaissance,[11] a powerful influence. Its promotive quality sets it above the schematic analysis of even so discerning a critic as Dionysius. Milton must have felt in it his own creative attitude toward reading. Nor does it need to dwell on the school of Isocrates when its own most characteristic passages have themselves the very mood and method of occasional oratory. What, then, did those immortals see who reached at the greatest things in writing and scorned unvarying nicety? Besides many other things, this, that nature meant us men to be no low species nor ignoble; but leading us, as into a great pageant, into life and the whole order of things, to be spectators of all that she shows and contestants eager for honor, she implanted forthwith in our souls invincible passion for all that is permanently great and in our eyes more divine.[12]