Not content with analysis, Dionysius proceeds[8] to enforce his point by garbling. Fine passages of verse and of prose, without any change of words, are dislocated to show that their force resides not in these words taken singly, but in the sentence order, or movement. The method is ingenious. It is even telling. Any teacher who shall thus put side by side a fine passage of English prose and the same words in a different order will make his students aware of literary effects to which they should not remain deaf.[9] The connotation of pace and tune may be further exemplified by comparing, for instance, a tale of Chaucer’s with the version made by Dryden.[10] The method is interesting, striking, to some extent revealing. What does it reveal? That suggestiveness is not only through the imagery of single words, but through their sound in combination; that a large part of the connotation which we call style is sentence pace. This is generally so little discerned that Dionysius may be pardoned for magnifying it; and he further guards himself by recording his intention of writing a treatise also on the choice of words. Occupied in the present treatise exclusively with their combination, he naturally brings out the importance of this as vividly as possible. Is the effectiveness of style in the choice of words, or in their combination? Here he seems to answer, “In their combination.”[11] But effectiveness of expression resides primarily in neither _electio_ nor _compositio_, secondarily in both. Primarily it is the writer’s keen sense of the ways of nature and of man, his receptivity and insight. Then it is concrete expression, the choice of words of sensation, the speaking in terms of light, sound, color, motion, attitude, gesture. Such words, whether figurative in the technical sense or literal, may be called imagery. Or, in other fields of composition, it is an illuminating precision. Finally, that effectiveness which we call style comes from apt and beautiful rhythms, from that _compositio_ which is the subject of this treatise. In a word, style is a complex. That _compositio_ is an important element Dionysius does well to show, for this is not obvious and is commonly neglected; but that _compositio_ is _the_ cause, or even that it is generally more important than the other elements, can hardly be demonstrated. Undoubtedly Homer’s verse weaves much of his spell;[12] but surely his words, though often, as Dionysius says, ordinary, have none the less that specific concreteness which characteristically makes epic vivid. In the following passage that he quotes from Herodotus, where the separable charm of the sentence movement is made more obvious by playing as it were in the wrong _tempo_, he might claim even more. Surely the dialogue method is important for vividness and economy, and this too is a matter of _compositio_. But is the _compositio_, for all its charm, the main cause? Who shall determine? The impression is a complex