in which each element counts—the choice of details, the choice of words, the arrangement or movement—and in which we can hardly assign an exact proportion to any one. Certainly the beat and tune of prose are part of its connotation, its effect on the reader. Doubtless also—though here we lack scientific analysis to confirm our impression[13]—they are demanded subconsciously by the composing emotion of the author as he speaks or writes. Nevertheless Dionysius is an early instance of a danger lurking in statistical analysis of literature, perhaps also of a danger lurking in the treatment of style—much more of a single element of style—as a separate entity. Being a teacher, Dionysius doubtless thought that there was little danger in over-emphasizing the importance of pace with young students. They are too likely to be quite unaware of it to be corrupted by pedagogical exaggeration. That “thin and bloodless talk” with which Cicero[14] taxes the philosophers Dionysius thinks to be due to defective _compositio_. The main difference between poet and poet, orator and orator, is in aptness of sentence movement. Almost all the ancients gave this much study; and consequently their poems, their songs, and their discourses are things of beauty. But among their successors, with few exceptions, this was no longer so. In time it was at last entirely forgotten; and no one thought it to be indispensable or even contributory to beauty of discourse.[15] Having established the importance of adapting sentence movement, Dionysius proceeds to show that such adaptation is little hindered by _a priori_ consideration of logic. I used to think that we ought to follow nature as far as possible in adjusting the parts of a discourse ... for instance, to put nouns before verbs ... the essential before its modifiers.... This idea is plausible; but I came to think it was not true.[16] Does Dionysius mean that logic offers no norm for the order of words?[17] Hardly. Rather he shows by his instances that word order has little to do with philosophical or logical classification. The order in a given sentence is not determined abstractly by the logical idea of putting the subject before the predicate, or the substance before the accident. It is guided partly by rhythm; and it is widely variable.