_Dictamen_ is defined with the usual inclusiveness as apt and elegant writing, inseparable from subject matter, depending on native ability, teaching, and practise, using to some extent all five traditional parts of rhetoric, but mainly style (_elocutio_). Exercising in all three styles (_humilis_, _mediocris_, _sublimis_),[19] it must beware of the corresponding vices: aridity, looseness, inflation. Its three requisites are choiceness of diction (_elegantia_), sentence skill (_compositio_), and dignity (_dignitas_, _ornatus_). Choiceness, or elegance, includes both purity (_latinitas_, the avoidance of barbarisms and solecisms, and, more widely, exactness of syntax) and lucidity (_explanatio_, including such figures as are illustrative). All the rest of Book I is devoted to _compositio_ as rhythm. “_Compositio_ is order polished smooth (_ordinatio verborum equabiliter perpolita_). If, therefore, we wish to give discourse this charm, we must so change the natural order that speech may have a _cursus_[20] charming and smooth and that we may not seem to talk vulgarly. _Compositio_ seems to be threefold: natural, casual (_fortuita_), and apt [i.e., adjusted, called below artistic]. The natural, proper to expositors, reduces the artistry of discourse to the natural order. Even in this the _dictator_ must give most careful attention to elegance.... If following the natural order does not give elegance, that superficial _compositio_ is inadmissible. Casual may be called that which, regarding only elegance, arranges words not artistically, but with simple freedom. It is observed in manuals and in the Scriptures, and commended by holy men; for, as says the apostle, ‘the kingdom of God consists not in word, but in work and power’ [1 Cor. 4. 20]. Further a certain sage says: ‘the simple word is the guardian of our faith’. That _compositio_ is artistic (_artificialis_) which gives the sentence charm by harmonizing its words in equable arrangement. But this is observed in one way at Orléans, in another by the fount of Latinity, Cicero, in another by the Apostolic See. For the Orléans arrangement is by imaginary dactyls and spondees; the Ciceronian tradition, by the artistry of the several feet—a style therefore absolutely dependent on the laws of metric. We, however, shall proceed according to the authority of the Roman Curia, because every one finds its style simpler.” Considering the positions of nominatives and of oblique cases, of relative clauses, of infinitives, of locutions fixed in certain places by usage, the author quotes Geoffroi de Vinsauf: “A noble gravity comes from order itself when what is joined by syntax is separated by order.”[21] A word ending in a consonant should be followed by one beginning with a vowel, and _vice versa_. The _cursus_ should not be continuously swift or slow but varied: