sentence so as to avoid ambiguity; using right genders; and right numbers. The specification of the latter points (as well as similar injunctions in the ‘Art of Poetry’) show in how infantile a condition. the science of Grammar was in Aristotle’s time. He lays down here some of the things which “every schoolboy knows.”
The book is not only a good deal limited to the instruction of Greek readers belonging to the fourth century b.c., but it also deals a good deal in allusions which such readers would perfectly understand, but which are obscure for us. Instead of quoting at some length the beauties of oratory, it frequently indicates passages by merely mentioning a single word out of them. There is generally speaking an air of scientific dryness in its treatment even of the most poetical metaphors. For instance, we are told that it is far better to call Aurora the “rosy-fingered” than the “purple-fingered,” and still more so than to call her the “red-fingered.” But charms of style from the Greek writers appear in this book like moths and butterflies pinned on to corks in the collection of an entomologist. Aristotle’s fondness for classification seems carried too far here; he incessantly analyses and enumerates, as for instance when he tells us that there are four ways by which “flatness” in a speech is produced. The principles laid down are of course sound and sensible—as, for example, that “the chief merit of style is clearness,” that the orator must not use poetical language, and that his sentences must be rhythmical, without falling into metre. Aristotle
