The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

of
language made no progress till late in the day. Besides, delivery
is-very properly-not regarded as an elevated subject of inquiry.
Still, the whole business of rhetoric being concerned with
appearances, we must pay attention to the subject of delivery,
unworthy though it is, because we cannot do without it. The right
thing in speaking really is that we should be satisfied not to
annoy our hearers, without trying to delight them: we ought in
fairness to fight our case with no help beyond the bare facts:
nothing, therefore, should matter except the proof of those facts.
Still, as has been already said, other things affect the result
considerably, owing to the defects of our hearers. The arts of
language cannot help having a small but real importance, whatever
it is we have to expound to others: the way in which a thing is
said does affect its intelligibility. Not, however, so much
importance as people think. All such arts are fanciful and meant to
charm the hearer. Nobody uses fine language when teaching
geometry.
    When the principles of delivery have been worked out, they will
produce the same effect as on the stage. But only very slight
attempts to deal with them have been made and by a few people, as
by Thrasymachus in his ‘Appeals to Pity’. Dramatic ability is a
natural gift, and can hardly be systematically taught. The
principles of good diction can be so taught, and therefore we have
men of ability in this direction too, who win prizes in their turn,
as well as those speakers who excel in delivery-speeches of the
written or literary kind owe more of their effect to their
direction than to their thought.
    It was naturally the poets who first set the movement going; for
words represent things, and they had also the human voice at their
disposal, which of all our organs can best represent other things.
Thus the arts of recitation and acting were formed, and others as
well. Now it was because poets seemed to win fame through their
fine language when their thoughts were simple enough, that the
language of oratorical prose at first took a poetical colour, e.g.
that of Gorgias. Even now most uneducated people think that
poetical language makes the finest discourses. That is not true:
the language of prose is distinct from that of poetry. This is
shown by the state of things to-day, when even the language of
tragedy has altered its character. Just as iambics were adopted,
instead of tetrameters, because they are the most prose-like of all
metres, so tragedy has given up all those words, not used in
ordinary talk, which decorated the early drama and are still used
by the writers of hexameter poems. It is therefore ridiculous to
imitate a poetical manner which the poets themselves have dropped;
and it is now plain that we have not to treat in detail the whole
question of style, but may confine ourselves to that part of it
which concerns our present subject, rhetoric. The other—the
poetical—part of it has been discussed in the treatise on the Art
of Poetry.
2
    We may, then, start from the observations there made, including
the definition of style. Style to be good must be clear, as is
proved by the fact that speech which fails to convey a plain
meaning will fail to do just what speech has to do. It must also be
appropriate, avoiding both meanness and undue elevation; poetical
language is certainly free from meanness, but it is not appropriate
to prose. Clearness is secured by using the words (nouns and verbs
alike) that are current and ordinary. Freedom from meanness, and
positive adornment too, are secured by using the other words
mentioned in the Art of Poetry. Such variation from what is usual
makes the language appear more stately. People do not feel towards
strangers as they do towards their own countrymen, and the same
thing is true of their feeling for language. It is therefore well
to give to everyday speech an unfamiliar air: people like what
strikes them, and are struck by what is out of the way. In verse
such effects are common, and there they are fitting: the persons
and things there spoken of are comparatively remote from ordinary
life. In prose passages they are far less often fitting because the
subject-matter is less exalted. Even in poetry, it is not quite
appropriate that fine language should be used by a slave or a very
young man, or about very trivial subjects: even in poetry the
style, to be appropriate, must sometimes be toned down, though at
other times heightened. We can now see that a