ones, only that we
seldom employ them. But words when well arranged have great ornament
if they give any neatness, which does not remain if the words are
altered while the sense remains. For the embellishments of sentiments
which remain, even if you alter the language in which they are
expressed, are many, but still there are but few of them which are
worth remarking.

Therefore a simple orator, provided he is elegant and not bold in the
matter of making words, and modest in his metaphors, and sparing in
his use of obsolete terms, and humble in the rest of his ornaments of
words and sentences, will perhaps indulge in a tolerably frequent use
of that kind of metaphor which is common in the ordinary conversation,
not only of city people, but even of rustics; since they too are in
the habit of saying, "that the vines sparkle with jewels," "that the
fields are thirsty," "that the corn-fields are rejoicing," "that the
crops are luxuriant." Now there is not one of these expressions which
is not somewhat bold; but the thing is either like that which you use
metaphorically; or else, if it has no name of its own, the expression
which you use appears to have been borrowed for the sake of teaching,
not of jesting. And this quiet sort of orator will use this ornament
with rather more freedom than the rest; and yet he will not do it with
as much licence as if he were practising the loftiest kind of oratory.

XXV. Therefore that unbecomingness (and what that is may be understood
from the definition we have given of what is becoming) is visible here
also, when some sublime expression is used metaphorically, and is used
in a lowly style of oration, though it might have been becoming in
a different one. But the neatness which I have spoken of, which
illuminates the arrangement of language by these lights which the
Greeks, as if they were some gestures of the speech, call [Greek:
schaemata], (and the same word is applied by them also to the
embellishments of sentences,) is employed by the refined orator (whom
some men call the Attic orator, and rightly too, if they did not mean
that he was the only one) but sparingly. For, as in the preparation of
a feast, a man while on his guard against magnificence, is desirous to
be thought not only economical but also elegant, he will choose what
is best for him to use. For there are many kinds of economy suited to
this very orator of whom I am speaking; for the ornaments which I have
previously b