Book 3
2.5
Art is cleverly concealed when the speaker chooses his words from ordinary languageCp. Hor. AP. 46, where it is said that the choice and use of words requires subtlety and care, skill in making an old word new by clever combination (callida iunctura) being especially praised. and puts them together like Euripides, who was the first to show the way.
2.5
Nouns and verbs being the components of speech, and nouns being of the different kinds which have been considered in the Poetics, of these we should use strange, compound, or coined words only rarely and in few places. We will state laterChaps. 3 and 7. in what places they should be used;
2.6
the reason for this has already been mentioned, namely, that it involves too great a departure from suitable language. Proper and appropriate words and metaphors are alone to be employed in the style of prose; this is shown by the fact that no one employs anything but these. For all use metaphors in conversation, as well as proper and appropriate words; wherefore it is clear that, if a speaker manages well, there will be some thing foreign about his speech, while possibly the art may not be detected, and his meaning will be clear. And this, as we have said, is the chief merit of rhetorical language.
