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diff --git a/17957.txt b/17957.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..238c899 --- /dev/null +++ b/17957.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4143 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Sublime, by Longinus + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: On the Sublime + +Author: Longinus + +Commentator: Andrew Lang + +Translator: H. L. Havell + +Release Date: March 10, 2006 [EBook #17957] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE SUBLIME *** + + + + +Produced by Louise Hope, Justin Kerk and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Transcriber's Note: +The printed text shows most sections (Roman numerals) as a continuous +block, with chapter numbers in the margin. In this e-text, chapters +are given as separate paragraphs determined by sentence breaks, with +continuing quotation marks supplied where necessary. +Except for footnotes, any brackets are from the original text. +Greek has been transliterated and shown between +marks+.] + + * * * * * + + LONGINUS + + ON THE SUBLIME + + Translated into English by + + H. L. HAVELL, B.A. + Formerly Scholar of University College, Oxford + + with an Introduction by + ANDREW LANG + + + London + MACMILLAN AND CO. + and New York + 1890 + + _All rights reserved_ + + + * * * * * + + + TO + + S. H. BUTCHER, Esq., LL.D. + + Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh + Formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge + and of University College, Oxford + + This Attempt + to Present the Great Thoughts of Longinus + in an English Form + + Is Dedicated + + in Acknowledgment of the Kind Support + but for Which It Might Never Have Seen the Light + and of the Benefits of That + Instruction to Which It Largely Owes + Whatever of Scholarly Quality It May Possess + + + + +TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE + + +The text which has been followed in the present Translation is that +of Jahn (Bonn, 1867), revised by Vahlen, and republished in 1884. In +several instances it has been found necessary to diverge from Vahlen's +readings, such divergencies being duly pointed out in the Notes. + +One word as to the aim and scope of the present Translation. My object +throughout has been to make Longinus speak in English, to preserve, as +far as lay in my power, the noble fire and lofty tone of the original. +How to effect this, without being betrayed into a loose paraphrase, was +an exceedingly difficult problem. The style of Longinus is in a high +degree original, occasionally running into strange eccentricities of +language; and no one who has not made the attempt can realise the +difficulty of giving anything like an adequate version of the more +elaborate passages. These considerations I submit to those to whom I +may seem at first sight to have handled my text too freely. + +My best thanks are due to Dr. Butcher, Professor of Greek in the +University of Edinburgh, who from first to last has shown a lively +interest in the present undertaking which I can never sufficiently +acknowledge. He has read the Translation throughout, and acting on his +suggestions I have been able in numerous instances to bring my version +into a closer conformity with the original. + +I have also to acknowledge the kindness of the distinguished writer who +has contributed the Introduction, and who, in spite of the heavy demands +on his time, has lent his powerful support to help on the work of one +who was personally unknown to him. + +In conclusion, I may be allowed to express a hope that the present +attempt may contribute something to reawaken an interest in an unjustly +neglected classic. + + + + +ANALYSIS + + +The Treatise on the Sublime may be divided into six Parts, as follows:-- + +I.--cc. i, ii. The Work of Caecilius. Definition of the Sublime. + Whether Sublimity falls within the rules of Art. + +II.--cc. iii-v. [The beginning lost.] Vices of Style opposed to the + Sublime: Affectation, Bombast, False Sentiment, Frigid Conceits. + The cause of such defects. + +III.--cc. vi, vii. The true Sublime, what it is, and how + distinguishable. + +IV.--cc. viii-xl. Five Sources of the Sublime (how Sublimity is related + to Passion, c. viii, Sec.Sec. 2-4). + + (i.) Grandeur of Thought, cc. ix-xv. + + _a._ As the natural outcome of nobility of soul. Examples (c. ix). + + _b._ Choice of the most striking circumstances. Sappho's Ode (c. x). + + _c._ Amplification. Plato compared with Demosthenes, Demosthenes + with Cicero (cc. xi-xiii). + + _d._ Imitation (cc. xiii, xiv). + + _e._ Imagery (c. xv). + + (ii.) Power of moving the Passions (omitted here, because dealt with + in a separate work). + + (iii.) Figures of Speech (cc. xvi-xxix). + + _a._ The Figure of Adjuration (c. xvi). The Art to conceal Art + (c. xvii). + + _b._ Rhetorical Question (c. xviii). + + _c._ Asyndeton (c. xix-xxi). + + _d._ Hyperbaton (c. xxii). + + _e._ Changes of Number, Person, Tense, etc. (cc. xxiii-xxvii). + + _f._ Periphrasis (cc. xxviii, xxix). + + (iv.) Graceful Expression (cc. xxx-xxxii and xxxvii, xxxviii). + + _a._ Choice of Words (c. xxx). + + _b._ Ornaments of Style (cc. xxxi, xxxii and xxxvii, xxxviii). + + (+a+) On the use of Familiar Words (c. xxxi). + + (+b+) Metaphors; accumulated; extract from the + _Timaeus_; abuse of Metaphors; certain tasteless conceits blamed + in Plato (c. xxxii). + [Hence arises a digression (cc. xxxiii-xxxvi) on the spirit + in which we should judge of the faults of great authors. + Demosthenes compared with Hyperides, Lysias with Plato. + Sublimity, however far from faultless, to be always preferred + to a tame correctness.] + + (+g+) Comparisons and Similes [lost] (c. xxxvii). + + (+d+) Hyperbole (c. xxxviii). + + (v.) Dignity and Elevation of Structure (cc. xxxix, xl). + + _a._ Modulation of Syllables (c. xxxix). + + _b._ Composition (c. xl). + +V.--cc. xli-xliii. Vices of Style destructive to Sublimity. + + (i.) Abuse of Rhythm } + + (ii.) Broken and Jerky Clauses } (cc. xli, xlii). + + (iii.) Undue Prolixity } + + (iv.) Improper Use of Familiar Words. Anti-climax. Example from + Theopompus (c. xliii). + +VI.--Why this age is so barren of great authors--whether the cause is +to be sought in a despotic form of government, or, as Longinus rather +thinks, in the prevailing corruption of manners, and in the sordid and +paltry views of life which almost universally prevail (c. xliv). + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +TREATISE ON THE SUBLIME + + +Boileau, in his introduction to his version of the ancient Treatise on +the Sublime, says that he is making no valueless present to his age. Not +valueless, to a generation which talks much about style and method in +literature, should be this new rendering of the noble fragment, long +attributed to Longinus, the Greek tutor and political adviser of +Zenobia. There is, indeed, a modern English version by Spurden,[1] but +that is now rare, and seldom comes into the market. Rare, too, is +Vaucher's critical essay (1854), which is unlucky, as the French and +English books both contain valuable disquisitions on the age of the +author of the Treatise. This excellent work has had curious fortunes. It +is never quoted nor referred to by any extant classical writer, and, +among the many books attributed by Suidas to Longinus, it is not +mentioned. Decidedly the old world has left no more noble relic of +criticism. Yet the date of the book is obscure, and it did not come into +the hands of the learned in modern Europe till Robertelli and Manutius +each published editions in 1544. From that time the Treatise has often +been printed, edited, translated; but opinion still floats undecided +about its origin and period. Does it belong to the age of Augustus, or +to the age of Aurelian? Is the author the historical Longinus--the +friend of Plotinus, the tutor of Porphyry, the victim of Aurelian,--or +have we here a work by an unknown hand more than two centuries earlier? +Manuscripts and traditions are here of little service. The oldest +manuscript, that of Paris, is regarded as the parent of the rest. It is +a small quarto of 414 pages, whereof 335 are occupied by the "Problems" +of Aristotle. Several leaves have been lost, hence the fragmentary +character of the essay. The Paris MS. has an index, first mentioning the +"Problems," and then +DIONUSIOU E LONGINOU PERI UPSOUS+, that is, "The +work of Dionysius, or of Longinus, about the Sublime." + + [Footnote 1: Longmans, London, 1836.] + +On this showing the transcriber of the MS. considered its authorship +dubious. Supposing that the author was Dionysius, which of the many +writers of that name was he? Again, if he was Longinus, how far does his +work tally with the characteristics ascribed to that late critic, and +peculiar to his age? + +About this Longinus, while much is written, little is certainly known. +Was he a descendant of a freedman of one of the Cassii Longini, or of an +eastern family with a mixture of Greek and Roman blood? The author of +the Treatise avows himself a Greek, and apologises, as a Greek, for +attempting an estimate of Cicero. Longinus himself was the nephew and +heir of Fronto, a Syrian rhetorician of Emesa. Whether Longinus was born +there or not, and when he was born, are things uncertain. Porphyry, born +in 233 A.D., was his pupil: granting that Longinus was twenty years +Porphyry's senior, he must have come into the world about 213 A.D. He +travelled much, studied in many cities, and was the friend of the mystic +Neoplatonists, Plotinus and Ammonius. The former called him "a +philologist, not a philosopher." Porphyry shows us Longinus at a supper +where the plagiarisms of Greek writers are discussed--a topic dear to +trivial or spiteful mediocrity. He is best known by his death. As the +Greek secretary of Zenobia he inspired a haughty answer from the queen +to Aurelian, who therefore put him to death. Many rhetorical and +philosophic treatises are ascribed to him, whereof only fragments +survive. Did he write the Treatise on the Sublime? Modern students +prefer to believe that the famous essay is, if not by Plutarch, as some +hold, at least by some author of his age, the age of the early Caesars. + +The arguments for depriving Longinus, Zenobia's tutor, of the credit of +the Treatise lie on the surface, and may be briefly stated. He addresses +his work as a letter to a friend, probably a Roman pupil, Terentianus, +with whom he has been reading a work on the Sublime by Caecilius. Now +Caecilius, a voluminous critic, certainly lived not later than Plutarch, +who speaks of him with a sneer. It is unlikely then that an author, two +centuries later, would make the old book of Caecilius the starting-point +of his own. He would probably have selected some recent or even +contemporary rhetorician. Once more, the writer of the Treatise of the +Sublime quotes no authors later than the Augustan period. Had he lived +as late as the historical Longinus he would surely have sought examples +of bad style, if not of good, from the works of the Silver Age. Perhaps +he would hardly have resisted the malicious pleasure of censuring the +failures among whom he lived. On the other hand, if he cites no late +author, no classical author cites him, in spite of the excellence of his +book. But we can hardly draw the inference that he was of late date from +this purely negative evidence. + +Again, he describes, in a very interesting and earnest manner, the +characteristics of his own period (Translation, pp. 82-86). Why, he is +asked, has genius become so rare? There are many clever men, but scarce +any highly exalted and wide-reaching genius. Has eloquence died with +liberty? "We have learned the lesson of a benignant despotism, and have +never tasted freedom." The author answers that it is easy and +characteristic of men to blame the present times. Genius may have been +corrupted, not by a world-wide peace, but by love of gain and pleasure, +passions so strong that "I fear, for such men as we are it is better to +serve than to be free. If our appetites were let loose altogether +against our neighbours, they would be like wild beasts uncaged, and +bring a deluge of calamity on the whole civilised world." Melancholy +words, and appropriate to our own age, when cleverness is almost +universal, and genius rare indeed, and the choice between liberty and +servitude hard to make, were the choice within our power. + +But these words assuredly apply closely to the peaceful period of +Augustus, when Virgil and Horace "praising their tyrant sang," not to +the confused age of the historical Longinus. Much has been said of the +allusion to "the Lawgiver of the Jews" as "no ordinary person," but that +remark might have been made by a heathen acquainted with the Septuagint, +at either of the disputed dates. On the other hand, our author (Section +XIII) quotes the critical ideas of "Ammonius and his school," as to the +debt of Plato to Homer. Now the historical Longinus was a friend of the +Neoplatonist teacher (not writer), Ammonius Saccas. If we could be sure +that the Ammonius of the Treatise was this Ammonius, the question would +be settled in favour of the late date. Our author would be that Longinus +who inspired Zenobia to resist Aurelian, and who perished under his +revenge. But Ammonius is not a very uncommon name, and we have no reason +to suppose that the Neoplatonist Ammonius busied himself with the +literary criticism of Homer and Plato. There was, among others, an +Egyptian Ammonius, the tutor of Plutarch. + +These are the mass of the arguments on both sides. M. Egger sums them up +thus: "After carefully examining the tradition of the MSS., and the one +very late testimony in favour of Longinus, I hesitated for long as to +the date of this precious work. In 1854 M. Vaucher[2] inclined me to +believe that Plutarch was the author.[3] All seems to concur towards the +opinion that, if not Plutarch, at least one of his contemporaries wrote +the most original Greek essay in its kind since the _Rhetoric_ and +_Poetic_ of Aristotle."[4] + + [Footnote 2: _Etude Critique sur la traite du Sublime et les ecrits + de Longin._ Geneva.] + + [Footnote 3: See also M. Naudet, _Journal des Savants_, Mars 1838, + and M. Egger, in the same Journal, May 1884.] + + [Footnote 4: Egger, _Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs_, + p. 426. Paris, 1887.] + +We may, on the whole, agree that the nobility of the author's thought, +his habit of quoting nothing more recent than the Augustan age, and his +description of his own time, which seems so pertinent to that epoch, +mark him as its child rather than as a great critic lost among the +_somnia Pythagorea_ of the Neoplatonists. On the other hand, if the +author be a man of high heart and courage, as he seems, so was that +martyr of independence, Longinus. Not without scruple, then, can we +deprive Zenobia's tutor of the glory attached so long to his name. + +Whatever its date, and whoever its author may be, the Treatise is +fragmentary. The lost parts may very probably contain the secret of its +period and authorship. The writer, at the request of his friend, +Terentianus, and dissatisfied with the essay of Caecilius, sets about +examining the nature of the Sublime in poetry and oratory. To the latter +he assigns, as is natural, much more literary importance than we do, in +an age when there is so little oratory of literary merit, and so much +popular rant. The subject of sublimity must naturally have attracted a +writer whose own moral nature was pure and lofty, who was inclined to +discover in moral qualities the true foundation of the highest literary +merit. Even in his opening words he strikes the keynote of his own +disposition, where he approves the saying that "the points in which we +resemble the divine nature are benevolence and love of truth." Earlier +or later born, he must have lived in the midst of literary activity, +curious, eager, occupied with petty questions and petty quarrels, +concerned, as men in the best times are not very greatly concerned, with +questions of technique and detail. Cut off from politics, people found +in composition a field for their activity. We can readily fancy what +literature becomes when not only its born children, but the minor +busybodies whose natural place is politics, excluded from these, pour +into the study of letters. Love of notoriety, vague activity, fantastic +indolence, we may be sure, were working their will in the sacred close +of the Muses. There were literary sets, jealousies, recitations of new +poems; there was a world of amateurs, if there were no papers and +paragraphs. To this world the author speaks like a voice from the older +and graver age of Greece. If he lived late, we can imagine that he did +not quote contemporaries, not because he did not know them, but because +he estimated them correctly. He may have suffered, as we suffer, from +critics who, of all the world's literature, know only "the last thing +out," and who take that as a standard for the past, to them unfamiliar, +and for the hidden future. As we are told that excellence is not of the +great past, but of the present, not in the classical masters, but in +modern Muscovites, Portuguese, or American young women, so the author of +the Treatise may have been troubled by Asiatic eloquence, now long +forgotten, by names of which not a shadow survives. He, on the other +hand, has a right to be heard because he has practised a long +familiarity with what is old and good. His mind has ever been in contact +with masterpieces, as the mind of a critic should be, as the mind of a +reviewer seldom is, for the reviewer has to hurry up and down inspecting +new literary adventurers. Not among their experiments will he find a +touchstone of excellence, a test of greatness, and that test will seldom +be applied to contemporary performances. What is the test, after all, of +the Sublime, by which our author means the truly great, the best and +most passionate thoughts, nature's high and rare inspirations, expressed +in the best chosen words? He replies that "a just judgment of style is +the final fruit of long experience." "Much has he travelled in the +realms of gold." + +The word "style" has become a weariness to think upon; so much is said, +so much is printed about the art of expression, about methods, tricks, +and turns; so many people, without any long experience, set up to be +judges of style, on the strength of having admired two or three modern +and often rather fantastic writers. About our author, however, we know +that his experience has been long, and of the best, that he does not +speak from a hasty acquaintance with a few contemporary _precieux_ and +_precieuses_. The bad writing of his time he traces, as much of our own +may be traced, to "the pursuit of novelty in thought," or rather in +expression. "It is this that has turned the brain of nearly all our +learned world to-day." "Gardons nous d'ecrire trop bien," he might have +said, "c'est la pire maniere qu'il y'ait d'ecrire."[5] + + [Footnote 5: M. Anatole France.] + +The Sublime, with which he concerns himself, is "a certain loftiness and +excellence of language," which "takes the reader out of himself.... The +Sublime, acting with an imperious and irresistible force, sways every +reader whether he will or no." In its own sphere the Sublime does what +"natural magic" does in the poetical rendering of nature, and perhaps in +the same scarcely-to-be-analysed fashion. Whether this art can be taught +or not is a question which the author treats with modesty. Then, as now, +people were denying (and not unjustly) that this art can be taught by +rule. The author does not go so far as to say that Criticism, "unlike +Justice, does little evil, and little good; that is, _if_ to entertain +for a moment delicate and curious minds is to do little good." He does +not rate his business so low as that. He admits that the inspiration +comes from genius, from nature. But "an author can only learn from art +when he is to abandon himself to the direction of his genius." Nature +must "burst out with a kind of fine madness and divine inspiration." The +madness must be _fine_. How can art aid it to this end? By knowledge of, +by sympathy and emulation with, "the great poets and prose writers of +the past." By these we may be inspired, as the Pythoness by Apollo. From +the genius of the past "an effluence breathes upon us." The writer is +not to imitate, but to keep before him the perfection of what has been +done by the greatest poets. He is to look on them as beacons; he is to +keep them as exemplars or ideals. He is to place them as judges of his +work. "How would Homer, how would Demosthenes, have been affected by +what I have written?" This is practical counsel, and even the most +florid modern author, after polishing a paragraph, may tear it up when +he has asked himself, "What would Addison have said about this eloquence +of mine, or Sainte Beuve, or Mr. Matthew Arnold?" In this way what we +call inspiration, that is the performance of the heated mind, perhaps +working at its best, perhaps overstraining itself, and overstating its +idea, might really be regulated. But they are few who consider so +closely, fewer perhaps they who have the heart to cut out their own fine +or refined things. Again, our author suggests another criterion. We are, +as in Lamb's phrase, "to write for antiquity," with the souls of poets +dead and gone for our judges. But we are also to write for the future, +asking with what feelings posterity will read us--if it reads us at all. +This is a good discipline. We know by practice what will hit some +contemporary tastes; we know the measure of smartness, say, or the +delicate flippancy, or the sentence with "a dying fall." But one should +also know that these are fancies of the hour--these and the touch of +archaism, and the spinster-like and artificial precision, which seem to +be points in some styles of the moment. Such reflections as our author +bids us make, with a little self-respect added, may render our work less +popular and effective, and certainly are not likely to carry it down to +remote posterity. But all such reflections, and action in accordance +with what they teach, are elements of literary self-respect. It is hard +to be conscientious, especially hard for him who writes much, and of +necessity, and for bread. But conscience is never to be obeyed with +ease, though the ease grows with the obedience. The book attributed to +Longinus will not have missed its mark if it reminds us that, in +literature at least, for conscience there is yet a place, possibly even +a reward, though that is unessential. By virtue of reasonings like +these, and by insisting that nobility of style is, as it were, the bloom +on nobility of soul, the Treatise on the Sublime becomes a tonic work, +wholesome to be read by young authors and old. "It is natural in us to +feel our souls lifted up by the true Sublime, and, conceiving a sort of +generous exultation, to be filled with joy and pride, as though we had +ourselves originated the ideas which we read." Here speaks his natural +disinterested greatness the author himself is here sublime, and teaches +by example as well as precept, for few things are purer than a pure and +ardent admiration. The critic is even confident enough to expect to find +his own nobility in others, believing that what is truly Sublime "will +always please, and please all readers." And in this universal acceptance +by the populace and the literate, by critics and creators, by young and +old, he finds the true external canon of sublimity. The verdict lies not +with contemporaries, but with the large public, not with the little set +of dilettanti, but must be spoken by all. Such verdicts assign the crown +to Shakespeare and Moliere, to Homer and Cervantes; we should not +clamorously anticipate this favourable judgment for Bryant or Emerson, +nor for the greatest of our own contemporaries. Boileau so much +misconceived these lofty ideas that he regarded "Longinus's" judgment as +solely that "of good sense," and held that, in his time, "nothing was +good or bad till he had spoken." But there is far more than good sense, +there is high poetic imagination and moral greatness, in the criticism +of our author, who certainly would have rejected Boileau's compliment +when he selects Longinus as a literary dictator. + +Indeed we almost grudge our author's choice of a subject. He who wrote +that "it was not in nature's plan for us, her children, to be base and +ignoble; no, she brought us into life as into some great field of +contest," should have had another field of contest than literary +criticism. It is almost a pity that we have to doubt the tradition, +according to which our author was Longinus, and, being but a +rhetorician, greatly dared and bravely died. Taking literature for his +theme, he wanders away into grammar, into considerations of tropes and +figures, plurals and singulars, trumpery mechanical pedantries, as we +think now, to whom grammar is no longer, as of old, "a new invented +game." Moreover, he has to give examples of the faults opposed to +sublimity, he has to dive into and search the bathos, to dally over +examples of the bombastic, the over-wrought, the puerile. These faults +are not the sins of "minds generous and aspiring," and we have them with +us always. The additions to Boileau's preface (Paris, 1772) contain +abundance of examples of faults from Voiture, Mascaron, Bossuet, +selected by M. de St. Marc, who no doubt found abundance of +entertainment in the chastising of these obvious affectations. It hardly +seems the proper work for an author like him who wrote the Treatise on +the Sublime. But it is tempting, even now, to give contemporary +instances of skill in the Art of Sinking--modern cases of bombast, +triviality, false rhetoric. "Speaking generally, it would seem that +bombast is one of the hardest things to avoid in writing," says an +author who himself avoids it so well. Bombast is the voice of sham +passion, the shadow of an insincere attitude. "Even the wretched phantom +who still bore the imperial title stooped to pay this ignominious +blackmail," cries bombast in Macaulay's _Lord Clive_. The picture of a +phantom who is not only a phantom but wretched, stooping to pay +blackmail which is not only blackmail but ignominious, may divert the +reader and remind him that the faults of the past are the faults of the +present. Again, "The desolate islands along the sea-coast, overgrown by +noxious vegetation, and swarming with deer and tigers"--do, what does +any one suppose, perform what forlorn part in the economy of the world? +Why, they "supply the cultivated districts with abundance of salt." It +is as comic as-- + + "And thou Dalhousie, thou great God of War, + Lieutenant-Colonel to the Earl of Mar." + +Bombast "transcends the Sublime," and falls on the other side. Our +author gives more examples of puerility. "Slips of this sort are made by +those who, aiming at brilliancy, polish, and especially attractiveness, +are landed in paltriness and silly affectation." Some modern instances +we had chosen; the field of choice is large and richly fertile in those +blossoms. But the reader may be left to twine a garland of them for +himself; to select from contemporaries were invidious, and might provoke +retaliation. When our author censures Timaeus for saying that Alexander +took less time to annex Asia than Isocrates spent in writing an oration, +to bid the Greeks attack Persia, we know what he would have thought of +Macaulay's antithesis. He blames Xenophon for a poor pun, and Plato, +less justly, for mere figurative badinage. It would be an easy task to +ransack contemporaries, even great contemporaries, for similar failings, +for pomposity, for the florid, for sentences like processions of +intoxicated torch-bearers, for pedantic display of cheap erudition, for +misplaced flippancy, for nice derangement of epitaphs wherein no +adjective is used which is appropriate. With a library of cultivated +American novelists and uncultivated English romancers at hand, with our +own voluminous essays, and the essays and histories and "art criticisms" +of our neighbours to draw from, no student need lack examples of what is +wrong. He who writes, reflecting on his own innumerable sins, can but +beat his breast, cry _Mea Culpa_, and resist the temptation to beat the +breasts of his coevals. There are not many authors, there have never +been many, who did not need to turn over the treatise of the Sublime by +day and night.[6] + + [Footnote 6: The examples of bombast used to be drawn as late as + Spurden's translation (1836), from Lee, from _Troilus and Cressida_, + and _The Taming of the Shrew_. Cowley and Crashaw furnished + instances of conceits; Waller, Young, and Hayley of frigidity; + and Darwin of affectation. + "What beaux and beauties crowd the gaudy groves, + And woo and win their _vegetable loves_"-- + a phrase adopted--"vapid vegetable loves"--by the Laureate in + "The Talking Oak."] + +As a literary critic of Homer our author is most interesting even in his +errors. He compares the poet of the _Odyssey_ to the sunset: the _Iliad_ +is noonday work, the _Odyssey_ is touched with the glow of evening--the +softness and the shadows. "Old age naturally leans," like childhood, +"towards the fabulous." The tide has flowed back, and left dim bulks of +things on the long shadowy sands. Yet he makes an exception, oddly +enough, in favour of the story of the Cyclops, which really is the most +fabulous and crude of the fairy tales in the first and greatest of +romances. The Slaying of the Wooers, that admirable fight, worthy of a +saga, he thinks too improbable, and one of the "trifles into which +second childhood is apt to be betrayed." He fancies that the aged Homer +had "lost his power of depicting the passions"; in fact, he is hardly a +competent or sympathetic critic of the _Odyssey_. Perhaps he had lived +among Romans till he lost his sense of humour; perhaps he never had any +to lose. On the other hand, he preserved for us that inestimable and not +to be translated fragment of Sappho--+phainetai moi kenos isos +theoisin+. + +It is curious to find him contrasting Apollonius Rhodius as faultless, +with Homer as great but faulty. The "faultlessness" of Apollonius is +not his merit, for he is often tedious, and he has little skill in +selection; moreover, he is deliberately antiquarian, if not pedantic. +His true merit is in his original and, as we think, modern telling of a +love tale--pure, passionate, and tender, the first in known literature. +Medea is often sublime, and always touching. But it is not on these +merits that our author lingers; he loves only the highest literature, +and, though he finds spots on the sun and faults in Homer, he condones +them as oversights passed in the poet's "contempt of little things." + +Such for us to-day are the lessons of Longinus. He traces dignity and +fire of style to dignity and fire of soul. He detects and denounces the +very faults of which, in each other, all writers are conscious, and +which he brings home to ourselves. He proclaims the essential merits of +conviction, and of selection. He sets before us the noblest examples of +the past, most welcome in a straining age which tries already to live in +the future. He admonishes and he inspires. He knows the "marvellous +power and enthralling charm of appropriate and striking words" without +dropping into mere word-tasting. "Beautiful words are the very light of +thought," he says, but does not maunder about the "colour" of words, in +the style of the decadence. And then he "leaves this generation to its +fate," and calmly turns himself to the work that lies nearest his hand. + +To us he is as much a moral as a literary teacher. We admire that Roman +greatness of soul in a Greek, and the character of this unknown man, who +carried the soul of a poet, the heart of a hero under the gown of a +professor. He was one of those whom books cannot debilitate, nor a life +of study incapacitate for the study of life. + + A. L. + + + + +I + +1 +The treatise of Caecilius on the Sublime, when, as you remember, my dear +Terentian, we examined it together, seemed to us to be beneath the +dignity of the whole subject, to fail entirely in seizing the salient +points, and to offer little profit (which should be the principal aim of +every writer) for the trouble of its perusal. There are two things +essential to a technical treatise: the first is to define the subject; +the second (I mean second in order, as it is by much the first in +importance) to point out how and by what methods we may become masters +of it ourselves. And yet Caecilius, while wasting his efforts in a +thousand illustrations of the nature of the Sublime, as though here we +were quite in the dark, somehow passes by as immaterial the question how +we might be able to exalt our own genius to a certain degree of progress +in sublimity. However, perhaps it would be fairer to commend this +writer's intelligence and zeal in themselves, instead of blaming him for +his omissions. + +2 +And since you have bidden me also to put together, if only for your +entertainment, a few notes on the subject of the Sublime, let me see if +there is anything in my speculations which promises advantage to men of +affairs. In you, dear friend--such is my confidence in your abilities, +and such the part which becomes you--I look for a sympathising and +discerning[1] critic of the several parts of my treatise. For that was a +just remark of his who pronounced that the points in which we resemble +the divine nature are benevolence and love of truth. + + [Footnote 1: Reading +philophronestata kai alethestata+.] + +3 +As I am addressing a person so accomplished in literature, I need only +state, without enlarging further on the matter, that the Sublime, +wherever it occurs, consists in a certain loftiness and excellence of +language, and that it is by this, and this only, that the greatest poets +and prose-writers have gained eminence, and won themselves a lasting +place in the Temple of Fame. + +4 +A lofty passage does not convince the reason of the reader, but takes +him out of himself. That which is admirable ever confounds our judgment, +and eclipses that which is merely reasonable or agreeable. To believe or +not is usually in our own power; but the Sublime, acting with an +imperious and irresistible force, sways every reader whether he will or +no. Skill in invention, lucid arrangement and disposition of facts, are +appreciated not by one passage, or by two, but gradually manifest +themselves in the general structure of a work; but a sublime thought, if +happily timed, illumines[2] an entire subject with the vividness of a +lightning-flash, and exhibits the whole power of the orator in a moment +of time. Your own experience, I am sure, my dearest Terentian, would +enable you to illustrate these and similar points of doctrine. + + [Footnote 2: Reading +diephotisen+.] + + +II + +The first question which presents itself for solution is whether there +is any art which can teach sublimity or loftiness in writing. For some +hold generally that there is mere delusion in attempting to reduce such +subjects to technical rules. "The Sublime," they tell us, "is born in a +man, and not to be acquired by instruction; genius is the only master +who can teach it. The vigorous products of nature" (such is their view) +"are weakened and in every respect debased, when robbed of their flesh +and blood by frigid technicalities." + +2 +But I maintain that the truth can be shown to stand otherwise in this +matter. Let us look at the case in this way; Nature in her loftier and +more passionate moods, while detesting all appearance of restraint, is +not wont to show herself utterly wayward and reckless; and though in all +cases the vital informing principle is derived from her, yet to +determine the right degree and the right moment, and to contribute the +precision of practice and experience, is the peculiar province of +scientific method. The great passions, when left to their own blind and +rash impulses without the control of reason, are in the same danger as a +ship let drive at random without ballast. Often they need the spur, but +sometimes also the curb. + +3 +The remark of Demosthenes with regard to human life in general,--that +the greatest of all blessings is to be fortunate, but next to that and +equal in importance is to be well advised,--for good fortune is utterly +ruined by the absence of good counsel,--may be applied to literature, if +we substitute genius for fortune, and art for counsel. Then, again (and +this is the most important point of all), a writer can only learn from +art when he is to abandon himself to the direction of his genius.[1] + + [Footnote 1: Literally, "But the most important point of all is that + the actual fact that there are some parts of literature which are in + the power of natural genius alone, must be learnt from no other + source than from art."] + +These are the considerations which I submit to the unfavourable critic +of such useful studies. Perhaps they may induce him to alter his opinion +as to the vanity and idleness of our present investigations. + + +III + + ... "And let them check the stove's long tongues of fire: + For if I see one tenant of the hearth, + I'll thrust within one curling torrent flame, + And bring that roof in ashes to the ground: + But now not yet is sung my noble lay."[1] + +Such phrases cease to be tragic, and become burlesque,--I mean phrases +like "curling torrent flames" and "vomiting to heaven," and representing +Boreas as a piper, and so on. Such expressions, and such images, produce +an effect of confusion and obscurity, not of energy; and if each +separately be examined under the light of criticism, what seemed +terrible gradually sinks into absurdity. Since then, even in tragedy, +where the natural dignity of the subject makes a swelling diction +allowable, we cannot pardon a tasteless grandiloquence, how much more +incongruous must it seem in sober prose! + + [Footnote 1: Aeschylus in his lost _Oreithyia_.] + +2 +Hence we laugh at those fine words of Gorgias of Leontini, such as +"Xerxes the Persian Zeus" and "vultures, those living tombs," and at +certain conceits of Callisthenes which are high-flown rather than +sublime, and at some in Cleitarchus more ludicrous still--a writer whose +frothy style tempts us to travesty Sophocles and say, "He blows a little +pipe, and blows it ill." The same faults may be observed in Amphicrates +and Hegesias and Matris, who in their frequent moments (as they think) +of inspiration, instead of playing the genius are simply playing the +fool. + +3 +Speaking generally, it would seem that bombast is one of the hardest +things to avoid in writing. For all those writers who are ambitious of a +lofty style, through dread of being convicted of feebleness and poverty +of language, slide by a natural gradation into the opposite extreme. +"Who fails in great endeavour, nobly fails," is their creed. + +4 +Now bulk, when hollow and affected, is always objectionable, whether in +material bodies or in writings, and in danger of producing on us an +impression of littleness: "nothing," it is said, "is drier than a man +with the dropsy." + +The characteristic, then, of bombast is that it transcends the Sublime: +but there is another fault diametrically opposed to grandeur: this is +called puerility, and it is the failing of feeble and narrow +minds,--indeed, the most ignoble of all vices in writing. By puerility +we mean a pedantic habit of mind, which by over-elaboration ends in +frigidity. Slips of this sort are made by those who, aiming at +brilliancy, polish, and especially attractiveness, are landed in +paltriness and silly affectation. + +5 +Closely associated with this is a third sort of vice, in dealing with +the passions, which Theodorus used to call false sentiment, meaning by +that an ill-timed and empty display of emotion, where no emotion is +called for, or of greater emotion than the situation warrants. Thus we +often see an author hurried by the tumult of his mind into tedious +displays of mere personal feeling which has no connection with the +subject. Yet how justly ridiculous must an author appear, whose most +violent transports leave his readers quite cold! However, I will dismiss +this subject, as I intend to devote a separate work to the treatment of +the pathetic in writing. + + +IV + +The last of the faults which I mentioned is frequently observed in +Timaeus--I mean the fault of frigidity. In other respects he is an able +writer, and sometimes not unsuccessful in the loftier style; a man of +wide knowledge, and full of ingenuity; a most bitter critic of the +failings of others--but unhappily blind to his own. In his eagerness to +be always striking out new thoughts he frequently falls into the most +childish absurdities. + +2 +I will only instance one or two passages, as most of them have been +pointed out by Caecilius. Wishing to say something very fine about +Alexander the Great he speaks of him as a man "who annexed the whole of +Asia in fewer years than Isocrates spent in writing his panegyric +oration in which he urges the Greeks to make war on Persia." How strange +is the comparison of the "great Emathian conqueror" with an Athenian +rhetorician! By this mode of reasoning it is plain that the Spartans +were very inferior to Isocrates in courage, since it took them thirty +years to conquer Messene, while he finished the composition of this +harangue in ten. + +3 +Observe, too, his language on the Athenians taken in Sicily. "They paid +the penalty for their impious outrage on Hermes in mutilating his +statues; and the chief agent in their destruction was one who was +descended on his father's side from the injured deity--Hermocrates, son +of Hermon." I wonder, my dearest Terentian, how he omitted to say of the +tyrant Dionysius that for his impiety towards Zeus and Herakles he was +deprived of his power by Dion and Herakleides. + +4 +Yet why speak of Timaeus, when even men like Xenophon and Plato--the +very demi-gods of literature--though they had sat at the feet of +Socrates, sometimes forgot themselves in the pursuit of such paltry +conceits. The former, in his account of the Spartan Polity, has these +words: "Their voice you would no more hear than if they were of marble, +their gaze is as immovable as if they were cast in bronze; you would +deem them more modest than the very maidens in their eyes."[1] To speak +of the pupils of the eye as "modest maidens" was a piece of absurdity +becoming Amphicrates[2] rather than Xenophon. And then what a strange +delusion to suppose that modesty is always without exception expressed +in the eye! whereas it is commonly said that there is nothing by which +an impudent fellow betrays his character so much as by the expression of +his eyes. Thus Achilles addresses Agamemnon in the _Iliad_ as "drunkard, +with eye of dog."[3] + + [Footnote 1: _Xen. de Rep. Laced._ 3, 5.] + + [Footnote 2: C. iii. sect. 2.] + + [Footnote 3: _Il._ i. 225.] + +5 +Timaeus, however, with that want of judgment which characterises +plagiarists, could not leave to Xenophon the possession of even this +piece of frigidity. In relating how Agathocles carried off his cousin, +who was wedded to another man, from the festival of the unveiling, he +asks, "Who could have done such a deed, unless he had harlots instead of +maidens in his eyes?" + +6 +And Plato himself, elsewhere so supreme a master of style, meaning to +describe certain recording tablets, says, "They shall write, and deposit +in the temples memorials of cypress wood";[4] and again, "Then +concerning walls, Megillus, I give my vote with Sparta that we should +let them lie asleep within the ground, and not awaken them."[5] + + [Footnote 4: _Plat. de Legg._ v. 741, C.] + + [Footnote 5: _Ib._ vi. 778, D.] + +7 +And Herodotus falls pretty much under the same censure, when he speaks +of beautiful women as "tortures to the eye,"[6] though here there is +some excuse, as the speakers in this passage are drunken barbarians. +Still, even from dramatic motives, such errors in taste should not be +permitted to deface the pages of an immortal work. + + [Footnote 6: v. 18.] + + +V + +Now all these glaring improprieties of language may be traced to one +common root--the pursuit of novelty in thought. It is this that has +turned the brain of nearly all the learned world of to-day. Human +blessings and human ills commonly flow from the same source: and, to +apply this principle to literature, those ornaments of style, those +sublime and delightful images, which contribute to success, are the +foundation and the origin, not only of excellence, but also of failure. +It is thus with the figures called transitions, and hyperboles, and the +use of plurals for singulars. I shall show presently the dangers which +they seem to involve. Our next task, therefore, must be to propose and +to settle the question how we may avoid the faults of style related to +sublimity. + + +VI + +Our best hope of doing this will be first of all to grasp some definite +theory and criterion of the true Sublime. Nevertheless this is a hard +matter; for a just judgment of style is the final fruit of long +experience; still, I believe that the way I shall indicate will enable +us to distinguish between the true and false Sublime, so far as it can +be done by rule. + + +VII + +It is proper to observe that in human life nothing is truly great which +is despised by all elevated minds. For example, no man of sense can +regard wealth, honour, glory, and power, or any of those things which +are surrounded by a great external parade of pomp and circumstance, as +the highest blessings, seeing that merely to despise such things is a +blessing of no common order: certainly those who possess them are +admired much less than those who, having the opportunity to acquire +them, through greatness of soul neglect it. Now let us apply this +principle to the Sublime in poetry or in prose; let us ask in all cases, +is it merely a specious sublimity? is this gorgeous exterior a mere +false and clumsy pageant, which if laid open will be found to conceal +nothing but emptiness? for if so, a noble mind will scorn instead of +admiring it. + +2 +It is natural to us to feel our souls lifted up by the true Sublime, and +conceiving a sort of generous exultation to be filled with joy and +pride, as though we had ourselves originated the ideas which we read. + +3 +If then any work, on being repeatedly submitted to the judgment of an +acute and cultivated critic, fails to dispose his mind to lofty ideas; +if the thoughts which it suggests do not extend beyond what is actually +expressed; and if, the longer you read it, the less you think of +it,--there can be here no true sublimity, when the effect is not +sustained beyond the mere act of perusal. But when a passage is pregnant +in suggestion, when it is hard, nay impossible, to distract the +attention from it, and when it takes a strong and lasting hold on the +memory, then we may be sure that we have lighted on the true Sublime. + +4 +In general we may regard those words as truly noble and sublime which +always please and please all readers. For when the same book always +produces the same impression on all who read it, whatever be the +difference in their pursuits, their manner of life, their aspirations, +their ages, or their language, such a harmony of opposites gives +irresistible authority to their favourable verdict. + + +VIII + +I shall now proceed to enumerate the five principal sources, as we may +call them, from which almost all sublimity is derived, assuming, of +course, the preliminary gift on which all these five sources depend, +namely, command of language. The first and the most important is (1) +grandeur of thought, as I have pointed out elsewhere in my work on +Xenophon. The second is (2) a vigorous and spirited treatment of the +passions. These two conditions of sublimity depend mainly on natural +endowments, whereas those which follow derive assistance from Art. The +third is (3) a certain artifice in the employment of figures, which are +of two kinds, figures of thought and figures of speech. The fourth is +(4) dignified expression, which is sub-divided into (_a_) the proper +choice of words, and (_b_) the use of metaphors and other ornaments of +diction. The fifth cause of sublimity, which embraces all those +preceding, is (5) majesty and elevation of structure. Let us consider +what is involved in each of these five forms separately. + +I must first, however, remark that some of these five divisions are +omitted by Caecilius; for instance, he says nothing about the passions. + +2 +Now if he made this omission from a belief that the Sublime and the +Pathetic are one and the same thing, holding them to be always +coexistent and interdependent, he is in error. Some passions are found +which, so far from being lofty, are actually low, such as pity, grief, +fear; and conversely, sublimity is often not in the least affecting, as +we may see (among innumerable other instances) in those bold expressions +of our great poet on the sons of Aloeus-- + + "Highly they raged + To pile huge Ossa on the Olympian peak, + And Pelion with all his waving trees + On Ossa's crest to raise, and climb the sky;" + +and the yet more tremendous climax-- + + "And now had they accomplished it." + +3 +And in orators, in all passages dealing with panegyric, and in all the +more imposing and declamatory places, dignity and sublimity play an +indispensable part; but pathos is mostly absent. Hence the most pathetic +orators have usually but little skill in panegyric, and conversely those +who are powerful in panegyric generally fail in pathos. + +4 +If, on the other hand, Caecilius supposed that pathos never contributes +to sublimity, and this is why he thought it alien to the subject, he is +entirely deceived. For I would confidently pronounce that nothing is so +conducive to sublimity as an appropriate display of genuine passion, +which bursts out with a kind of "fine madness" and divine inspiration, +and falls on our ears like the voice of a god. + + +IX + +I have already said that of all these five conditions of the Sublime the +most important is the first, that is, a certain lofty cast of mind. +Therefore, although this is a faculty rather natural than acquired, +nevertheless it will be well for us in this instance also to train up +our souls to sublimity, and make them as it were ever big with noble +thoughts. + +2 +How, it may be asked, is this to be done? I have hinted elsewhere in my +writings that sublimity is, so to say, the image of greatness of soul. +Hence a thought in its naked simplicity, even though unuttered, is +sometimes admirable by the sheer force of its sublimity; for instance, +the silence of Ajax in the eleventh _Odyssey_[1] is great, and grander +than anything he could have said. + + [Footnote 1: _Od._ xi. 543.] + +3 +It is absolutely essential, then, first of all to settle the question +whence this grandeur of conception arises; and the answer is that true +eloquence can be found only in those whose spirit is generous and +aspiring. For those whose whole lives are wasted in paltry and illiberal +thoughts and habits cannot possibly produce any work worthy of the +lasting reverence of mankind. It is only natural that their words should +be full of sublimity whose thoughts are full of majesty. + +4 +Hence sublime thoughts belong properly to the loftiest minds. Such was +the reply of Alexander to his general Parmenio, when the latter had +observed, "Were I Alexander, I should have been satisfied"; "And I, were +I Parmenio"... + +The distance between heaven and earth[1]--a measure, one might say, not +less appropriate to Homer's genius than to the stature of his discord. + + [Footnote 1: _Il._ iv. 442.] + +5 +How different is that touch of Hesiod's in his description of sorrow--if +the _Shield_ is really one of his works: "rheum from her nostrils +flowed"[2]--an image not terrible, but disgusting. Now consider how +Homer gives dignity to his divine persons-- + + "As far as lies his airy ken, who sits + On some tall crag, and scans the wine-dark sea: + So far extends the heavenly coursers' stride."[3] + +He measures their speed by the extent of the whole world--a grand +comparison, which might reasonably lead us to remark that if the divine +steeds were to take two such leaps in succession, they would find no +room in the world for another. + + [Footnote 2: _Scut. Herc._ 267.] + + [Footnote 3: _Il._ v. 770.] + +6 +Sublime also are the images in the "Battle of the Gods"-- + + "A trumpet sound + Rang through the air, and shook the Olympian height; + Then terror seized the monarch of the dead, + And springing from his throne he cried aloud + With fearful voice, lest the earth, rent asunder + By Neptune's mighty arm, forthwith reveal + To mortal and immortal eyes those halls + So drear and dank, which e'en the gods abhor."[4] + +Earth rent from its foundations! Tartarus itself laid bare! The whole +world torn asunder and turned upside down! Why, my dear friend, this is +a perfect hurly-burly, in which the whole universe, heaven and hell, +mortals and immortals, share the conflict and the peril. + + [Footnote 4: _Il._ xxi. 388; xx. 61.] + +7 +A terrible picture, certainly, but (unless perhaps it is to be taken +allegorically) downright impious, and overstepping the bounds of +decency. It seems to me that the strange medley of wounds, quarrels, +revenges, tears, bonds, and other woes which makes up the Homeric +tradition of the gods was designed by its author to degrade his deities, +as far as possible, into men, and exalt his men into deities--or rather, +his gods are worse off than his human characters, since we, when we are +unhappy, have a haven from ills in death, while the gods, according to +him, not only live for ever, but live for ever in misery. + +8 +Far to be preferred to this description of the Battle of the Gods are +those passages which exhibit the divine nature in its true light, as +something spotless, great, and pure, as, for instance, a passage which +has often been handled by my predecessors, the lines on Poseidon:-- + + "Mountain and wood and solitary peak, + The ships Achaian, and the towers of Troy, + Trembled beneath the god's immortal feet. + Over the waves he rode, and round him played, + Lured from the deeps, the ocean's monstrous brood, + With uncouth gambols welcoming their lord: + The charmed billows parted: on they flew."[5] + + [Footnote 5: _Il._ xiii. 18; xx. 60; xiii. 19, 27.] + +9 +And thus also the lawgiver of the Jews, no ordinary man, having formed +an adequate conception of the Supreme Being, gave it adequate expression +in the opening words of his "Laws": "God said"--what?--"let there be +light, and there was light: let there be land, and there was." + +10 +I trust you will not think me tedious if I quote yet one more passage +from our great poet (referring this time to human characters) in +illustration of the manner in which he leads us with him to heroic +heights. A sudden and baffling darkness as of night has overspread the +ranks of his warring Greeks. Then Ajax in sore perplexity cries aloud-- + + "Almighty Sire, + Only from darkness save Achaia's sons; + No more I ask, but give us back the day; + Grant but our sight, and slay us, if thou wilt."[6] + +The feelings are just what we should look for in Ajax. He does not, you +observe, ask for his life--such a request would have been unworthy of +his heroic soul--but finding himself paralysed by darkness, and +prohibited from employing his valour in any noble action, he chafes +because his arms are idle, and prays for a speedy return of light. "At +least," he thinks, "I shall find a warrior's grave, even though Zeus +himself should fight against me." + + [Footnote 6: _Il._ xvii. 645.] + +11 +In such passages the mind of the poet is swept along in the whirlwind of +the struggle, and, in his own words, he + + "Like the fierce war-god, raves, or wasting fire + Through the deep thickets on a mountain-side; + His lips drop foam."[7] + + [Footnote 7: _Il._ xv. 605.] + +12 +But there is another and a very interesting aspect of Homer's mind. When +we turn to the _Odyssey_ we find occasion to observe that a great +poetical genius in the decline of power which comes with old age +naturally leans towards the fabulous. For it is evident that this work +was composed after the _Iliad_, in proof of which we may mention, among +many other indications, the introduction in the _Odyssey_ of the sequel +to the story of his heroes' adventures at Troy, as so many additional +episodes in the Trojan war, and especially the tribute of sorrow and +mourning which is paid in that poem to departed heroes, as if in +fulfilment of some previous design. The _Odyssey_ is, in fact, a sort of +epilogue to the _Iliad_-- + + "There warrior Ajax lies, Achilles there, + And there Patroclus, godlike counsellor; + There lies my own dear son."[8] + + [Footnote 8: _Od._ iii. 109.] + +13 +And for the same reason, I imagine, whereas in the _Iliad_, which was +written when his genius was in its prime, the whole structure of the +poem is founded on action and struggle, in the _Odyssey_ he generally +prefers the narrative style, which is proper to old age. Hence Homer in +his _Odyssey_ may be compared to the setting sun: he is still as great +as ever, but he has lost his fervent heat. The strain is now pitched to +a lower key than in the "Tale of Troy divine": we begin to miss that +high and equable sublimity which never flags or sinks, that continuous +current of moving incidents, those rapid transitions, that force of +eloquence, that opulence of imagery which is ever true to Nature. Like +the sea when it retires upon itself and leaves its shores waste and +bare, henceforth the tide of sublimity begins to ebb, and draws us away +into the dim region of myth and legend. + +14 +In saying this I am not forgetting the fine storm-pieces in the +_Odyssey_, the story of the Cyclops,[9] and other striking passages. It +is Homer grown old I am discussing, but still it is Homer. Yet in every +one of these passages the mythical predominates over the real. + +My purpose in making this digression was, as I said, to point out into +what trifles the second childhood of genius is too apt to be betrayed; +such, I mean, as the bag in which the winds are confined,[10] the +tale of Odysseus's comrades being changed by Circe into swine[11] +("whimpering porkers" Zoilus called them), and how Zeus was fed like +a nestling by the doves,[12] and how Odysseus passed ten nights on the +shipwreck without food,[13] and the improbable incidents in the slaying +of the suitors.[14] When Homer nods like this, we must be content to say +that he dreams as Zeus might dream. + + [Footnote 9: _Od._ ix. 182.] + + [Footnote 10: _Od._ x. 17.] + + [Footnote 11: _Od._ x. 237.] + + [Footnote 12: _Od._ xii. 62.] + + [Footnote 13: _Od._ xii. 447.] + + [Footnote 14: _Od._ xxii. _passim_.] + +15 +Another reason for these remarks on the _Odyssey_ is that I wished to +make you understand that great poets and prose-writers, after they have +lost their power of depicting the passions, turn naturally to the +delineation of character. Such, for instance, is the lifelike and +characteristic picture of the palace of Odysseus, which may be called a +sort of comedy of manners. + + +X + +Let us now consider whether there is anything further which conduces to +the Sublime in writing. It is a law of Nature that in all things there +are certain constituent parts, coexistent with their substance. It +necessarily follows, therefore, that one cause of sublimity is the +choice of the most striking circumstances involved in whatever we are +describing, and, further, the power of afterwards combining them into +one animate whole. The reader is attracted partly by the selection of +the incidents, partly by the skill which has welded them together. For +instance, Sappho, in dealing with the passionate manifestations +attending on the frenzy of lovers, always chooses her strokes from the +signs which she has observed to be actually exhibited in such cases. But +her peculiar excellence lies in the felicity with which she chooses and +unites together the most striking and powerful features. + +2 + "I deem that man divinely blest + Who sits, and, gazing on thy face, + Hears thee discourse with eloquent lips, + And marks thy lovely smile. + This, this it is that made my heart + So wildly flutter in my breast; + Whene'er I look on thee, my voice + Falters, and faints, and fails; + My tongue's benumbed; a subtle fire + Through all my body inly steals; + Mine eyes in darkness reel and swim; + Strange murmurs drown my ears; + With dewy damps my limbs are chilled; + An icy shiver shakes my frame; + Paler than ashes grows my cheek; + And Death seems nigh at hand." + +3 +Is it not wonderful how at the same moment soul, body, ears, tongue, +eyes, colour, all fail her, and are lost to her as completely as if they +were not her own? Observe too how her sensations contradict one +another--she freezes, she burns, she raves, she reasons, and all at the +same instant. And this description is designed to show that she is +assailed, not by any particular emotion, but by a tumult of different +emotions. All these tokens belong to the passion of love; but it is in +the choice, as I said, of the most striking features, and in the +combination of them into one picture, that the perfection of this Ode of +Sappho's lies. Similarly Homer in his descriptions of tempests always +picks out the most terrific circumstances. + +4 +The poet of the "Arimaspeia" intended the following lines to be grand-- + + "Herein I find a wonder passing strange, + That men should make their dwelling on the deep, + Who far from land essaying bold to range + With anxious heart their toilsome vigils keep; + Their eyes are fixed on heaven's starry steep; + The ravening billows hunger for their lives; + And oft each shivering wretch, constrained to weep, + With suppliant hands to move heaven's pity strives, + While many a direful qualm his very vitals rives." + +All must see that there is more of ornament than of terror in the +description. Now let us turn to Homer. + +5 +One passage will suffice to show the contrast. + + "On them he leaped, as leaps a raging wave, + Child of the winds, under the darkening clouds, + On a swift ship, and buries her in foam; + Then cracks the sail beneath the roaring blast, + And quakes the breathless seamen's shuddering heart + In terror dire: death lours on every wave."[1] + + [Footnote 1: _Il._ xv. 624.] + +6 +Aratus has tried to give a new turn to this last thought-- + + "But one frail timber shields them from their doom,"[2]-- + +banishing by this feeble piece of subtlety all the terror from his +description; setting limits, moreover, to the peril described by saying +"shields them"; for so long as it shields them it matters not whether +the "timber" be "frail" or stout. But Homer does not set any fixed limit +to the danger, but gives us a vivid picture of men a thousand times on +the brink of destruction, every wave threatening them with instant +death. Moreover, by his bold and forcible combination of prepositions of +opposite meaning he tortures his language to imitate the agony of the +scene, the constraint which is put on the words accurately reflecting +the anxiety of the sailors' minds, and the diction being stamped, as it +were, with the peculiar terror of the situation. + + [Footnote 2: _Phaenomena_, 299.] + +7 +Similarly Archilochus in his description of the shipwreck, and similarly +Demosthenes when he describes how the news came of the taking of +Elatea[3]--"It was evening," etc. Each of these authors fastidiously +rejects whatever is not essential to the subject, and in putting +together the most vivid features is careful to guard against the +interposition of anything frivolous, unbecoming, or tiresome. Such +blemishes mar the general effect, and give a patched and gaping +appearance to the edifice of sublimity, which ought to be built up in a +solid and uniform structure. + + [Footnote 3: _De Cor._ 169.] + + +XI + +Closely associated with the part of our subject we have just treated of +is that excellence of writing which is called amplification, when a +writer or pleader, whose theme admits of many successive starting-points +and pauses, brings on one impressive point after another in a continuous +and ascending scale. + +2 +Now whether this is employed in the treatment of a commonplace, or in +the way of exaggeration, whether to place arguments or facts in a strong +light, or in the disposition of actions, or of passions--for +amplification takes a hundred different shapes--in all cases the orator +must be cautioned that none of these methods is complete without the aid +of sublimity,--unless, indeed, it be our object to excite pity, or to +depreciate an opponent's argument. In all other uses of amplification, +if you subtract the element of sublimity you will take as it were the +soul from the body. No sooner is the support of sublimity removed than +the whole becomes lifeless, nerveless, and dull. + +3 +There is a difference, however, between the rules I am now giving and +those just mentioned. Then I was speaking of the delineation and +co-ordination of the principal circumstances. My next task, therefore, +must be briefly to define this difference, and with it the general +distinction between amplification and sublimity. Our whole discourse +will thus gain in clearness. + + +XII + +I must first remark that I am not satisfied with the definition of +amplification generally given by authorities on rhetoric. They explain +it to be a form of language which invests the subject with a certain +grandeur. Yes, but this definition may be applied indifferently to +sublimity, pathos, and the use of figurative language, since all these +invest the discourse with some sort of grandeur. The difference seems to +me to lie in this, that sublimity gives elevation to a subject, while +amplification gives extension as well. Thus the sublime is often +conveyed in a single thought,[1] but amplification can only subsist with +a certain prolixity and diffusiveness. + + [Footnote 1: Comp. i. 4. 26.] + +2 +The most general definition of amplification would explain it to consist +in the gathering together of all the constituent parts and topics of a +subject, emphasising the argument by repeated insistence, herein +differing from proof, that whereas the object of proof is logical +demonstration, ... + +Plato, like the sea, pours forth his riches in a copious and expansive +flood. + +3 +Hence the style of the orator, who is the greater master of our +emotions, is often, as it were, red-hot and ablaze with passion, whereas +Plato, whose strength lay in a sort of weighty and sober magnificence, +though never frigid, does not rival the thunders of Demosthenes. + +4 +And, if a Greek may be allowed to express an opinion on the subject of +Latin literature, I think the same difference may be discerned in the +grandeur of Cicero as compared with that of his Grecian rival. The +sublimity of Demosthenes is generally sudden and abrupt: that of Cicero +is equally diffused. Demosthenes is vehement, rapid, vigorous, terrible; +he burns and sweeps away all before him; and hence we may liken him to a +whirlwind or a thunderbolt: Cicero is like a widespread conflagration, +which rolls over and feeds on all around it, whose fire is extensive and +burns long, breaking out successively in different places, and finding +its fuel now here, now there. + +5 +Such points, however, I resign to your more competent judgment. + +To resume, then, the high-strung sublimity of Demosthenes is appropriate +to all cases where it is desired to exaggerate, or to rouse some +vehement emotion, and generally when we want to carry away our audience +with us. We must employ the diffusive style, on the other hand, when we +wish to overpower them with a flood of language. It is suitable, for +example, to familiar topics, and to perorations in most cases, and to +digressions, and to all descriptive and declamatory passages, and in +dealing with history or natural science, and in numerous other cases. + + +XIII + +To return, however, to Plato: how grand he can be with all that +gentle and noiseless flow of eloquence you will be reminded by this +characteristic passage, which you have read in his _Republic_: "They, +therefore, who have no knowledge of wisdom and virtue, whose lives are +passed in feasting and similar joys, are borne downwards, as is but +natural, and in this region they wander all their lives; but they never +lifted up their eyes nor were borne upwards to the true world above, nor +ever tasted of pleasure abiding and unalloyed; but like beasts they ever +look downwards, and their heads are bent to the ground, or rather to the +table; they feed full their bellies and their lusts, and longing ever +more and more for such things they kick and gore one another with horns +and hoofs of iron, and slay one another in their insatiable desires."[1] + + [Footnote 1: _Rep._ ix. 586, A.] + +2 +We may learn from this author, if we would but observe his example, that +there is yet another path besides those mentioned which leads to sublime +heights. What path do I mean? The emulous imitation of the great poets +and prose-writers of the past. On this mark, dear friend, let us keep +our eyes ever steadfastly fixed. Many gather the divine impulse from +another's spirit, just as we are told that the Pythian priestess, when +she takes her seat on the tripod, where there is said to be a rent in +the ground breathing upwards a heavenly emanation, straightway conceives +from that source the godlike gift of prophecy, and utters her inspired +oracles; so likewise from the mighty genius of the great writers of +antiquity there is carried into the souls of their rivals, as from a +fount of inspiration, an effluence which breathes upon them until, even +though their natural temper be but cold, they share the sublime +enthusiasm of others. + +3 +Thus Homer's name is associated with a numerous band of illustrious +disciples--not only Herodotus, but Stesichorus before him, and the great +Archilochus, and above all Plato, who from the great fountain-head of +Homer's genius drew into himself innumerable tributary streams. Perhaps +it would have been necessary to illustrate this point, had not Ammonius +and his school already classified and noted down the various examples. + +4 +Now what I am speaking of is not plagiarism, but resembles the process +of copying from fair forms or statues or works of skilled labour. Nor in +my opinion would so many fair flowers of imagery have bloomed among the +philosophical dogmas of Plato, nor would he have risen so often to the +language and topics of poetry, had he not engaged heart and soul in a +contest for precedence with Homer, like a young champion entering the +lists against a veteran. It may be that he showed too ambitious a spirit +in venturing on such a duel; but nevertheless it was not without +advantage to him: "for strife like this," as Hesiod says, "is good for +men."[2] And where shall we find a more glorious arena or a nobler crown +than here, where even defeat at the hands of our predecessors is not +ignoble? + + [Footnote 2: _Opp._ 29.] + + +XIV + +Therefore it is good for us also, when we are labouring on some subject +which demands a lofty and majestic style, to imagine to ourselves how +Homer might have expressed this or that, or how Plato or Demosthenes +would have clothed it with sublimity, or, in history, Thucydides. For by +our fixing an eye of rivalry on those high examples they will become +like beacons to guide us, and will perhaps lift up our souls to the +fulness of the stature we conceive. + +2 +And it would be still better should we try to realise this further +thought, How would Homer, had he been here, or how would Demosthenes, +have listened to what I have written, or how would they have been +affected by it? For what higher incentive to exertion could a writer +have than to imagine such judges or such an audience of his works, and +to give an account of his writings with heroes like these to criticise +and look on? + +3 +Yet more inspiring would be the thought, With what feelings will future +ages through all time read these my works? If this should awaken a fear +in any writer that he will not be intelligible to his contemporaries it +will necessarily follow that the conceptions of his mind will be crude, +maimed, and abortive, and lacking that ripe perfection which alone can +win the applause of ages to come. + + +XV + +The dignity, grandeur, and energy of a style largely depend on a proper +employment of images, a term which I prefer to that usually given.[1] +The term image in its most general acceptation includes every thought, +howsoever presented, which issues in speech. But the term is now +generally confined to those cases when he who is speaking, by reason of +the rapt and excited state of his feelings, imagines himself to see what +he is talking about, and produces a similar illusion in his hearers. + + [Footnote 1: +eidolopoiiai+, "fictions of the imagination," Hickie.] + +2 +Poets and orators both employ images, but with a very different object, +as you are well aware. The poetical image is designed to astound; the +oratorical image to give perspicuity. Both, however, seek to work on the +emotions. + + "Mother, I pray thee, set not thou upon me + Those maids with bloody face and serpent hair: + See, see, they come, they're here, they spring upon me!"[2] + +And again-- + + "Ah, ah, she'll slay me! whither shall I fly?"[3] + +The poet when he wrote like this saw the Erinyes with his own eyes, and +he almost compels his readers to see them too. + + [Footnote 2: Eur. _Orest._ 255.] + + [Footnote 3: _Iph. Taur._ 291.] + +3 +Euripides found his chief delight in the labour of giving tragic +expression to these two passions of madness and love, showing here a +real mastery which I cannot think he exhibited elsewhere. Still, he is +by no means diffident in venturing on other fields of the imagination. +His genius was far from being of the highest order, but by taking pains +he often raises himself to a tragic elevation. In his sublimer moments +he generally reminds us of Homer's description of the lion-- + + "With tail he lashes both his flanks and sides, + And spurs himself to battle."[4] + + [Footnote 4: _Il._ xx. 170.] + +4 +Take, for instance, that passage in which Helios, in handing the reins +to his son, says-- + + "Drive on, but shun the burning Libyan tract; + The hot dry air will let thine axle down: + Toward the seven Pleiades keep thy steadfast way." + +And then-- + + "This said, his son undaunted snatched the reins, + Then smote the winged coursers' sides: they bound + Forth on the void and cavernous vault of air. + His father mounts another steed, and rides + With warning voice guiding his son. 'Drive there! + Turn, turn thy car this way.'"[5] + +May we not say that the spirit of the poet mounts the chariot with his +hero, and accompanies the winged steeds in their perilous flight? Were +it not so,--had not his imagination soared side by side with them in +that celestial passage,--he would never have conceived so vivid an +image. Similar is that passage in his "Cassandra," beginning + + "Ye Trojans, lovers of the steed."[6] + + [Footnote 5: Eur. _Phaet._] + + [Footnote 6: Perhaps from the lost "Alexander" (Jahn).] + +5 +Aeschylus is especially bold in forming images suited to his heroic +themes: as when he says of his "Seven against Thebes"-- + + "Seven mighty men, and valiant captains, slew + Over an iron-bound shield a bull, then dipped + Their fingers in the blood, and all invoked + Ares, Enyo, and death-dealing Flight + In witness of their oaths,"[7] + +and describes how they all mutually pledged themselves without flinching +to die. Sometimes, however, his thoughts are unshapen, and as it were +rough-hewn and rugged. Not observing this, Euripides, from too blind a +rivalry, sometimes falls under the same censure. + + [Footnote 7: _Sept. c. Th._ 42.] + +6 +Aeschylus with a strange violence of language represents the palace of +Lycurgus as _possessed_ at the appearance of Dionysus-- + + "The halls with rapture thrill, the roof's inspired."[8] + +Here Euripides, in borrowing the image, softens its extravagance[9]-- + + "And all the mountain felt the god."[10] + + [Footnote 8: Aesch. _Lycurg._] + + [Footnote 9: Lit. "Giving it a different flavour," as Arist. _Poet._ + +hedusmeno logo choris hekasto ton eidon+, ii. 10.] + + [Footnote 10: _Bacch._ 726.] + +7 +Sophocles has also shown himself a great master of the imagination in +the scene in which the dying Oedipus prepares himself for burial in the +midst of a tempest,[11] and where he tells how Achilles appeared to the +Greeks over his tomb just as they were putting out to sea on their +departure from Troy.[12] This last scene has also been delineated by +Simonides with a vividness which leaves him inferior to none. But it +would be an endless task to cite all possible examples. + + [Footnote 11: _Oed. Col._ 1586.] + + [Footnote 12: In his lost "Polyxena."] + +8 +To return, then,[13] in poetry, as I observed, a certain mythical +exaggeration is allowable, transcending altogether mere logical +credence. But the chief beauties of an oratorical image are its energy +and reality. Such digressions become offensive and monstrous when the +language is cast in a poetical and fabulous mould, and runs into all +sorts of impossibilities. Thus much may be learnt from the great orators +of our own day, when they tell us in tragic tones that they see the +Furies[14]--good people, can't they understand that when Orestes cries +out + + "Off, off, I say! I know thee who thou art, + One of the fiends that haunt me: I feel thine arms + About me cast, to drag me down to hell,"[15] + +these are the hallucinations of a madman? + + [Footnote 13: Sec. 2.] + + [Footnote 14: Comp. Petronius, _Satyricon_, ch. i. _passim_.] + + [Footnote 15: _Orest._ 264.] + +9 +Wherein, then, lies the force of an oratorical image? Doubtless in +adding energy and passion in a hundred different ways to a speech; but +especially in this, that when it is mingled with the practical, +argumentative parts of an oration, it does not merely convince the +hearer, but enthralls him. Such is the effect of those words of +Demosthenes:[16] "Supposing, now, at this moment a cry of alarm were +heard outside the assize courts, and the news came that the prison was +broken open and the prisoners escaped, is there any man here who is such +a trifler that he would not run to the rescue at the top of his speed? +But suppose some one came forward with the information that they had +been set at liberty by the defendant, what then? Why, he would be +lynched on the spot!" + + [Footnote 16: _c. Timocrat._ 208.] + +10 +Compare also the way in which Hyperides excused himself, when he was +proceeded against for bringing in a bill to liberate the slaves after +Chaeronea. "This measure," he said, "was not drawn up by any orator, but +by the battle of Chaeronea." This striking image, being thrown in by the +speaker in the midst of his proofs, enables him by one bold stroke to +carry all mere logical objection before him. + +11 +In all such cases our nature is drawn towards that which affects it most +powerfully: hence an image lures us away from an argument: judgment is +paralysed, matters of fact disappear from view, eclipsed by the superior +blaze. Nor is it surprising that we should be thus affected; for when +two forces are thus placed in juxtaposition, the stronger must always +absorb into itself the weaker. + +12 +On sublimity of thought, and the manner in which it arises from native +greatness of mind, from imitation, and from the employment of images, +this brief outline must suffice.[17] + + [Footnote 17: He passes over chs. x. xi.] + + +XVI + +The subject which next claims our attention is that of figures of +speech. I have already observed that figures, judiciously employed, play +an important part in producing sublimity. It would be a tedious, or +rather an endless task, to deal with every detail of this subject here; +so in order to establish what I have laid down, I will just run over, +without further preface, a few of those figures which are most effective +in lending grandeur to language. + +2 +Demosthenes is defending his policy; his natural line of argument would +have been: "You did not do wrong, men of Athens, to take upon yourselves +the struggle for the liberties of Hellas. Of this you have home proofs. +_They_ did not wrong who fought at Marathon, at Salamis, and Plataea." +Instead of this, in a sudden moment of supreme exaltation he bursts out +like some inspired prophet with that famous appeal to the mighty dead: +"Ye did not, could not have done wrong. I swear it by the men who faced +the foe at Marathon!"[1] He employs the figure of adjuration, to which I +will here give the name of Apostrophe. And what does he gain by it? He +exalts the Athenian ancestors to the rank of divinities, showing that we +ought to invoke those who have fallen for their country as gods; he +fills the hearts of his judges with the heroic pride of the old warriors +of Hellas; forsaking the beaten path of argument he rises to the +loftiest altitude of grandeur and passion, and commands assent by the +startling novelty of his appeal; he applies the healing charm of +eloquence, and thus "ministers to the mind diseased" of his countrymen, +until lifted by his brave words above their misfortunes they begin to +feel that the disaster of Chaeronea is no less glorious than the +victories of Marathon and Salamis. All this he effects by the use of one +figure, and so carries his hearers away with him. + + [Footnote 1: _De Cor._ 208.] + +3 +It is said that the germ of this adjuration is found in Eupolis-- + + "By mine own fight, by Marathon, I say, + Who makes my heart to ache shall rue the day!"[2] + +But there is nothing grand in the mere employment of an oath. Its +grandeur will depend on its being employed in the right place and the +right manner, on the right occasion, and with the right motive. In +Eupolis the oath is nothing beyond an oath; and the Athenians to whom it +is addressed are still prosperous, and in need of no consolation. +Moreover, the poet does not, like Demosthenes, swear by the departed +heroes as deities, so as to engender in his audience a just conception +of their valour, but diverges from the champions to the battle--a mere +lifeless thing. But Demosthenes has so skilfully managed the oath that +in addressing his countrymen after the defeat of Chaeronea he takes out +of their minds all sense of disaster; and at the same time, while +proving that no mistake has been made, he holds up an example, confirms +his arguments by an oath, and makes his praise of the dead an incentive +to the living. + + [Footnote 2: In his (lost) "Demis."] + +4 +And to rebut a possible objection which occurred to him--"Can you, +Demosthenes, whose policy ended in defeat, swear by a victory?"--the +orator proceeds to measure his language, choosing his very words so as +to give no handle to opponents, thus showing us that even in our most +inspired moments reason ought to hold the reins.[3] Let us mark his +words: "Those who _faced the foe_ at Marathon; those who _fought in the +sea-fights_ of Salamis and Artemisium; those who _stood in the ranks_ at +Plataea." Note that he nowhere says "those who _conquered_," artfully +suppressing any word which might hint at the successful issue of those +battles, which would have spoilt the parallel with Chaeronea. And for +the same reason he steals a march on his audience, adding immediately: +"All of whom, Aeschines,--not those who were successful only,--were +buried by the state at the public expense." + + [Footnote 3: Lit. "That even in the midst of the revels of Bacchus + we ought to remain sober."] + + +XVII + +There is one truth which my studies have led me to observe, which +perhaps it would be worth while to set down briefly here. It is this, +that by a natural law the Sublime, besides receiving an acquisition of +strength from figures, in its turn lends support in a remarkable manner +to them. To explain: the use of figures has a peculiar tendency to rouse +a suspicion of dishonesty, and to create an impression of treachery, +scheming, and false reasoning; especially if the person addressed be a +judge, who is master of the situation, and still more in the case of a +despot, a king, a military potentate, or any of those who sit in high +places.[1] If a man feels that this artful speaker is treating him like +a silly boy and trying to throw dust in his eyes, he at once grows +irritated, and thinking that such false reasoning implies a contempt of +his understanding, he perhaps flies into a rage and will not hear +another word; or even if he masters his resentment, still he is utterly +indisposed to yield to the persuasive power of eloquence. Hence it +follows that a figure is then most effectual when it appears in +disguise. + + [Footnote 1: Reading with Cobet, +kai pantas tous en huperochais+.] + +2 +To allay, then, this distrust which attaches to the use of figures we +must call in the powerful aid of sublimity and passion. For art, once +associated with these great allies, will be overshadowed by their +grandeur and beauty, and pass beyond the reach of all suspicion. To +prove this I need only refer to the passage already quoted: "I swear it +by the men," etc. It is the very brilliancy of the orator's figure which +blinds us to the fact that it _is_ a figure. For as the fainter lustre +of the stars is put out of sight by the all-encompassing rays of the +sun, so when sublimity sheds its light all round the sophistries of +rhetoric they become invisible. + +3 +A similar illusion is produced by the painter's art. When light and +shadow are represented in colour, though they lie on the same surface +side by side, it is the light which meets the eye first, and appears not +only more conspicuous but also much nearer. In the same manner passion +and grandeur of language, lying nearer to our souls by reason both of a +certain natural affinity and of their radiance, always strike our mental +eye before we become conscious of the figure, throwing its artificial +character into the shade and hiding it as it were in a veil. + + +XVIII + +The figures of question and interrogation[1] also possess a specific +quality which tends strongly to stir an audience and give energy to the +speaker's words. "Or tell me, do you want to run about asking one +another, is there any news? what greater news could you have than that a +man of Macedon is making himself master of Hellas? Is Philip dead? Not +he. However, he is ill. But what is that to you? Even if anything +happens to him you will soon raise up another Philip."[2] Or this +passage: "Shall we sail against Macedon? And where, asks one, shall we +effect a landing? The war itself will show us where Philip's weak places +lie."[2] Now if this had been put baldly it would have lost greatly in +force. As we see it, it is full of the quick alternation of question and +answer. The orator replies to himself as though he were meeting another +man's objections. And this figure not only raises the tone of his words +but makes them more convincing. + + [Footnote 1: See Note.] + + [Footnote 2: _Phil._ i. 44.] + +2 +For an exhibition of feeling has then most effect on an audience when it +appears to flow naturally from the occasion, not to have been laboured +by the art of the speaker; and this device of questioning and replying +to himself reproduces the moment of passion. For as a sudden question +addressed to an individual will sometimes startle him into a reply which +is an unguarded expression of his genuine sentiments, so the figure of +question and interrogation blinds the judgment of an audience, and +deceives them into a belief that what is really the result of labour in +every detail has been struck out of the speaker by the inspiration of +the moment. + +There is one passage in Herodotus which is generally credited with +extraordinary sublimity.... + + +XIX + +... The removal of connecting particles gives a quick rush and "torrent +rapture" to a passage, the writer appearing to be actually almost left +behind by his own words. There is an example in Xenophon: "Clashing +their shields together they pushed, they fought, they slew, they +fell."[1] And the words of Eurylochus in the _Odyssey_-- + + "We passed at thy command the woodland's shade; + We found a stately hall built in a mountain glade."[2] + +Words thus severed from one another without the intervention of stops +give a lively impression of one who through distress of mind at once +halts and hurries in his speech. And this is what Homer has expressed by +using the figure _Asyndeton_. + + [Footnote 1: Xen. _Hel._ iv. 3. 19.] + + [Footnote 2: _Od._ x. 251.] + + +XX + +But nothing is so conducive to energy as a combination of different +figures, when two or three uniting their resources mutually contribute +to the vigour, the cogency, and the beauty of a speech. So Demosthenes +in his speech against Meidias repeats the same words and breaks up his +sentences in one lively descriptive passage: "He who receives a blow is +hurt in many ways which he could not even describe to another, by +gesture, by look, by tone." + +2 +Then, to vary the movement of his speech, and prevent it from standing +still (for stillness produces rest, but passion requires a certain +disorder of language, imitating the agitation and commotion of the +soul), he at once dashes off in another direction, breaking up his words +again, and repeating them in a different form, "by gesture, by look, by +tone--when insult, when hatred, is added to violence, when he is struck +with the fist, when he is struck as a slave!" By such means the orator +imitates the action of Meidias, dealing blow upon blow on the minds of +his judges. Immediately after like a hurricane he makes a fresh attack: +"When he is struck with the fist, when he is struck in the face; this is +what moves, this is what maddens a man, unless he is inured to outrage; +no one could describe all this so as to bring home to his hearers its +bitterness."[1] You see how he preserves, by continual variation, the +intrinsic force of these repetitions and broken clauses, so that his +order seems irregular, and conversely his irregularity acquires a +certain measure of order. + + [Footnote 1: _Meid._ 72.] + + +XXI + +Supposing we add the conjunctions, after the practice of Isocrates and +his school: "Moreover, I must not omit to mention that he who strikes a +blow may hurt in many ways, in the first place by gesture, in the second +place by look, in the third and last place by his tone." If you compare +the words thus set down in logical sequence with the expressions of the +"Meidias," you will see that the rapidity and rugged abruptness of +passion, when all is made regular by connecting links, will be smoothed +away, and the whole point and fire of the passage will at once +disappear. + +2 +For as, if you were to bind two runners together, they will forthwith be +deprived of all liberty of movement, even so passion rebels against the +trammels of conjunctions and other particles, because they curb its free +rush and destroy the impression of mechanical impulse. + + +XXII + +The figure hyperbaton belongs to the same class. By hyperbaton we mean a +transposition of words or thoughts from their usual order, bearing +unmistakably the characteristic stamp of violent mental agitation. In +real life we often see a man under the influence of rage, or fear, or +indignation, or beside himself with jealousy, or with some other out of +the interminable list of human passions, begin a sentence, and then +swerve aside into some inconsequent parenthesis, and then again double +back to his original statement, being borne with quick turns by his +distress, as though by a shifting wind, now this way, now that, and +playing a thousand capricious variations on his words, his thoughts, and +the natural order of his discourse. Now the figure hyperbaton is the +means which is employed by the best writers to imitate these signs of +natural emotion. For art is then perfect when it seems to be nature, and +nature, again, is most effective when pervaded by the unseen presence of +art. An illustration will be found in the speech of Dionysius of Phocaea +in Herodotus: "A hair's breadth now decides our destiny, Ionians, +whether we shall live as freemen or as slaves--ay, as runaway slaves. +Now, therefore, if you choose to endure a little hardship, you will be +able at the cost of some present exertion to overcome your enemies."[1] + + [Footnote 1: vi. 11.] + +2 +The regular sequence here would have been: "Ionians, now is the time for +you to endure a little hardship; for a hair's breadth will now decide +our destiny." But the Phocaean transposes the title "Ionians," rushing +at once to the subject of alarm, as though in the terror of the moment +he had forgotten the usual address to his audience. Moreover, he inverts +the logical order of his thoughts, and instead of beginning with the +necessity for exertion, which is the point he wishes to urge upon them, +he first gives them the reason for that necessity in the words, "a +hair's breadth now decides our destiny," so that his words seem +unpremeditated, and forced upon him by the crisis. + +3 +Thucydides surpasses all other writers in the bold use of this figure, +even breaking up sentences which are by their nature absolutely one and +indivisible. But nowhere do we find it so unsparingly employed as in +Demosthenes, who though not so daring in his manner of using it as the +elder writer is very happy in giving to his speeches by frequent +transpositions the lively air of unstudied debate. Moreover, he drags, +as it were, his audience with him into the perils of a long inverted +clause. + +4 +He often begins to say something, then leaves the thought in suspense, +meanwhile thrusting in between, in a position apparently foreign and +unnatural, some extraneous matters, one upon another, and having thus +made his hearers fear lest the whole discourse should break down, and +forced them into eager sympathy with the danger of the speaker, when he +is nearly at the end of a period he adds just at the right moment, +_i.e._ when it is least expected, the point which they have been waiting +for so long. And thus by the very boldness and hazard of his inversions +he produces a much more astounding effect. I forbear to cite examples, +as they are too numerous to require it. + + +XXIII + +The juxtaposition of different cases, the enumeration of particulars, +and the use of contrast and climax, all, as you know, add much vigour, +and give beauty and great elevation and life to a style. The diction +also gains greatly in diversity and movement by changes of case, time, +person, number, and gender. + +2 +With regard to change of number: not only is the style improved by the +use of those words which, though singular in form, are found on +inspection to be plural in meaning, as in the lines-- + + "A countless host dispersed along the sand + With joyous cries the shoal of tunny hailed," + +but it is more worthy of observation that plurals for singulars +sometimes fall with a more impressive dignity, rousing the imagination +by the mere sense of vast number. + +3 +Such is the effect of those words of Oedipus in Sophocles-- + + "Oh fatal, fatal ties! + Ye gave us birth, and we being born ye sowed + The self-same seed, and gave the world to view + Sons, brothers, sires, domestic murder foul, + Brides, mothers, wives.... Ay, ye laid bare + The blackest, deepest place where Shame can dwell."[1] + +Here we have in either case but one person, first Oedipus, then Jocasta; +but the expansion of number into the plural gives an impression of +multiplied calamity. So in the following plurals-- + + "There came forth Hectors, and there came Sarpedons." + + [Footnote 1: _O. R._ 1403.] + +4 +And in those words of Plato's (which we have already adduced elsewhere), +referring to the Athenians: "We have no Pelopses or Cadmuses or +Aegyptuses or Danauses, or any others out of all the mob of Hellenised +barbarians, dwelling among us; no, this is the land of pure Greeks, with +no mixture of foreign elements,"[2] etc. Such an accumulation of words +in the plural number necessarily gives greater pomp and sound to a +subject. But we must only have recourse to this device when the nature +of our theme makes it allowable to amplify, to multiply, or to speak in +the tones of exaggeration or passion. To overlay every sentence with +ornament[3] is very pedantic. + + [Footnote 2: _Menex._ 245, D.] + + [Footnote 3: Lit. "To hang bells everywhere," a metaphor from + the bells which were attached to horses' trappings on festive + occasions.] + + +XXIV + +On the other hand, the contraction of plurals into singulars sometimes +creates an appearance of great dignity; as in that phrase of +Demosthenes: "Thereupon all Peloponnesus was divided."[1] There is +another in Herodotus: "When Phrynichus brought a drama on the stage +entitled _The Taking of Miletus_, the whole theatre fell a +weeping"--instead of "all the spectators." This knitting together of a +number of scattered particulars into one whole gives them an aspect of +corporate life. And the beauty of both uses lies, I think, in their +betokening emotion, by giving a sudden change of complexion to the +circumstances,--whether a word which is strictly singular is +unexpectedly changed into a plural,--or whether a number of isolated +units are combined by the use of a single sonorous word under one head. + + [Footnote 1: _De Cor._ 18.] + + +XXV + +When past events are introduced as happening in present time the +narrative form is changed into a dramatic action. Such is that +description in Xenophon: "A man who has fallen, and is being trampled +under foot by Cyrus's horse, strikes the belly of the animal with his +scimitar; the horse starts aside and unseats Cyrus, and he falls." +Similarly in many passages of Thucydides. + + +XXVI + +Equally dramatic is the interchange of persons, often making a reader +fancy himself to be moving in the midst of the perils described-- + + "Unwearied, thou wouldst deem, with toil unspent, + They met in war; so furiously they fought."[1] + +and that line in Aratus-- + + "Beware that month to tempt the surging sea."[2] + + [Footnote 1: _Il._ xv. 697.] + + [Footnote 2: _Phaen._ 287.] + +2 +In the same way Herodotus: "Passing from the city of Elephantine you +will sail upwards until you reach a level plain. You cross this region, +and there entering another ship you will sail on for two days, and so +reach a great city, whose name is Meroe."[3] Observe how he takes us, as +it were, by the hand, and leads us in spirit through these places, +making us no longer readers, but spectators. Such a direct personal +address always has the effect of placing the reader in the midst of the +scene of action. + + [Footnote 3: ii. 29.] + +3 +And by pointing your words to the individual reader, instead of to the +readers generally, as in the line + + "Thou had'st not known for whom Tydides fought,"[4] + +and thus exciting him by an appeal to himself, you will rouse interest, +and fix attention, and make him a partaker in the action of the book. + + [Footnote 4: _Il._ v. 85.] + + +XXVII + +Sometimes, again, a writer in the midst of a narrative in the third +person suddenly steps aside and makes a transition to the first. It is a +kind of figure which strikes like a sudden outburst of passion. Thus +Hector in the _Iliad_ + + "With mighty voice called to the men of Troy + To storm the ships, and leave the bloody spoils: + If any I behold with willing foot + Shunning the ships, and lingering on the plain, + That hour I will contrive his death."[1] + +The poet then takes upon himself the narrative part, as being his proper +business; but this abrupt threat he attributes, without a word of +warning, to the enraged Trojan chief. To have interposed any such words +as "Hector said so and so" would have had a frigid effect. As the lines +stand the writer is left behind by his own words, and the transition is +effected while he is preparing for it. + + [Footnote 1: _Il._ xv. 346.] + +2 +Accordingly the proper use of this figure is in dealing with some urgent +crisis which will not allow the writer to linger, but compels him to +make a rapid change from one person to another. So in Hecataeus: "Now +Ceyx took this in dudgeon, and straightway bade the children of Heracles +to depart. 'Behold, I can give you no help; lest, therefore, ye perish +yourselves and bring hurt upon me also, get ye forth into some other +land.'" + +3 +There is a different use of the change of persons in the speech of +Demosthenes against Aristogeiton, which places before us the quick turns +of violent emotion. "Is there none to be found among you," he asks, "who +even feels indignation at the outrageous conduct of a loathsome and +shameless wretch who,--vilest of men, when you were debarred from +freedom of speech, not by barriers or by doors, which might indeed be +opened,"[2] etc. Thus in the midst of a half-expressed thought he makes +a quick change of front, and having almost in his anger torn one word +into two persons, "who, vilest of men," etc., he then breaks off his +address to Aristogeiton, and seems to leave him, nevertheless, by the +passion of his utterance, rousing all the more the attention of the +court. + + [Footnote 2: _c. Aristog._ i. 27.] + +4 +The same feature may be observed in a speech of Penelope's-- + + "Why com'st thou, Medon, from the wooers proud? + Com'st thou to bid the handmaids of my lord + To cease their tasks, and make for them good cheer? + Ill fare their wooing, and their gathering here! + Would God that here this hour they all might take + Their last, their latest meal! Who day by day + Make here your muster, to devour and waste + The substance of my son: have ye not heard + When children at your fathers' knee the deeds + And prowess of your king?"[3] + + [Footnote 3: _Od._ iv. 681.] + + +XXVIII + +None, I suppose, would dispute the fact that periphrasis tends much to +sublimity. For, as in music the simple air is rendered more pleasing by +the addition of harmony, so in language periphrasis often sounds in +concord with a literal expression, adding much to the beauty of its +tone,--provided always that it is not inflated and harsh, but agreeably +blended. + +2 +To confirm this one passage from Plato will suffice--the opening words +of his Funeral Oration: "In deed these men have now received from us +their due, and that tribute paid they are now passing on their destined +journey, with the State speeding them all and his own friends speeding +each one of them on his way."[1] Death, you see, he calls the "destined +journey"; to receive the rites of burial is to be publicly "sped on your +way" by the State. And these turns of language lend dignity in no common +measure to the thought. He takes the words in their naked simplicity and +handles them as a musician, investing them with melody,--harmonising +them, as it were,--by the use of periphrasis. + + [Footnote 1: _Menex._ 236, D.] + +3 +So Xenophon: "Labour you regard as the guide to a pleasant life, and you +have laid up in your souls the fairest and most soldier-like of all +gifts: in praise is your delight, more than in anything else."[2] By +saying, instead of "you are ready to labour," "you regard labour as the +guide to a pleasant life," and by similarly expanding the rest of that +passage, he gives to his eulogy a much wider and loftier range of +sentiment. Let us add that inimitable phrase in Herodotus: "Those +Scythians who pillaged the temple were smitten from heaven by a female +malady." + + [Footnote 2: _Cyrop._ i. 5. 12.] + + +XXIX + +But this figure, more than any other, is very liable to abuse, and great +restraint is required in employing it. It soon begins to carry an +impression of feebleness, savours of vapid trifling, and arouses +disgust. Hence Plato, who is very bold and not always happy in his use +of figures, is much ridiculed for saying in his _Laws_ that "neither +gold nor silver wealth must be allowed to establish itself in our +State,"[1] suggesting, it is said, that if he had forbidden property in +oxen or sheep he would certainly have spoken of it as "bovine and ovine +wealth." + + [Footnote 1: _De Legg._ vii. 801, B.] + +2 +Here we must quit this part of our subject, hoping, my dear friend +Terentian, that your learned curiosity will be satisfied with this short +excursion on the use of figures in their relation to the Sublime. All +those which I have mentioned help to render a style more energetic and +impassioned; and passion contributes as largely to sublimity as the +delineation of character to amusement. + + +XXX + +But since the thoughts conveyed by words and the expression of those +thoughts are for the most part interwoven with one another, we will now +add some considerations which have hitherto been overlooked on the +subject of expression. To say that the choice of appropriate and +striking words has a marvellous power and an enthralling charm for the +reader, that this is the main object of pursuit with all orators and +writers, that it is this, and this alone, which causes the works of +literature to exhibit the glowing perfections of the finest statues, +their grandeur, their beauty, their mellowness, their dignity, their +energy, their power, and all their other graces, and that it is this +which endows the facts with a vocal soul; to say all this would, I fear, +be, to the initiated, an impertinence. Indeed, we may say with strict +truth that beautiful words are the very light of thought. + +2 +I do not mean to say that imposing language is appropriate to every +occasion. A trifling subject tricked out in grand and stately words +would have the same effect as a huge tragic mask placed on the head of a +little child. Only in poetry and ... + + +XXXI + +... There is a genuine ring in that line of Anacreon's-- + + "The Thracian filly I no longer heed." + +The same merit belongs to that original phrase in Theophrastus; to me, +at least, from the closeness of its analogy, it seems to have a peculiar +expressiveness, though Caecilius censures it, without telling us why. +"Philip," says the historian, "showed a marvellous alacrity in _taking +doses of trouble_."[1] We see from this that the most homely language is +sometimes far more vivid than the most ornamental, being recognised at +once as the language of common life, and gaining immediate currency by +its familiarity. In speaking, then, of Philip as "taking doses of +trouble," Theopompus has laid hold on a phrase which describes with +peculiar vividness one who for the sake of advantage endured what was +base and sordid with patience and cheerfulness. + + [Footnote 1: See Note.] + +2 +The same may be observed of two passages in Herodotus: "Cleomenes having +lost his wits, cut his own flesh into pieces with a short sword, until +by gradually _mincing_ his whole body he destroyed himself";[2] and +"Pythes continued fighting on his ship until he was entirely _hacked to +pieces_."[3] Such terms come home at once to the vulgar reader, but +their own vulgarity is redeemed by their expressiveness. + + [Footnote 2: vi. 75.] + + [Footnote 3: vii. 181.] + + +XXXII + +Concerning the number of metaphors to be employed together Caecilius +seems to give his vote with those critics who make a law that not more +than two, or at the utmost three, should be combined in the same place. +The use, however, must be determined by the occasion. Those outbursts of +passion which drive onwards like a winter torrent draw with them as an +indispensable accessory whole masses of metaphor. It is thus in that +passage of Demosthenes (who here also is our safest guide):[1] + + [Footnote 1: See Note.] + +2 +"Those vile fawning wretches, each one of whom has lopped from his +country her fairest members, who have toasted away their liberty, first +to Philip, now to Alexander, who measure happiness by their belly and +their vilest appetites, who have overthrown the old landmarks and +standards of felicity among Greeks,--to be freemen, and to have no one +for a master."[2] Here the number of the metaphors is obscured by the +orator's indignation against the betrayers of his country. + + [Footnote 2: _De Cor._ 296.] + +3 +And to effect this Aristotle and Theophrastus recommend the softening of +harsh metaphors by the use of some such phrase as "So to say," "As it +were," "If I may be permitted the expression," "If so bold a term is +allowable." For thus to forestall criticism[3] mitigates, they assert, +the boldness of the metaphors. + + [Footnote 3: Reading +hupotimesis+.] + +4 +And I will not deny that these have their use. Nevertheless I must +repeat the remark which I made in the case of figures,[4] and maintain +that there are native antidotes to the number and boldness of metaphors, +in well-timed displays of strong feeling, and in unaffected sublimity, +because these have an innate power by the dash of their movement of +sweeping along and carrying all else before them. Or should we not +rather say that they absolutely demand as indispensable the use of +daring metaphors, and will not allow the hearer to pause and criticise +the number of them, because he shares the passion of the speaker? + + [Footnote 4: Ch. xvii.] + +5 +In the treatment, again, of familiar topics and in descriptive passages +nothing gives such distinctness as a close and continuous series of +metaphors. It is by this means that Xenophon has so finely delineated +the anatomy of the human frame.[5] And there is a still more brilliant +and life-like picture in Plato.[6] The human head he calls a _citadel_; +the neck is an _isthmus_ set to divide it from the chest; to support it +beneath are the vertebrae, turning like _hinges_; pleasure he describes +as a _bait_ to tempt men to ill; the tongue is the _arbiter of tastes_. +The heart is at once the _knot_ of the veins and the _source_ of the +rapidly circulating blood, and is stationed in the _guard-room_ of the +body. The ramifying blood-vessels he calls _alleys_. "And casting +about," he says, "for something to sustain the violent palpitation of +the heart when it is alarmed by the approach of danger or agitated by +passion, since at such times it is overheated, they (the gods) implanted +in us the lungs, which are so fashioned that being soft and bloodless, +and having cavities within, they act like a buffer, and when the heart +boils with inward passion by yielding to its throbbing save it from +injury." He compares the seat of the desires to the _women's quarters_, +the seat of the passions to the _men's quarters_, in a house. The +spleen, again, is the _napkin_ of the internal organs, by whose +excretions it is saturated from time to time, and swells to a great size +with inward impurity. "After this," he continues, "they shrouded the +whole with flesh, throwing it forward, like a cushion, as a barrier +against injuries from without." The blood he terms the _pasture_ of the +flesh. "To assist the process of nutrition," he goes on, "they divided +the body into ducts, cutting trenches like those in a garden, so that, +the body being a system of narrow conduits, the current of the veins +might flow as from a perennial fountain-head. And when the end is at +hand," he says, "the soul is cast loose from her moorings like a ship, +and free to wander whither she will." + +6 +These, and a hundred similar fancies, follow one another in quick +succession. But those which I have pointed out are sufficient to +demonstrate how great is the natural power of figurative language, and +how largely metaphors conduce to sublimity, and to illustrate the +important part which they play in all impassioned and descriptive +passages. + + [Footnote 5: _Memorab._ i. 4, 5.] + + [Footnote 6: _Timaeus_, 69, D; 74, A; 65, C; 72, G; 74, B, D; 80, E; + 77, G; 78, E; 85, E.] + +7 +That the use of figurative language, as of all other beauties of style, +has a constant tendency towards excess, is an obvious truth which I need +not dwell upon. It is chiefly on this account that even Plato comes in +for a large share of disparagement, because he is often carried away by +a sort of frenzy of language into an intemperate use of violent +metaphors and inflated allegory. "It is not easy to remark" (he says in +one place) "that a city ought to be blended like a bowl, in which the +mad wine boils when it is poured out, but being disciplined by another +and a sober god in that fair society produces a good and temperate +drink."[7] Really, it is said, to speak of water as a "sober god," and +of the process of mixing as a "discipline," is to talk like a poet, and +no very _sober_ one either. + + [Footnote 7: _Legg._ vi. 773, G.] + +8 +It was such defects as these that the hostile critic[8] Caecilius made +his ground of attack, when he had the boldness in his essay "On the +Beauties of Lysias" to pronounce that writer superior in every respect +to Plato. Now Caecilius was doubly unqualified for a judge: he loved +Lysias better even than himself, and at the same time his hatred of +Plato and all his works is greater even than his love for Lysias. +Moreover, he is so blind a partisan that his very premises are open to +dispute. He vaunts Lysias as a faultless and immaculate writer, while +Plato is, according to him, full of blemishes. Now this is not the case: +far from it. + + [Footnote 8: Reading +ho mison auton+, by a conjecture of the + translator.] + + +XXXIII + +But supposing now that we assume the existence of a really unblemished +and irreproachable writer. Is it not worth while to raise the whole +question whether in poetry and prose we should prefer sublimity +accompanied by some faults, or a style which never rising above moderate +excellence never stumbles and never requires correction? and again, +whether the first place in literature is justly to be assigned to the +more numerous, or the loftier excellences? For these are questions +proper to an inquiry on the Sublime, and urgently asking for settlement. + +2 +I know, then, that the largest intellects are far from being the most +exact. A mind always intent on correctness is apt to be dissipated in +trifles; but in great affluence of thought, as in vast material wealth, +there must needs be an occasional neglect of detail. And is it not +inevitably so? Is it not by risking nothing, by never aiming high, that +a writer of low or middling powers keeps generally clear of faults and +secure of blame? whereas the loftier walks of literature are by their +very loftiness perilous? + +3 +I am well aware, again, that there is a law by which in all human +productions the weak points catch the eye first, by which their faults +remain indelibly stamped on the memory, while their beauties quickly +fade away. + +4 +Yet, though I have myself noted not a few faulty passages in Homer and +in other authors of the highest rank, and though I am far from being +partial to their failings, nevertheless I would call them not so much +wilful blunders as oversights which were allowed to pass unregarded +through that contempt of little things, that "brave disorder," which is +natural to an exalted genius; and I still think that the greater +excellences, though not everywhere equally sustained, ought always to be +voted to the first place in literature, if for no other reason, for the +mere grandeur of soul they evince. Let us take an instance: Apollonius +in his _Argonautica_ has given us a poem actually faultless; and in his +pastoral poetry Theocritus is eminently happy, except when he +occasionally attempts another style. And what then? Would you rather be +a Homer or an Apollonius? + +5 +Or take Eratosthenes and his _Erigone_; because that little work is +without a flaw, is he therefore a greater poet than Archilochus, with +all his disorderly profusion? greater than that impetuous, that +god-gifted genius, which chafed against the restraints of law? or in +lyric poetry would you choose to be a Bacchylides or a Pindar? in +tragedy a Sophocles or (save the mark!) an Io of Chios? Yet Io and +Bacchylides never stumble, their style is always neat, always pretty; +while Pindar and Sophocles sometimes move onwards with a wide blaze of +splendour, but often drop out of view in sudden and disastrous eclipse. +Nevertheless no one in his senses would deny that a single play of +Sophocles, the _Oedipus_, is of higher value than all the dramas of Io +put together. + + +XXXIV + +If the number and not the loftiness of an author's merits is to be our +standard of success, judged by this test we must admit that Hyperides is +a far superior orator to Demosthenes. For in Hyperides there is a richer +modulation, a greater variety of excellence. He is, we may say, in +everything second-best, like the champion of the _pentathlon_, who, +though in every contest he has to yield the prize to some other +combatant, is superior to the unpractised in all five. + +2 +Not only has he rivalled the success of Demosthenes in everything but +his manner of composition, but, as though that were not enough, he has +taken in all the excellences and graces of Lysias as well. He knows when +it is proper to speak with simplicity, and does not, like Demosthenes, +continue the same key throughout. His touches of character are racy and +sparkling, and full of a delicate flavour. Then how admirable is his +wit, how polished his raillery! How well-bred he is, how dexterous in +the use of irony! His jests are pointed, but without any of the +grossness and vulgarity of the old Attic comedy. He is skilled in making +light of an opponent's argument, full of a well-aimed satire which +amuses while it stings; and through all this there runs a pervading, may +we not say, a matchless charm. He is most apt in moving compassion; his +mythical digressions show a fluent ease, and he is perfect in bending +his course and finding a way out of them without violence or effort. +Thus when he tells the story of Leto he is really almost a poet; and his +funeral oration shows a declamatory magnificence to which I hardly know +a parallel. + +3 +Demosthenes, on the other hand, has no touches of character, none of the +versatility, fluency, or declamatory skill of Hyperides. He is, in fact, +almost entirely destitute of all those excellences which I have just +enumerated. When he makes violent efforts to be humorous and witty, the +only laughter he arouses is against himself; and the nearer he tries to +get to the winning grace of Hyperides, the farther he recedes from it. +Had he, for instance, attempted such a task as the little speech in +defence of Phryne or Athenagoras, he would only have added to the +reputation of his rival. + +4 +Nevertheless all the beauties of Hyperides, however numerous, cannot +make him sublime. He never exhibits strong feeling, has little energy, +rouses no emotion; certainly he never kindles terror in the breast of +his readers. But Demosthenes followed a great master,[1] and drew his +consummate excellences, his high-pitched eloquence, his living passion, +his copiousness, his sagacity, his speed--that mastery and power which +can never be approached--from the highest of sources. These mighty, +these heaven-sent gifts (I dare not call them human), he made his own +both one and all. Therefore, I say, by the noble qualities which he does +possess he remains supreme above all rivals, and throws a cloud over his +failings, silencing by his thunders and blinding by his lightnings the +orators of all ages. Yes, it would be easier to meet the +lightning-stroke with steady eye than to gaze unmoved when his +impassioned eloquence is sending out flash after flash. + + [Footnote 1: _I.e._ Thucydides. See the passage of Dionysius quoted + in the Note.] + + +XXXV + +But in the case of Plato and Lysias there is, as I said, a further +difference. Not only is Lysias vastly inferior to Plato in the degree of +his merits, but in their number as well; and at the same time he is as +far ahead of Plato in the number of his faults as he is behind in that +of his merits. + +2 +What truth, then, was it that was present to those mighty spirits of the +past, who, making whatever is greatest in writing their aim, thought it +beneath them to be exact in every detail? Among many others especially +this, that it was not in nature's plan for us her chosen children to be +creatures base and ignoble,--no, she brought us into life, and into the +whole universe, as into some great field of contest, that we should be +at once spectators and ambitious rivals of her mighty deeds, and from +the first implanted in our souls an invincible yearning for all that is +great, all that is diviner than ourselves. + +3 +Therefore even the whole world is not wide enough for the soaring range +of human thought, but man's mind often overleaps the very bounds of +space.[1] When we survey the whole circle of life, and see it abounding +everywhere in what is elegant, grand, and beautiful, we learn at once +what is the true end of man's being. + + [Footnote 1: Comp. Lucretius on Epicurus: "Ergo vivida vis animi + pervicit, et extra Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi," etc.] + +4 +And this is why nature prompts us to admire, not the clearness and +usefulness of a little stream, but the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine, and +far beyond all the Ocean; not to turn our wandering eyes from the +heavenly fires, though often darkened, to the little flame kindled by +human hands, however pure and steady its light; not to think that tiny +lamp more wondrous than the caverns of Aetna, from whose raging depths +are hurled up stones and whole masses of rock, and torrents sometimes +come pouring from earth's centre of pure and living fire. + +To sum the whole: whatever is useful or needful lies easily within man's +reach; but he keeps his homage for what is astounding. + + +XXXVI + +How much more do these principles apply to the Sublime in literature, +where grandeur is never, as it sometimes is in nature, dissociated from +utility and advantage. Therefore all those who have achieved it, however +far from faultless, are still more than mortal. When a writer uses any +other resource he shows himself to be a man; but the Sublime lifts him +near to the great spirit of the Deity. He who makes no slips must be +satisfied with negative approbation, but he who is sublime commands +positive reverence. + +2 +Why need I add that each one of those great writers often redeems all +his errors by one grand and masterly stroke? But the strongest point of +all is that, if you were to pick out all the blunders of Homer, +Demosthenes, Plato, and all the greatest names in literature, and add +them together, they would be found to bear a very small, or rather an +infinitesimal proportion to the passages in which these supreme masters +have attained absolute perfection. Therefore it is that all posterity, +whose judgment envy herself cannot impeach, has brought and bestowed on +them the crown of glory, has guarded their fame until this day against +all attack, and is likely to preserve it + + "As long as lofty trees shall grow, + And restless waters seaward flow." + +3 +It has been urged by one writer that we should not prefer the huge +disproportioned Colossus to the Doryphorus of Polycletus. But (to give +one out of many possible answers) in art we admire exactness, in the +works of nature magnificence; and it is from nature that man derives the +faculty of speech. Whereas, then, in statuary we look for close +resemblance to humanity, in literature we require something which +transcends humanity. + +4 +Nevertheless (to reiterate the advice which we gave at the beginning of +this essay), since that success which consists in avoidance of error is +usually the gift of art, while high, though unequal excellence is the +attribute of genius, it is proper on all occasions to call in art as an +ally to nature. By the combined resources of these two we may hope to +achieve perfection. + +Such are the conclusions which were forced upon me concerning the points +at issue; but every one may consult his own taste. + + +XXXVII + +To return, however, from this long digression; closely allied to +metaphors are comparisons and similes, differing only in this * * *[1] + + [Footnote 1: The asterisks denote gaps in the original text.] + + +XXXVIII + +Such absurdities as, "Unless you carry your brains next to the ground in +your heels."[1] Hence it is necessary to know where to draw the line; +for if ever it is overstepped the effect of the hyperbole is spoilt, +being in such cases relaxed by overstraining, and producing the very +opposite to the effect desired. + + [Footnote 1: Pseud. Dem. de Halon. 45.] + +2 +Isocrates, for instance, from an ambitious desire of lending everything +a strong rhetorical colouring, shows himself in quite a childish light. +Having in his Panegyrical Oration set himself to prove that the Athenian +state has surpassed that of Sparta in her services to Hellas, he starts +off at the very outset with these words: "Such is the power of language +that it can extenuate what is great, and lend greatness to what is +little, give freshness to what is antiquated, and describe what is +recent so that it seems to be of the past."[2] Come, Isocrates (it might +be asked), is it thus that you are going to tamper with the facts about +Sparta and Athens? This flourish about the power of language is like a +signal hung out to warn his audience not to believe him. + + [Footnote 2: Paneg. 8.] + +3 +We may repeat here what we said about figures, and say that the +hyperbole is then most effective when it appears in disguise.[3] And +this effect is produced when a writer, impelled by strong feeling, +speaks in the accents of some tremendous crisis; as Thucydides does in +describing the massacre in Sicily. "The Syracusans," he says, "went down +after them, and slew those especially who were in the river, and the +water was at once defiled, yet still they went on drinking it, though +mingled with mud and gore, most of them even fighting for it."[4] The +drinking of mud and gore, and even the fighting for it, is made credible +by the awful horror of the scene described. + + [Footnote 3: xvii. 1.] + + [Footnote 4: Thuc. vii. 84.] + +4 +Similarly Herodotus on those who fell at Thermopylae: "Here as they +fought, those who still had them, with daggers, the rest with hands and +teeth, the barbarians buried them under their javelins."[5] That they +fought with the teeth against heavy-armed assailants, and that they were +buried with javelins, are perhaps hard sayings, but not incredible, for +the reasons already explained. We can see that these circumstances have +not been dragged in to produce a hyperbole, but that the hyperbole has +grown naturally out of the circumstances. + + [Footnote 5: vii. 225.] + +5 +For, as I am never tired of explaining, in actions and passions verging +on frenzy there lies a kind of remission and palliation of any licence +of language. Hence some comic extravagances, however improbable, gain +credence by their humour, such as-- + + "He had a farm, a little farm, where space severely pinches; + 'Twas smaller than the last despatch from Sparta by some inches." + +6 +For mirth is one of the passions, having its seat in pleasure. And +hyperboles may be employed either to increase or to lessen--since +exaggeration is common to both uses. Thus in extenuating an opponent's +argument we try to make it seem smaller than it is. + + +XXXIX + +We have still left, my dear sir, the fifth of those sources which we set +down at the outset as contributing to sublimity, that which consists in +the mere arrangement of words in a certain order. Having already +published two books dealing fully with this subject--so far at least as +our investigations had carried us--it will be sufficient for the purpose +of our present inquiry to add that harmony is an instrument which has a +natural power, not only to win and to delight, but also in a remarkable +degree to exalt the soul and sway the heart of man. + +2 +When we see that a flute kindles certain emotions in its hearers, +rendering them almost beside themselves and full of an orgiastic frenzy, +and that by starting some kind of rhythmical beat it compels him who +listens to move in time and assimilate his gestures to the tune, even +though he has no taste whatever for music; when we know that the sounds +of a harp, which in themselves have no meaning, by the change of key, by +the mutual relation of the notes, and their arrangement in symphony, +often lay a wonderful spell on an audience-- + +3 +though these are mere shadows and spurious imitations of persuasion, +not, as I have said, genuine manifestations of human nature:--can we +doubt that composition (being a kind of harmony of that language which +nature has taught us, and which reaches, not our ears only, but our very +souls), when it raises changing forms of words, of thoughts, of actions, +of beauty, of melody, all of which are engrained in and akin to +ourselves, and when by the blending of its manifold tones it brings home +to the minds of those who stand by the feelings present to the speaker, +and ever disposes the hearer to sympathise with those feelings, adding +word to word, until it has raised a majestic and harmonious +structure:--can we wonder if all this enchants us, wherever we meet with +it, and filling us with the sense of pomp and dignity and sublimity, and +whatever else it embraces, gains a complete mastery over our minds? It +would be mere infatuation to join issue on truths so universally +acknowledged, and established by experience beyond dispute.[1] + + [Footnote 1: Reading +all' eoike mania+, and putting a full stop at + +pistis+.] + +4 +Now to give an instance: that is doubtless a sublime thought, indeed +wonderfully fine, which Demosthenes applies to his decree: +touto to +psephisma ton tote te polei peristanta kindunon parelthein epoiesen +hosper nephos+, "This decree caused the danger which then hung round our +city to pass away like a cloud." But the modulation is as perfect as the +sentiment itself is weighty. It is uttered wholly in the dactylic +measure, the noblest and most magnificent of all measures, and hence +forming the chief constituent in the finest metre we know, the heroic. +[And it is with great judgment that the words +hosper nephos+ are +reserved till the end.[2]] Supposing we transpose them from their proper +place and read, say +touto to psephisma hosper nephos epoiese ton tote +kindunon parelthein+--nay, let us merely cut off one syllable, reading ++epoiese parelthein hos nephos+--and you will understand how close is +the unison between harmony and sublimity. In the passage before us the +words +hosper nephos+ move first in a heavy measure, which is metrically +equivalent to four short syllables: but on removing one syllable, and +reading +hos nephos+, the grandeur of movement is at once crippled by +the abridgment. So conversely if you lengthen into +hosperei nephos+, +the meaning is still the same, but it does not strike the ear in the +same manner, because by lingering over the final syllables you at once +dissipate and relax the abrupt grandeur of the passage. + + [Footnote 2: There is a break here in the text; but the context + indicates the sense of the words lost, which has accordingly been + supplied.] + + +XL + +There is another method very efficient in exalting a style. As the +different members of the body, none of which, if severed from its +connection, has any intrinsic excellence, unite by their mutual +combination to form a complete and perfect organism, so also the +elements of a fine passage, by whose separation from one another its +high quality is simultaneously dissipated and evaporates, when joined in +one organic whole, and still further compacted by the bond of harmony, +by the mere rounding of the period gain power of tone. + +2 +In fact, a clause may be said to derive its sublimity from the joint +contributions of a number of particulars. And further (as we have shown +at large elsewhere), many writers in prose and verse, though their +natural powers were not high, were perhaps even low, and though the +terms they employed were usually common and popular and conveying no +impression of refinement, by the mere harmony of their composition have +attained dignity and elevation, and avoided the appearance of meanness. +Such among many others are Philistus, Aristophanes occasionally, +Euripides almost always. + +3 +Thus when Heracles says, after the murder of his children, + + "I'm full of woes, I have no room for more,"[1] + +the words are quite common, but they are made sublime by being cast in a +fine mould. By changing their position you will see that the poetical +quality of Euripides depends more on his arrangement than on his +thoughts. + + [Footnote 1: _H. F._ 1245.] + +4 +Compare his lines on Dirce dragged by the bull-- + + "Whatever crossed his path, + Caught in his victim's form, he seized, and dragging + Oak, woman, rock, now here, now there, he flies."[2] + +The circumstance is noble in itself, but it gains in vigour because the +language is disposed so as not to hurry the movement, not running, as it +were, on wheels, because there is a distinct stress on each word, and +the time is delayed, advancing slowly to a pitch of stately sublimity. + + [Footnote 2: _Antiope_ (Nauck, 222).] + + +XLI + +Nothing so much degrades the tone of a style as an effeminate and +hurried movement in the language, such as is produced by pyrrhics and +trochees and dichorees falling in time together into a regular dance +measure. Such abuse of rhythm is sure to savour of coxcombry and petty +affectation, and grows tiresome in the highest degree by a monotonous +sameness of tone. + +2 +But its worst effect is that, as those who listen to a ballad have their +attention distracted from its subject and can think of nothing but the +tune, so an over-rhythmical passage does not affect the hearer by the +meaning of its words, but merely by their cadence, so that sometimes, +knowing where the pause must come, they beat time with the speaker, +striking the expected close like dancers before the stop is reached. +Equally undignified is the splitting up of a sentence into a number of +little words and short syllables crowded too closely together and forced +into cohesion,--hammered, as it were, successively together,--after the +manner of mortice and tenon.[1] + + [Footnote 1: I must refer to Weiske's Note, which I have followed, + for the probable interpretation of this extraordinary passage.] + + +XLII + +Sublimity is further diminished by cramping the diction. Deformity +instead of grandeur ensues from over-compression. Here I am not +referring to a judicious compactness of phrase, but to a style which is +dwarfed, and its force frittered away. To cut your words too short is to +prune away their sense, but to be concise is to be direct. On the other +hand, we know that a style becomes lifeless by over-extension, I mean by +being relaxed to an unseasonable length. + + +XLIII + +The use of mean words has also a strong tendency to degrade a lofty +passage. Thus in that description of the storm in Herodotus the matter +is admirable, but some of the words admitted are beneath the dignity of +the subject; such, perhaps, as "the seas having _seethed_" because the +ill-sounding phrase "having seethed" detracts much from its +impressiveness: or when he says "the wind wore away," and "those who +clung round the wreck met with an unwelcome end."[1] "Wore away" is +ignoble and vulgar, and "unwelcome" inadequate to the extent of the +disaster. + + [Footnote 1: Hdt. vii. 188, 191, 13.] + +2 +Similarly Theopompus, after giving a fine picture of the Persian king's +descent against Egypt, has exposed the whole to censure by certain +paltry expressions. "There was no city, no people of Asia, which did not +send an embassy to the king; no product of the earth, no work of art, +whether beautiful or precious, which was not among the gifts brought to +him. Many and costly were the hangings and robes, some purple, some +embroidered, some white; many the tents, of cloth of gold, furnished +with all things useful; many the tapestries and couches of great price. +Moreover, there was gold and silver plate richly wrought, goblets and +bowls, some of which might be seen studded with gems, and others besides +worked in relief with great skill and at vast expense. Besides these +there were suits of armour in number past computation, partly Greek, +partly foreign, endless trains of baggage animals and fat cattle for +slaughter, many bushels of spices, many panniers and sacks and sheets of +writing-paper; and all other necessaries in the same proportion. And +there was salt meat of all kinds of beasts in immense quantity, heaped +together to such a height as to show at a distance like mounds and hills +thrown up one against another." + +3 +He runs off from the grander parts of his subject to the meaner, and +sinks where he ought to rise. Still worse, by his mixing up _panniers_ +and _spices_ and _bags_ with his wonderful recital of that vast and busy +scene one would imagine that he was describing a kitchen. Let us suppose +that in that show of magnificence some one had taken a set of wretched +baskets and bags and placed them in the midst, among vessels of gold, +jewelled bowls, silver plate, and tents and goblets of gold; how +incongruous would have seemed the effect! Now just in the same way these +petty words, introduced out of season, stand out like deformities and +blots on the diction. + +4 +These details might have been given in one or two broad strokes, as when +he speaks of mounds being heaped together. So in dealing with the other +preparations he might have told us of "waggons and camels and a long +train of baggage animals loaded with all kinds of supplies for the +luxury and enjoyment of the table," or have mentioned "piles of grain of +every species, and of all the choicest delicacies required by the art of +the cook or the taste of the epicure," or (if he must needs be so very +precise) he might have spoken of "whatever dainties are supplied by +those who lay or those who dress the banquet." + +5 +In our sublimer efforts we should never stoop to what is sordid and +despicable, unless very hard pressed by some urgent necessity. If we +would write becomingly, our utterance should be worthy of our theme. We +should take a lesson from nature, who when she planned the human frame +did not set our grosser parts, or the ducts for purging the body, in our +face, but as far as she could concealed them, "diverting," as Xenophon +says, "those canals as far as possible from our senses,"[2] and thus +shunning in any part to mar the beauty of the whole creature. + + [Footnote 2: _Mem._ i. 4. 6.] + +6 +However, it is not incumbent on us to specify and enumerate whatever +diminishes a style. We have now pointed out the various means of giving +it nobility and loftiness. It is clear, then, that whatever is contrary +to these will generally degrade and deform it. + + +XLIV + +There is still another point which remains to be cleared up, my dear +Terentian, and on which I shall not hesitate to add some remarks, to +gratify your inquiring spirit. It relates to a question which was +recently put to me by a certain philosopher. "To me," he said, "in +common, I may say, with many others, it is a matter of wonder that in +the present age, which produces many highly skilled in the arts Of +popular persuasion, many of keen and active powers, many especially rich +in every pleasing gift of language, the growth of highly exalted and +wide-reaching genius has with a few rare exceptions almost entirely +ceased. So universal is the dearth of eloquence which prevails +throughout the world. + +2 +"Must we really," he asked, "give credit to that oft-repeated assertion +that democracy is the kind nurse of genius, and that high literary +excellence has flourished with her prime and faded with her decay? +Liberty, it is said, is all-powerful to feed the aspirations of high +intellects, to hold out hope, and keep alive the flame of mutual rivalry +and ambitious struggle for the highest place. + +3 +"Moreover, the prizes which are offered in every free state keep the +spirits of her foremost orators whetted by perpetual exercise;[1] they +are, as it were, ignited by friction, and naturally blaze forth freely +because they are surrounded by freedom. But we of to-day," he continued, +"seem to have learnt in our childhood the lessons of a benignant +despotism, to have been cradled in her habits and customs from the time +when our minds were still tender, and never to have tasted the fairest +and most fruitful fountain of eloquence, I mean liberty. Hence we +develop nothing but a fine genius for flattery. + + [Footnote 1: Comp. Pericles in Thuc. ii., +athla gar hois keitai + aretes megista tois de kai andres arista politeuousin+.] + +4 +"This is the reason why, though all other faculties are consistent with +the servile condition, no slave ever became an orator; because in him +there is a dumb spirit which will not be kept down: his soul is chained: +he is like one who has learnt to be ever expecting a blow. For, as Homer +says-- + +5 + "'The day of slavery + Takes half our manly worth away.'[2] + +"As, then (if what I have heard is credible), the cages in which those +pigmies commonly called dwarfs are reared not only stop the growth of +the imprisoned creature, but absolutely make him smaller by compressing +every part of his body, so all despotism, however equitable, may be +defined as a cage of the soul and a general prison." + + [Footnote 2: _Od._ xvii. 322.] + +6 +My answer was as follows: "My dear friend, it is so easy, and so +characteristic of human nature, always to find fault with the +present.[3] Consider, now, whether the corruption of genius is to be +attributed, not to a world-wide peace,[4] but rather to the war within +us which knows no limit, which engages all our desires, yes, and still +further to the bad passions which lay siege to us to-day, and make utter +havoc and spoil of our lives. Are we not enslaved, nay, are not our +careers completely shipwrecked, by love of gain, that fever which rages +unappeased in us all, and love of pleasure?--one the most debasing, the +other the most ignoble of the mind's diseases. + + [Footnote 3: Comp. Byron, "The good old times,--all times when old + are good."] + + [Footnote 4: A euphemism for "a world-wide tyranny."] + +7 +"When I consider it I can find no means by which we, who hold in such +high honour, or, to speak more correctly, who idolise boundless riches, +can close the door of our souls against those evil spirits which grow up +with them. For Wealth unmeasured and unbridled is dogged by +Extravagance: she sticks close to him, and treads in his footsteps: and +as soon as he opens the gates of cities or of houses she enters with him +and makes her abode with him. And after a time they build their nests +(to use a wise man's words[5]) in that corner of life, and speedily set +about breeding, and beget Boastfulness, and Vanity, and Wantonness, no +base-born children, but their very own. And if these also, the offspring +of Wealth, be allowed to come to their prime, quickly they engender in +the soul those pitiless tyrants, Violence, and Lawlessness, and +Shamelessness. + + [Footnote 5: Plato, _Rep._ ix. 573, E.] + +8 +"Whenever a man takes to worshipping what is mortal and irrational[6] in +him, and neglects to cherish what is immortal, these are the inevitable +results. He never looks up again; he has lost all care for good report; +by slow degrees the ruin of his life goes on, until it is consummated +all round; all that is great in his soul fades, withers away, and is +despised. + + [Footnote 6: Reading +kanoeta+.] + +9 +"If a judge who passes sentence for a bribe can never more give a free +and sound decision on a point of justice or honour (for to him who takes +a bribe honour and justice must be measured by his own interests), how +can we of to-day expect, when the whole life of each one of us is +controlled by bribery, while we lie in wait for other men's death and +plan how to get a place in their wills, when we buy gain, from whatever +source, each one of us, with our very souls in our slavish greed, how, I +say, can we expect, in the midst of such a moral pestilence, that there +is still left even one liberal and impartial critic, whose verdict will +not be biassed by avarice in judging of those great works which live on +through all time? + +10 +"Alas! I fear that for such men as we are it is better to serve than to +be free. If our appetites were let loose altogether against our +neighbours, they would be like wild beasts uncaged, and bring a deluge +of calamity on the whole civilised world." + +11 +I ended by remarking generally that the genius of the present age is +wasted by that indifference which with a few exceptions runs through the +whole of life. If we ever shake off our apathy[7] and apply ourselves to +work, it is always with a view to pleasure or applause, not for that +solid advantage which is worthy to be striven for and held in honour. + + [Footnote 7: Comp. Thuc. vi. 26. 2, for this sense of + +analambanein+.] + +12 +We had better then leave this generation to its fate, and turn to what +follows, which is the subject of the passions, to which we promised +early in this treatise to devote a separate work.[8] They play an +important part in literature generally, and especially in relation to +the Sublime. + + [Footnote 8: iii. 5.] + + + + +NOTES ON LONGINUS + +[Transcriber's Note: +Citation format is as in the printed text. The last number in each +group appears to refer to clauses in the original Greek; there is no +correspondence with line numbers in the printed book.] + + +I. 2. 10. There seems to be an antithesis implied in +politikois +tetheorekenai+, referring to the well-known distinction between the ++praktikos bios+ and the +theoretikos bios+. + +4. 27. I have ventured to return to the original reading, +diephotisen+, +though all editors seem to have adopted the correction +diephoresen+, on +account, I suppose, of +skeptou+. To _illumine_ a large subject, as a +landscape is lighted up at night by a flash of lightning, is surely a +far more vivid and intelligible expression than to _sweep away_ a +subject.[1] + + [Footnote 1: Comp. for the metaphor Goethe, _Dichtung und Wahrheit_, + B 8. "Wie vor einem Blitz erleuchteten sich uns alle Folgen dieses + herrlichen Gedankens."] + + +III. 2. 17. +phorbeias d' ater+, lit. "without a cheek-strap," which was +worn by trumpeters to assist them in regulating their breath. The line +is contracted from two of Sophocles's, and Longinus's point is that the +extravagance of Cleitarchus is not that of a strong but ill-regulated +nature, but the ludicrous straining after grandeur of a writer at once +feeble and pretentious. + +Ruhnken gives an extract from some inedited "versus politici" of +Tzetzes, in which are some amusing specimens of those felicities of +language Longinus is here laughing at. Stones are the "bones," rivers +the "veins," of the earth; the moon is "the sigma of the sky" (+(lunate +Sigma)+ the old form of +(Sigma)+); sailors, "the ants of ocean"; the +strap of a pedlar's pack, "the girdle of his load"; pitch, "the ointment +of doors," and so on. + + +IV. 4. 4. The play upon the double meaning of +kora+, (1) maiden, (2) +pupil of the eye, can hardly be kept in English. It is worthy of remark +that our text of Xenophon has +en tois thalamois+, a perfectly natural +expression. Such a variation would seem to point to a very early +corruption of ancient manuscripts, or to extraordinary inaccuracy on the +part of Longinus, who, indeed, elsewhere displays great looseness of +citation, confusing together totally different passages. + +9. +itamon+. I can make nothing of this word. Various corrections have +been suggested, but with little certainty. + +5. 10. +hos phoriou tinos ephaptomenos+, literally, "as though he were +laying hands on a piece of stolen property." The point seems to be, that +plagiarists, like other robbers, show no discrimination in their +pilferings, seizing what comes first to hand. + + +VIII. 1. 20. +edaphous+. I have avoided the rather harsh confusion of +metaphor which this word involves, taken in connection with +pegai+. + + +IX. 2. 13. +apechema+, properly an "echo," a metaphor rather Greek than +English. + + +X. 2. 13. +chlorotera de poias+, lit. "more wan than grass"--of the +sickly yellow hue which would appear on a dark Southern face under the +influence of violent emotion.[2] + + [Footnote 2: The notion of _yellowness_, as associated with grass, + is made intelligible by a passage in Longus, i. 17. 19. +chloroteron + to prosopon en poas _therines_.+] + +3. 6. The words +e gar ... tethneken+ are omitted in the translation, +being corrupt, and giving no satisfactory sense. Ruhnken corrects, ++alogistei, phronei, ptoeitai, e p. o. t.+ + +18. +splanchnoisi kakos anaballomenoisi.+ Probably of sea-sickness; and +so I find Ruhnken took it, quoting Plutarch, _T._ ii. 831: +emountos tou +heterou, kai legontos ta splanchna ekballein+. An objection on the score +of _taste_ would be out of place in criticising the laureate of the +Arimaspi. + + +X. 7. 2. +tas exochas aristinden ekkatherantes.+ +aristinden +ekkatherantes+ appears to be a condensed phrase for +aristinden +eklexantes kai ekkatherantes+. "Having chosen the most striking +circumstances _par excellence_, and having relieved them of all +superfluity," would perhaps give the literal meaning. Longinus seems +conscious of some strangeness in his language, making a quasi-apology in ++hos an eipoi tis+. + +3. Partly with the help of Toup, we may emend this corrupt passage as +follows: +lumainetai gar tauta to holon, hosanei psegmata e araiomata, +ta empoiounta megethos te pros allela schesei sunteteichismena+. +to +holon+ here = "omnino." To explain the process of corruption, +ta+ would +easily drop out after the final +-ta+ in +araiomata+; +sunoikonomoumena+ +is simply a corruption of +sunoikodomoumena+, which is itself a gloss on ++sunteteichismena+, having afterwards crept into the text; +megethos+ +became corrupted into +megethe+ through the error of some copyist, who +wished to make it agree with +empoiounta+. The whole maybe translated: +"Such [interpolations], like so many patches or rents, mar altogether +the effect of those details which, by being built up in an uninterrupted +series [+te pros allela sch. suntet.+], produce sublimity in a work." + + +XII. 4. 2. +en auto+; the sense seems clearly to require +en hauto+. + + +XIV. 3. 16. +me ... huperemeron.+ Most of the editors insert +ou+ before ++phthenxaito+, thus ruining the sense of this fine passage. Longinus has +just said that a writer should always work with an eye to posterity. If +(he adds) he thinks of nothing but the taste and judgment of his +contemporaries, he will have no chance of "leaving something so written +that the world will not willingly let it die." A book, then, which is ++tou idiou biou kai chronou huperemeros+, is a book which is in advance +of its own times. Such were the poems of Lucretius, of Milton, of +Wordsworth.[3] + + [Footnote 3: Compare the "Gefluegelte Worte" in the Vorspiel to + Goethe's _Faust_: + Was glaenzt, ist fuer den Augenblick geboren, + Das Aechte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren. ] + + +XV. 5. 23. +pokoeideis kai amalaktous+, lit. "like raw, undressed wool." + + +XVII. 1. 25. I construct the infinit. with +hupopton+, though the +ordinary interpretation joins +to dia schematon panourgein+: "proprium +est _verborum lenociniis_ suspicionem movere" (Weiske). + +2. 8. +paralephtheisa+. This word has given much trouble; but is it not +simply a continuation of the metaphor implied in +epikouria+? ++paralambanein tina+, in the sense of calling in an ally, is a common +enough use. This would be clearer if we could read +paralephtheisi+. I +have omitted +tou panourgein+ in translating, as it seems to me to have +evidently crept in from above (p. 33, l. 25). +he tou panourgein +techne+, "the art of playing the villain," is surely, in Longinus's own +words, +deinon kai ekphulon+, "a startling novelty" of language. + +12. +to photi auto+. The words may remind us of Shelley's "Like a poet +_hidden in the light of thought_." + + +XVIII. 1. 24. The distinction between +peusis+ or +pusma+ and +erotesis+ +or +erotema+ is said to be that +erotesis+ is a simple question, which +can be answered yes or no; +peusis+ a fuller inquiry, requiring a fuller +answer. _Aquila Romanus in libro de figuris sententiarum et +elocutionis_, Sec. 12 (Weiske). + + +XXXI. 1. 11. +anankophagesai+, properly of the fixed diet of athletes, +which seems to have been excessive in quantity, and sometimes nauseous +in quality. I do not know what will be thought of my rendering here; it +is certainly not elegant, but it was necessary to provide some sort of +equivalent to the Greek. "Swallow," which the other translators give, is +quite inadequate. We require a threefold combination--(1) To swallow (2) +something nasty (3) for the sake of prospective advantage. + + +XXXII. 1. 3. The text is in great confusion here. Following a hint in +Vahlin's critical note, I have transposed the words thus: +ho kairos de +tes chreias horos; entha ta pathe cheimarrou diken elaunetai, kai ten +polupletheian auton hos anankaian entautha sunephelketai; ho gar D., +horos kai ton toiouton, anthropoi, phesin, k.t.l.+ + +8. 16. Some words have probably been lost here. The sense of +plen+, and +the absence of antithesis to +houtos men+, point in this direction. The +original reading may have been something of this sort: +plen houtos men +hupo philoneikias _paregeto_; all' oude ta themata tithesin +homologoumena+, the sense being that, though we may allow something to +the partiality of Caecilius, yet this does not excuse him from arguing +on premises which are unsound. + + +XXXIV. 4. 10. +ho de enthen helon, k.t.l.+ Probably the darkest place in +the whole treatise. Toup cites a remarkable passage from Dionysius of +Halicarnassus, from which we may perhaps conclude that Longinus is +referring here to Thucydides, the traditional master of Demosthenes. _De +Thucyd._ Sec. 53, +Rhetoron de Demosthenes monos Thoukudidou zelotos +egeneto kata polla, kai prosetheke tois politikois logois, par' ekeinou +labon, has oute Antiphon, oute Lusias, oute Isokrates, hoi proteusantes +ton tote rhetoron, eschon aretas, ta tache lego, kai tas sustrophas, kai +tous tonous, kai to struphnon, kai ten exegeirousan ta pathe deinoteta.+ +So close a parallel can hardly be accidental. + + +XXXV. 4. 5. Longinus probably had his eye on the splendid lines in +Pindar's _First Pythian_: + + +tas [Aitnas] ereugontai men aplatou puros hagnotatai + ek muchon pagai, potamoi d' + hameraisin men procheonti rhoon kapnou-- + aithon'; all' en orphnaisin petras + phoinissa kulindomena phlox es bathei- + an pherei pontou plaka sun patago+, + +which I find has also been pointed out by Toup, who remarks that ++hagnotatai+ confirms the reading +autou monou+ here, which has been +suspected without reason. + + +XXXVIII. 2. 7. Comp. Plato, _Phaedrus_, 267, A: +Tisian de Gorgian te +easomen heudein, hoi pro ton alethon ta eikota eidon hos timetea mallon, +ta te au smikra megala kai ta megala smikra poiousi phainesthai dia +rhomen logou, kaina te archaios ta t' enantia kainos, suntomian te logon +kai apeira meke peri panton aneuron.+ + + + + +APPENDIX + +SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LESS KNOWN WRITERS +MENTIONED IN THE TREATISE ON THE SUBLIME + + +AMMONIUS.--Alexandrian grammarian, carried on the school of Aristarchus +previously to the reign of Augustus. The allusion here is to a work on +the passages in which Plato has imitated Homer. (Suidas, _s.v._; Schol. +on Hom. Il. ix. 540, quoted by Jahn.) + +AMPHIKRATES.--Author of a book _On Famous Men_, referred to by +Athenaeus, xiii. 576, G, and Diog. Laert. ii. 101. C. Muller, _Hist. Gr. +Fragm._ iv. p. 300, considers him to be the Athenian rhetorician who, +according to Plutarch (_Lucullus_, c. 22), retired to Seleucia, and +closed his life at the Court of Kleopatra, daughter of Mithridates and +wife of Tigranes (Pauly, _Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen +Alterthumswissenschaft_). Plutarch tells a story illustrative of his +arrogance. Being asked by the Seleucians to open a school of rhetoric, +he replied, "A dish is not large enough for a dolphin" (+hos oude lekane +delphina choroie+), v. _Luculli_, c. 22, quoted by Pearce. + +ARISTEAS.--A name involved in a mist of fable. According to Suidas he +was a contemporary of Kroesus, though Herodotus assigns to him a much +remoter antiquity. The latter authority describes him as visiting the +northern peoples of Europe and recording his travels in an epic poem, a +fragment of which is given here by Longinus. The passage before us +appears to be intended as the words of some Arimaspian, who, as +belonging to a remote inland race, expresses his astonishment that any +men could be found bold enough to commit themselves to the mercy of the +sea, and tries to describe the terror of human beings placed in such a +situation (Pearce ad. l.; Abicht on Hdt. iv. 12; Suidas, _s.v._) + +BAKCHYLIDES, nephew and pupil of the great Simonides, flourished about +460 B.C. He followed his uncle to the Court of Hiero at Syracuse, and +enjoyed the patronage of that despot. After Hiero's death he returned to +his home in Keos; but finding himself discontented with the mode of life +pursued in a free Greek community, for which his experiences at Hiero's +Court may well have disqualified him, he retired to Peloponnesus, where +he died. His works comprise specimens of almost every kind of lyric +composition, as practised by the Greeks of his time. Horace is said to +have imitated him in his _Prophecy of Nereus_, c. I. xv. (Pauly, as +above). So far as we can judge from what remains of his works, he was +distinguished rather by elegance than by force. A considerable fragment +on the Blessings of Peace has been translated by Mr. J. A. Symonds in +his work on the Greek poets. He is made the subject of a very bitter +allusion by Pindar (Ol. ii. s. fin. c. Schol.) We may suppose that the +stern and lofty spirit of Pindar had little sympathy with the "tearful" +(Catullus, xxxviii.) strains of Simonides or his imitators. + +CAECILIUS, a native of Kale Akte in Sicily, and hence known as Caecilius +Kalaktinus, lived in Rome at the time of Augustus. He is mentioned with +distinction as a learned Greek rhetorician and grammarian, and was the +author of numerous works, frequently referred to by Plutarch and other +later writers. He may be regarded as one of the most distinguished Greek +rhetoricians of his time. His works, all of which have perished, +comprised, among many others, commentaries on Antipho and Lysias; +several treatises on Demosthenes, among which is a dissertation on the +genuine and spurious speeches, and another comparing that orator with +Cicero; "On the Distinction between Athenian and Asiatic Eloquence"; and +the work on the Sublime, referred to by Longinus (Pauly). The criticism +of Longinus on the above work may be thus summed up: Caecilius is +censured (1) as failing to rise to the dignity of his subject; (2) as +missing the cardinal points; and (3) as failing in practical utility. He +wastes his energy in tedious attempts to define the Sublime, but does +not tell us how it is to be attained (I. i.) He is further blamed for +omitting to deal with the Pathetic (VIII. i. _sqq._) He allows only two +metaphors to be employed together in the same passage (XXXII. ii.) He +extols Lysias as a far greater writer than Plato (_ib._ viii.), and is a +bitter assailant of Plato's style (_ib._) On the whole, he seems to have +been a cold and uninspired critic, finding his chief pleasure in minute +verbal details, and incapable of rising to an elevated and extensive +view of his subject. + +ERATOSTHENES, a native of Cyrene, born in 275 B.C.; appointed by Ptolemy +III. Euergetes as the successor of Kallimachus in the post of librarian +in the great library of Alexandria. He was the teacher of Aristophanes +of Byzantium, and his fame as a man of learning is testified by the +various fanciful titles which were conferred on him, such as "The +Pentathlete," "The second Plato," etc. His great work was a treatise on +geography (Luebker). + +GORGIAS of Leontini, according to some authorities a pupil of +Empedokles, came, when already advanced in years, as ambassador from his +native city to ask help against Syracuse (427 B.C.) Here he attracted +notice by a novel style of eloquence. Some time after he settled +permanently in Greece, wandering from city to city, and acquiring wealth +and fame by practising and teaching rhetoric. We find him last in +Larissa, where he died at the age of a hundred in 375 B.C. As a teacher +of eloquence Gorgias belongs to what is known as the Sicilian school, in +which he followed the steps of his predecessors, Korax and Tisias. At +the time when this school arose the Greek ear was still accustomed to +the rhythm and beat of poetry, and the whole rhetorical system of the +Gorgian school (compare the phrases +gorgieia schemata+, +gorgiazein+) +is built on a poetical plan (Luebker, _Reallexikon des classischen +Alterthums_). Hermogenes, as quoted by Jahn, appears to classify him +among the "hollow pedants" (+hupoxuloi sophistai+), "who," he says, +"talk of vultures as 'living tombs,' to which they themselves would best +be committed, and indulge in many other such frigid conceits." (With the +metaphor censured by Longinus compare Achilles Tatius, III. v. 50, ed. +Didot.) See also Plato, _Phaedrus_, 267, A. + +HEGESIAS of Magnesia, rhetorician and historian, contemporary of Timaeus +(300 B.C.) He belongs to the period of the decline of Greek learning, +and Cicero treats him as the representative of the decline of taste. His +style was harsh and broken in character, and a parody on the Old Attic. +He wrote a life of Alexander the Great, of which Plutarch (_Alexander_, +c. 3) gives the following specimen: "On the day of Alexander's birth the +temple of Artemis in Ephesus was burnt down, a coincidence which +occasions Hegesias to utter a conceit frigid enough to extinguish the +conflagration. 'It was natural,' he says, 'that the temple should be +burnt down, as Artemis was engaged with bringing Alexander into the +world'" (Pauly, with the references). + +HEKATAEUS of Miletus, the logographer; born in 549 B.C., died soon after +the battle of Plataea. He was the author of two works--(1) +periodos +ges+; and (2) +geneelogiai+. The _Periodos_ deals in two books, first +with Europe, then with Asia and Libya. The quotation in the text is from +his genealogies (Luebker). + +ION of Chios, poet, historian, and philosopher, highly distinguished +among his contemporaries, and mentioned by Strabo among the celebrated +men of the island. He won the tragic prize at Athens in 452 B.C., and +Aristophanes (_Peace_, 421 B.C.) speaks of him as already dead. He was +not less celebrated as an elegiac poet, and we still possess some +specimens of his elegies, which are characterised by an Anacreontic +spirit, a cheerful, joyous tone, and even by a certain degree of +inspiration. He wrote also Skolia, Hymns, and Epigrams, and was a pretty +voluminous writer in prose (Pauly). Compare the Scholiast on Ar. +_Peace_, 801. + +KALLISTHENES of Olynthus, a near relative of Aristotle; born in 360, and +educated by the philosopher as fellow-pupil with Alexander, afterwards +the Great. He subsequently visited Athens, where he enjoyed the +friendship of Theophrastus, and devoted himself to history and natural +philosophy. He afterwards accompanied Alexander on his Asiatic +expedition, but soon became obnoxious to the tyrant on account of his +independent and manly bearing, which he carried even to the extreme of +rudeness and arrogance. He at last excited the enmity of Alexander to +such a degree that the latter took the opportunity afforded by the +conspiracy of Hermolaus, in which Kallisthenes was accused of +participating, to rid himself of his former school companion, whom he +caused to be put to death. He was the author of various historical and +scientific works. Of the latter two are mentioned--(1) _On the Nature of +the Eye_; (2) _On the Nature of Plants_. Among his historical works are +mentioned (1) the _Phocian War_ (read "Phocicum" for v. l. "Troikum" in +Cic. _Epp. ad Div._ v. 12); (2) a _History of Greece_ in ten books; (3) ++ta Persika+, apparently identical with the description of Alexander's +march, of which we still possess fragments. As an historian he seems to +have displayed an undue love of recording signs and wonders. Polybius, +however (vi. 45), classes him among the best historical writers. His +style is said by Cicero (_de Or._ ii. 14) to approximate to the +rhetorical (Pauly). + +KLEITARCHUS, a contemporary of Alexander, accompanied that monarch on +his Asiatic expedition, and wrote a history of the same in twelve books, +which must have included at least a short retrospect on the early +history of Asia. His talents are spoken of in high terms, but his credit +as an historian is held very light--"probatur ingenium, fides +infamatur," Quint. x. 1, 74. Cicero also (_de Leg._ i. 2) ranks him very +low. That his credit as an historian was sacrificed to a childish +credulity and a foolish love of fable and adventure is sufficiently +testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). +Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent +description of the wasp taken from Kleitarchus, "feeding on the +mountainside, her home the hollow oak." + +MATRIS, a native of Thebes, author of a panegyric on Herakles, whether +in verse or prose is uncertain. In one passage Athenaeus speaks of him +as an Athenian, but this must be a mistake. Toup restores a verse from +an allusion in Diodorus Siculus (i. 24), which, if genuine, would agree +well with the description given of him by Longinus: +Eraklea kaleesken, +hoti kleos esche dia Heran+ (see Toup ad Long. III. ii.) + +PHILISTUS of Syracuse, a relative of the elder Dionysius, whom he +assisted with his wealth in his attack on the liberty of that city, and +remained with him until 386 B.C., when he was banished by the jealous +suspicions of the tyrant. He retired to Epirus, where he remained until +Dionysius's death. The younger Dionysius recalled him, wishing to employ +him in the character of supporter against Dion. By his instrumentality +it would seem that Dion and Plato were banished from Syracuse. He +commanded the fleet in the struggle between Dion and Dionysius, and lost +a battle, whereupon he was seized and put to death by the people. During +his banishment he wrote his historical work, +ta Sikelika+, divided into +two parts and numbering eleven books. The first division embraced the +history of Sicily from the earliest times down to the capture of +Agrigentum (seven books), and the remaining four books dealt with the +life of Dionysius the elder. He afterwards added a supplement in two +books, giving an account of the younger Dionysius, which he did not, +however, complete. He is described as an imitator, though at a great +distance, of Thucydides, and hence was known as "the little Thucydides." +As an historian he is deficient in conscientiousness and candour; he +appears as a partisan of Dionysius, and seeks to throw a veil over his +discreditable actions. Still he belongs to the most important of the +Greek historians (Luebker). + +THEODORUS of Gadara, a rhetorician in the first century after Christ; +tutor of Tiberius, first in Rome, afterwards in Rhodes, from which town +he called himself a Rhodian, and where Tiberius during his exile +diligently attended his instruction. He was the author of various +grammatical and other works, but his fame chiefly rested on his +abilities as a teacher, in which capacity he seems to have had great +influence (Pauly). He was the author of that famous description of +Tiberius which is given by Suetonius (_Tib._ 57), +pelos haimati +pephuramenos+, "A clod kneaded together with blood."[1] + + [Footnote 1: A remarkable parallel, if not actually an imitation, + occurs in Goethe's _Faust_, "Du Spottgeburt von Dreck und Feuer."] + +THEOPOMPUS, a native of Chios; born 380 B.C. He came to Athens while +still a boy, and studied eloquence under Isokrates, who is said, in +comparing him with another pupil, Ephorus, to have made use of the image +which we find in Longinus, c. ii. "Theopompus," he said, "needs the +curb, Ephorus the spur" (Suidas, quoted by Jahn ad v.) He appeared with +applause in various great cities as an advocate, but especially +distinguished himself in the contest of eloquence instituted by +Artemisia at the obsequies of her husband Mausolus, where he won the +prize. He afterwards devoted himself to historical composition. His +great work was a history of Greece, in which he takes up the thread of +Thucydides's narrative, and carries it on uninterruptedly in twelve +books down to the battle of Knidus, seventeen years later. Here he broke +off, and began a new work entitled _The Philippics_, in fifty-eight +books. This work dealt with the history of Greece in the Macedonian +period, but was padded out to a preposterous bulk by all kinds of +digressions on mythological, historical, or social topics. Only a few +fragments remain. He earned an ill name among ancient critics by the +bitterness of his censures, his love of the marvellous, and the +inordinate length of his digressions. His style is by some critics +censured as feeble, and extolled by others as clear, nervous, and +elevated (Luebker and Pauly). + +TIMAEUS, a native of Tauromenium in Sicily; born about 352 B.C. Being +driven out of Sicily by Agathokles, he lived a retired life for fifty +years in Athens, where he composed his History. Subsequently he returned +to Sicily, and died at the age of ninety-six in 256 B.C. His chief work +was a _History of Sicily_ from the earliest times down to the 129th +Olympiad. It numbered sixty-eight books, and consisted of two principal +divisions, whose limits cannot now be ascertained. In a separate work he +handled the campaigns of Pyrrhus, and also wrote _Olympionikae_, +probably dealing with chronological matters. Timaeus has been severely +criticised and harshly condemned by the ancients, especially by +Polybius, who denies him every faculty required by the historical writer +(xii. 3-15, 23-28). And though Cicero differs from this judgment, yet it +may be regarded as certain that Timaeus was better qualified for the +task of learned compilation than for historical research, and held no +distinguished place among the historians of Greece. His works have +perished, only a few fragments remaining (Luebker). + +ZOILUS, a Greek rhetorician, native of Amphipolis in Macedonia, in the +time probably of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.), who is said by +Vitruvius to have crucified him for his abuse of Homer. He won the name +of Homeromastix, "the scourge of Homer," and was also known as +kuon +rhetorikos+, "the dog of rhetoric," on account of his biting sarcasm; +and his name (as in the case of the English Dennis) came to be used to +signify in general a carping and malicious critic. Suidas mentions two +works of his, written with the object of injuring or destroying the fame +of Homer--(1) _Nine Books against Homer_; and (2) _Censures on Homer_ +(Pauly). + + [The facts contained in the above short notices are taken chiefly + from Luebker's _Reallexikon des classischen Alterthums_, and the + very copious and elaborate _Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen + Alterthumswissenschaft_, edited by Pauly. I have here to acknowledge + the kindness of Dr. Wollseiffen, Gymnasialdirektor in Crefeld, in + placing at my disposal the library of the Crefeld Gymnasium, but for + which these biographical notes, which were put together at the + suggestion of Mr. Lang, could not have been compiled. + CREFELD, _31st July 1890_.] + + +THE END + + +_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_ + + + + +CLASSICAL LIBRARY. + +Texts, Edited with Introductions and Notes, for the use of Advanced +Students; Commentaries and Translations. + + +AESCHYLUS.--THE SUPPLICES. A Revised Text, with Translation. By T. G. + TUCKER, M.A., Professor of Classical Philology in the University of + Melbourne. 8vo. 10s. 6d. + +THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. With Translation. By A. W. VERRALL, Litt.D., + Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 8vo. 7s. 6d. + +AGAMEMNON. With Translation. By A. W. VERRALL, Litt.D. 8vo. 12s. + +AGAMEMNON, CHOEPHOROE, AND EUMENIDES. By A. O. PRICKARD, M.A., Fellow + and Tutor of New College, Oxford. 8vo. [_In preparation._ + + +ARISTOTLE.--THE METAPHYSICS. BOOK I. Translated by a Cambridge + Graduate. 8vo. 5s. + +THE POLITICS. Translated by Rev. J. E. C. WELLDON, M.A., Headmaster of + Harrow. Cr. 8vo. 10s. 6d. + +THE RHETORIC. Translated by the same. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. + +AN INTRODUCTION TO ARISTOTLE'S RHETORIC. With Analysis, Notes, and + Appendices. By E. M. COPE, Fellow and late Tutor of Trinity College, + Cambridge. 8vo. 14s. + +THE ETHICS. Translated by Rev. J. E. C. WELLDON, M.A. Cr. 8vo. + [_In preparation._ + +THE SOPHISTICI ELENCHI. With Translation. By E. POSTE, M.A., Fellow of + Oriel College, Oxford. 8vo. 8s. 6d. + + +ATTIC ORATORS.--FROM ANTIPHON TO ISAEOS. By R. C. JEBB, Litt.D., + Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge. 2 vols. + 8vo. 25s. + + +BABRIUS.--With Lexicon. By Rev. W. G. RUTHERFORD, M.A., LL.D., + Headmaster of Westminster. 8vo. 12s. 6d. + + +CICERO.--THE ACADEMICA. By J. S. REID, Litt.D., Fellow of Caius + College, Cambridge. 8vo. 15s. + +THE ACADEMICS. Translated by the same. 8vo. 5s. 6d. + +SELECT LETTERS. After the Edition of ALBERT WATSON, M.A. Translated by + G. E. JEANS, M.A., Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. Cr. 8vo. + 10s. 6d. + + +EURIPIDES.--MEDEA. Edited by A. W. VERRALL, Litt.D. 8vo. 7s. 6d. + +IPHIGENIA IN AULIS. Edited by E. B. ENGLAND, M.A. 8vo. + [_In the Press._ + + +HERODOTUS.--BOOKS I.-III. THE ANCIENT EMPIRES OF THE EAST. Edited by + A. H. SAYCE, Deputy-Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford. + 8vo. 16s. + +BOOKS IV.-IX. Edited by R. W. MACAN, M.A., Lecturer in Ancient History + at Brasenose College, Oxford. 8vo. [_In preparation._ + +THE HISTORY. Translated by G. C. MACAULAY, M.A. 2 vols. Cr. 8vo. + 18s. + + +HOMER.--THE ILIAD. By WALTER LEAF, Litt.D. 8vo. Books I.-XII. + 14s. Books XIII.-XXIV. 14s. + +THE ILIAD. Translated into English Prose by ANDREW LANG, M.A., WALTER + LEAF, Litt.D., and ERNEST MYERS, M.A. Cr. 8vo. 12s. 6d. + +THE ODYSSEY. Done into English by S. H. BUTCHER, M.A., Professor of + Greek in the University of Edinburgh, and ANDREW LANG, M.A. + Cr. 8vo. 6s. + + +HORACE.--STUDIES, LITERARY AND HISTORICAL, IN THE ODES OF HORACE. By + A. W. VERRALL, Litt.D. 8vo. 8s. 6d. + + +JUVENAL.--THIRTEEN SATIRES OF JUVENAL. By JOHN E. B. MAYOR, M.A., + Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge. Cr. 8vo. + 2 vols. 10s. 6d. each. Vol. I. 10s. 6d. Vol. II. 10s. 6d. + +THIRTEEN SATIRES. Translated by ALEX. LEEPER, M.A., LL.D., Warden of + Trinity College, Melbourne. Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d. + + +KTESIAS.--THE FRAGMENTS OF THE PERSIKA OF KTESIAS. By JOHN GILMORE, + M.A. 8vo. 8s. 6d. + + +LIVY.--BOOKS XXI.-XXV. Translated by A. J. CHURCH, M.A., and W. J. + BRODRIBB, M.A. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. + + +PAUSANIAS.--DESCRIPTION OF GREECE. Translated with Commentary by + J. G. FRAZER, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. + [_In preparation._ + + +PHRYNICHUS.--THE NEW PHRYNICHUS; being a Revised Text of the Ecloga of + the Grammarian Phrynichus. With Introduction and Commentary by Rev. + W. G. RUTHERFORD, M.A., LL.D., Headmaster of Westminster. 8vo. + 18s. + + +PINDAR.--THE EXTANT ODES OF PINDAR. Translated by ERNEST MYERS, M.A. + Cr. 8vo. 5s. + +THE NEMEAN ODES. By J. B. BURY, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, + Dublin. 8vo. [_In the Press._ + + +PLATO.--PHAEDO. By R. D. ARCHER-HIND, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, + Cambridge. 8vo. 8s. 6d. + +PHAEDO. By W. D. GEDDES, LL.D., Principal of the University of + Aberdeen. 8vo. 8s. 6d. + +TIMAEUS. With Translation. By R. D. ARCHER-HIND, M.A. 8vo. 16s. + +THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. Translated by J. LL. DAVIES, M.A., and D. J. + VAUGHAN, M.A. 18mo. 4s. 6d. + +EUTHYPHRO, APOLOGY, CRITO, AND PHAEDO. Translated by F. J. CHURCH. + 18mo. 4s. 6d. + +PHAEDRUS, LYSIS, AND PROTAGORAS. Translated by J. WRIGHT, M.A. 18mo. + 4s. 6d. + + +PLAUTUS.--THE MOSTELLARIA. By WILLIAM RAMSAY, M.A. Edited by G. G. + RAMSAY, M.A., Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow. + 8vo. 14s. + + +PLINY.--CORRESPONDENCE WITH TRAJAN. C. Plinii Caecilii Secundi + Epistulae ad Traianum Imperatorem cum Eiusdem Responsis. By E. G. + HARDY, M.A. 8vo. 10s. 6d. + + +POLYBIUS.--THE HISTORIES OF POLYBIUS. Translated by E. S. SHUCKBURGH, + M.A. 2 vols. Cr. 8vo. 24s. + + +TACITUS.--THE ANNALS. By G. O. HOLBROOKE, M.A., Professor of Latin in + Trinity College, Hartford, U.S.A. With Maps. 8vo. 16s. + +THE ANNALS. Translated by A. J. CHURCH, M.A., and W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. + With Maps. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. + +THE HISTORIES. By Rev. W. A. SPOONER, M.A., Fellow of New College, + Oxford. 8vo. [_In the Press._ + +THE HISTORY. Translated by A. J. CHURCH, M.A., and W. J. BRODRIBB, + M.A. With Map. Cr. 8vo. 6s. + +THE AGRICOLA AND GERMANY, WITH THE DIALOGUE ON ORATORY. Translated by + A. J. CHURCH, M.A., and W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. With Maps. Cr. 8vo. + 4s. 6d. + + +THEOCRITUS, BION, AND MOSCHUS. Translated by A. LANG, M.A. 18mo. + 4s. 6d. + + [*] Also an Edition on Large Paper. Cr. 8vo. 9s. + + +THUCYDIDES.--BOOK IV. A Revision of the Text, Illustrating the + Principal Causes of Corruption in the Manuscripts of this Author. + By Rev. W. G. RUTHERFORD, M.A., LL.D., Headmaster of Westminster. + 8vo. 7s. 6d. + + +VIRGIL.--THE AENEID. Translated by J. W. MACKAIL, M.A., Fellow of + Balliol College, Oxford. Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. + + +XENOPHON.--Translated by H. G. DAKYNS, M.A. In four vols. Vol. I., + containing "The Anabasis" and Books I. and II. of "The Hellenica." + Cr. 8vo. 10s. 6d. [Vol. II. _in the Press._ + + + * * * * * + + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON. + + + * * * * * + * * * * + * * * * * + +Errata Noted by Transcriber: + +The spellings "Heracles" and "Herakles" each occur twice. + +certain tasteless conceits blamed / in Plato + _so in original: "on Plato"?_ + +I.2 And since... + _text shows chapter break in previous line, "writer's ... instead"_ + +... the very maidens in their eyes."[1] + _close quote missing in text_ + ++... choris hekasto ton eidon+ + _text reads_ hekasio [_alternate citation form: 1449b_] + +XXIII.4 And in those words ... + _text shows chapter break in following line, "already ... to the"_ + +... a good and temperate drink."[1] + _close quote missing in text_ + +XXXIX.3 though these are mere shadows... + _chapter break conjectural: no sentence-ends in English text_ + +APPENDIX + _any punctuation anomalies, including missing full stops after + sentence-final parentheses, are as in the original_ + +to ask help against Syracuse (427 B.C.) + _open parenthesis missing in text_ + +the capture of Agrigentum (seven books) + _open parenthesis missing in text_ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Sublime, by Longinus + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE SUBLIME *** + +***** This file should be named 17957.txt or 17957.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/9/5/17957/ + +Produced by Louise Hope, Justin Kerk and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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