Longinus — On the Sublime

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+.]

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.

... "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.

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.]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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.]

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."]

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.

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....

... 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.]

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.]

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.

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.

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.]

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.]

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.

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.]

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.]

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.]

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.

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 ...

... 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.]

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.]

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.

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.]

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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.]

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).]

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.]

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.

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.

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.]