Part 4

4 Now what I am speaking of is not plagiarism, but resembles the process of copying from fair forms or statues or works of skilled labour. Nor in my opinion would so many fair flowers of imagery have bloomed among the philosophical dogmas of Plato, nor would he have risen so often to the language and topics of poetry, had he not engaged heart and soul in a contest for precedence with Homer, like a young champion entering the lists against a veteran. It may be that he showed too ambitious a spirit in venturing on such a duel; but nevertheless it was not without advantage to him: "for strife like this," as Hesiod says, "is good for men."[2] And where shall we find a more glorious arena or a nobler crown than here, where even defeat at the hands of our predecessors is not ignoble?

[Footnote 2: _Opp._ 29.]

XIV

Therefore it is good for us also, when we are labouring on some subject which demands a lofty and majestic style, to imagine to ourselves how Homer might have expressed this or that, or how Plato or Demosthenes would have clothed it with sublimity, or, in history, Thucydides. For by our fixing an eye of rivalry on those high examples they will become like beacons to guide us, and will perhaps lift up our souls to the fulness of the stature we conceive.

2 And it would be still better should we try to realise this further thought, How would Homer, had he been here, or how would Demosthenes, have listened to what I have written, or how would they have been affected by it? For what higher incentive to exertion could a writer have than to imagine such judges or such an audience of his works, and to give an account of his writings with heroes like these to criticise and look on?

3 Yet more inspiring would be the thought, With what feelings will future ages through all time read these my works? If this should awaken a fear in any writer that he will not be intelligible to his contemporaries it will necessarily follow that the conceptions of his mind will be crude, maimed, and abortive, and lacking that ripe perfection which alone can win the applause of ages to come.

XV

The dignity, grandeur, and energy of a style largely depend on a proper employment of images, a term which I prefer to that usually given.[1] The term image in its most general acceptation includes every thought, howsoever presented, which issues in speech. But the term is now generally confined to those cases when he who is speaking, by reason of the rapt and excited state of his feelings, imagines himself to see what he is talking about, and produces a similar illusion in his hearers.

[Footnote 1: +eidôlopoiïai+, "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._ +hêdusmenô logô chôris hekastô tôn eidôn+, 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: § 2.]

[Footnote 14: Comp. Petronius, _Satyricon_, ch. i. _passim_.]

[Footnote 15: _Orest._ 264.]

9 Wherein, then, lies the force of an oratorical image? Doubtless in adding energy and passion in a hundred different ways to a speech; but especially in this, that when it is mingled with the practical, argumentative parts of an oration, it does not merely convince the hearer, but enthralls him. Such is the effect of those words of Demosthenes:[16] "Supposing, now, at this moment a cry of alarm were heard outside the assize courts, and the news came that the prison was broken open and the prisoners escaped, is there any man here who is such a trifler that he would not run to the rescue at the top of his speed? But suppose some one came forward with the information that they had been set at liberty by the defendant, what then? Why, he would be lynched on the spot!"

[Footnote 16: _c. Timocrat._ 208.]

10 Compare also the way in which Hyperides excused himself, when he was proceeded against for bringing in a bill to liberate the slaves after Chaeronea. "This measure," he said, "was not drawn up by any orator, but by the battle of Chaeronea." This striking image, being thrown in by the speaker in the midst of his proofs, enables him by one bold stroke to carry all mere logical objection before him.

11 In all such cases our nature is drawn towards that which affects it most powerfully: hence an image lures us away from an argument: judgment is paralysed, matters of fact disappear from view, eclipsed by the superior blaze. Nor is it surprising that we should be thus affected; for when two forces are thus placed in juxtaposition, the stronger must always absorb into itself the weaker.

12 On sublimity of thought, and the manner in which it arises from native greatness of mind, from imitation, and from the employment of images, this brief outline must suffice.[17]

[Footnote 17: He passes over chs. x. xi.]

XVI

The subject which next claims our attention is that of figures of speech. I have already observed that figures, judiciously employed, play an important part in producing sublimity. It would be a tedious, or rather an endless task, to deal with every detail of this subject here; so in order to establish what I have laid down, I will just run over, without further preface, a few of those figures which are most effective in lending grandeur to language.

2 Demosthenes is defending his policy; his natural line of argument would have been: "You did not do wrong, men of Athens, to take upon yourselves the struggle for the liberties of Hellas. Of this you have home proofs. _They_ did not wrong who fought at Marathon, at Salamis, and Plataea." Instead of this, in a sudden moment of supreme exaltation he bursts out like some inspired prophet with that famous appeal to the mighty dead: "Ye did not, could not have done wrong. I swear it by the men who faced the foe at Marathon!"[1] He employs the figure of adjuration, to which I will here give the name of Apostrophe. And what does he gain by it? He exalts the Athenian ancestors to the rank of divinities, showing that we ought to invoke those who have fallen for their country as gods; he fills the hearts of his judges with the heroic pride of the old warriors of Hellas; forsaking the beaten path of argument he rises to the loftiest altitude of grandeur and passion, and commands assent by the startling novelty of his appeal; he applies the healing charm of eloquence, and thus "ministers to the mind diseased" of his countrymen, until lifted by his brave words above their misfortunes they begin to feel that the disaster of Chaeronea is no less glorious than the victories of Marathon and Salamis. All this he effects by the use of one figure, and so carries his hearers away with him.

[Footnote 1: _De Cor._ 208.]

3 It is said that the germ of this adjuration is found in Eupolis--

"By mine own fight, by Marathon, I say, Who makes my heart to ache shall rue the day!"[2]

But there is nothing grand in the mere employment of an oath. Its grandeur will depend on its being employed in the right place and the right manner, on the right occasion, and with the right motive. In Eupolis the oath is nothing beyond an oath; and the Athenians to whom it is addressed are still prosperous, and in need of no consolation. Moreover, the poet does not, like Demosthenes, swear by the departed heroes as deities, so as to engender in his audience a just conception of their valour, but diverges from the champions to the battle--a mere lifeless thing. But Demosthenes has so skilfully managed the oath that in addressing his countrymen after the defeat of Chaeronea he takes out of their minds all sense of disaster; and at the same time, while proving that no mistake has been made, he holds up an example, confirms his arguments by an oath, and makes his praise of the dead an incentive to the living.

[Footnote 2: In his (lost) "Demis."]

4 And to rebut a possible objection which occurred to him--"Can you, Demosthenes, whose policy ended in defeat, swear by a victory?"--the orator proceeds to measure his language, choosing his very words so as to give no handle to opponents, thus showing us that even in our most inspired moments reason ought to hold the reins.[3] Let us mark his words: "Those who _faced the foe_ at Marathon; those who _fought in the sea-fights_ of Salamis and Artemisium; those who _stood in the ranks_ at Plataea." Note that he nowhere says "those who _conquered_," artfully suppressing any word which might hint at the successful issue of those battles, which would have spoilt the parallel with Chaeronea. And for the same reason he steals a march on his audience, adding immediately: "All of whom, Aeschines,--not those who were successful only,--were buried by the state at the public expense."

[Footnote 3: Lit. "That even in the midst of the revels of Bacchus we ought to remain sober."]

XVII

There is one truth which my studies have led me to observe, which perhaps it would be worth while to set down briefly here. It is this, that by a natural law the Sublime, besides receiving an acquisition of strength from figures, in its turn lends support in a remarkable manner to them. To explain: the use of figures has a peculiar tendency to rouse a suspicion of dishonesty, and to create an impression of treachery, scheming, and false reasoning; especially if the person addressed be a judge, who is master of the situation, and still more in the case of a despot, a king, a military potentate, or any of those who sit in high places.[1] If a man feels that this artful speaker is treating him like a silly boy and trying to throw dust in his eyes, he at once grows irritated, and thinking that such false reasoning implies a contempt of his understanding, he perhaps flies into a rage and will not hear another word; or even if he masters his resentment, still he is utterly indisposed to yield to the persuasive power of eloquence. Hence it follows that a figure is then most effectual when it appears in disguise.

[Footnote 1: Reading with Cobet, +kai pantas tous en huperochais+.]

2 To allay, then, this distrust which attaches to the use of figures we must call in the powerful aid of sublimity and passion. For art, once associated with these great allies, will be overshadowed by their grandeur and beauty, and pass beyond the reach of all suspicion. To prove this I need only refer to the passage already quoted: "I swear it by the men," etc. It is the very brilliancy of the orator's figure which blinds us to the fact that it _is_ a figure. For as the fainter lustre of the stars is put out of sight by the all-encompassing rays of the sun, so when sublimity sheds its light all round the sophistries of rhetoric they become invisible.

3 A similar illusion is produced by the painter's art. When light and shadow are represented in colour, though they lie on the same surface side by side, it is the light which meets the eye first, and appears not only more conspicuous but also much nearer. In the same manner passion and grandeur of language, lying nearer to our souls by reason both of a certain natural affinity and of their radiance, always strike our mental eye before we become conscious of the figure, throwing its artificial character into the shade and hiding it as it were in a veil.

XVIII

The figures of question and interrogation[1] also possess a specific quality which tends strongly to stir an audience and give energy to the speaker's words. "Or tell me, do you want to run about asking one another, is there any news? what greater news could you have than that a man of Macedon is making himself master of Hellas? Is Philip dead? Not he. However, he is ill. But what is that to you? Even if anything happens to him you will soon raise up another Philip."[2] Or this passage: "Shall we sail against Macedon? And where, asks one, shall we effect a landing? The war itself will show us where Philip's weak places lie."[2] Now if this had been put baldly it would have lost greatly in force. As we see it, it is full of the quick alternation of question and answer. The orator replies to himself as though he were meeting another man's objections. And this figure not only raises the tone of his words but makes them more convincing.

[Footnote 1: See Note.]

[Footnote 2: _Phil._ i. 44.]

2 For an exhibition of feeling has then most effect on an audience when it appears to flow naturally from the occasion, not to have been laboured by the art of the speaker; and this device of questioning and replying to himself reproduces the moment of passion. For as a sudden question addressed to an individual will sometimes startle him into a reply which is an unguarded expression of his genuine sentiments, so the figure of question and interrogation blinds the judgment of an audience, and deceives them into a belief that what is really the result of labour in every detail has been struck out of the speaker by the inspiration of the moment.

There is one passage in Herodotus which is generally credited with extraordinary sublimity....

XIX

... The removal of connecting particles gives a quick rush and "torrent rapture" to a passage, the writer appearing to be actually almost left behind by his own words. There is an example in Xenophon: "Clashing their shields together they pushed, they fought, they slew, they fell."[1] And the words of Eurylochus in the _Odyssey_--

"We passed at thy command the woodland's shade; We found a stately hall built in a mountain glade."[2]

Words thus severed from one another without the intervention of stops give a lively impression of one who through distress of mind at once halts and hurries in his speech. And this is what Homer has expressed by using the figure _Asyndeton_.

[Footnote 1: Xen. _Hel._ iv. 3. 19.]

[Footnote 2: _Od._ x. 251.]

XX

But nothing is so conducive to energy as a combination of different figures, when two or three uniting their resources mutually contribute to the vigour, the cogency, and the beauty of a speech. So Demosthenes in his speech against Meidias repeats the same words and breaks up his sentences in one lively descriptive passage: "He who receives a blow is hurt in many ways which he could not even describe to another, by gesture, by look, by tone."

2 Then, to vary the movement of his speech, and prevent it from standing still (for stillness produces rest, but passion requires a certain disorder of language, imitating the agitation and commotion of the soul), he at once dashes off in another direction, breaking up his words again, and repeating them in a different form, "by gesture, by look, by tone--when insult, when hatred, is added to violence, when he is struck with the fist, when he is struck as a slave!" By such means the orator imitates the action of Meidias, dealing blow upon blow on the minds of his judges. Immediately after like a hurricane he makes a fresh attack: "When he is struck with the fist, when he is struck in the face; this is what moves, this is what maddens a man, unless he is inured to outrage; no one could describe all this so as to bring home to his hearers its bitterness."[1] You see how he preserves, by continual variation, the intrinsic force of these repetitions and broken clauses, so that his order seems irregular, and conversely his irregularity acquires a certain measure of order.

[Footnote 1: _Meid._ 72.]

XXI

Supposing we add the conjunctions, after the practice of Isocrates and his school: "Moreover, I must not omit to mention that he who strikes a blow may hurt in many ways, in the first place by gesture, in the second place by look, in the third and last place by his tone." If you compare the words thus set down in logical sequence with the expressions of the "Meidias," you will see that the rapidity and rugged abruptness of passion, when all is made regular by connecting links, will be smoothed away, and the whole point and fire of the passage will at once disappear.

2 For as, if you were to bind two runners together, they will forthwith be deprived of all liberty of movement, even so passion rebels against the trammels of conjunctions and other particles, because they curb its free rush and destroy the impression of mechanical impulse.

XXII

The figure hyperbaton belongs to the same class. By hyperbaton we mean a transposition of words or thoughts from their usual order, bearing unmistakably the characteristic stamp of violent mental agitation. In real life we often see a man under the influence of rage, or fear, or indignation, or beside himself with jealousy, or with some other out of the interminable list of human passions, begin a sentence, and then swerve aside into some inconsequent parenthesis, and then again double back to his original statement, being borne with quick turns by his distress, as though by a shifting wind, now this way, now that, and playing a thousand capricious variations on his words, his thoughts, and the natural order of his discourse. Now the figure hyperbaton is the means which is employed by the best writers to imitate these signs of natural emotion. For art is then perfect when it seems to be nature, and nature, again, is most effective when pervaded by the unseen presence of art. An illustration will be found in the speech of Dionysius of Phocaea in Herodotus: "A hair's breadth now decides our destiny, Ionians, whether we shall live as freemen or as slaves--ay, as runaway slaves. Now, therefore, if you choose to endure a little hardship, you will be able at the cost of some present exertion to overcome your enemies."[1]

[Footnote 1: vi. 11.]

2 The regular sequence here would have been: "Ionians, now is the time for you to endure a little hardship; for a hair's breadth will now decide our destiny." But the Phocaean transposes the title "Ionians," rushing at once to the subject of alarm, as though in the terror of the moment he had forgotten the usual address to his audience. Moreover, he inverts the logical order of his thoughts, and instead of beginning with the necessity for exertion, which is the point he wishes to urge upon them, he first gives them the reason for that necessity in the words, "a hair's breadth now decides our destiny," so that his words seem unpremeditated, and forced upon him by the crisis.