On the Sublime Part 6

"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: "Pa.s.sing from the city of Elephantine you will sail upwards until you reach a level plain. You cross this region, and there entering another s.h.i.+p you will sail on for two days, and so reach a great city, whose name is Meroe."[3] Observe how he takes us, as it were, by the hand, and leads us in spirit through these places, making us no longer readers, but spectators. Such a direct personal address always has the effect of placing the reader in the midst of the scene of action.

[Footnote 3: ii. 29.]

3 And by pointing your words to the individual reader, instead of to the readers generally, as in the line

"Thou had'st not known for whom Tydides fought,"[4]

and thus exciting him by an appeal to himself, you will rouse interest, and fix attention, and make him a partaker in the action of the book.

[Footnote 4: _Il._ v. 85.]

XXVII

Sometimes, again, a writer in the midst of a narrative in the third person suddenly steps aside and makes a transition to the first. It is a kind of figure which strikes like a sudden outburst of pa.s.sion. Thus Hector in the _Iliad_

"With mighty voice called to the men of Troy To storm the s.h.i.+ps, and leave the b.l.o.o.d.y spoils: If any I behold with willing foot Shunning the s.h.i.+ps, 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d that here this hour they all might take Their last, their latest meal! Who day by day Make here your muster, to devour and waste The substance of my son: have ye not heard When children at your fathers' knee the deeds And prowess of your king?"[3]

[Footnote 3: _Od._ iv. 681.]

XXVIII

None, I suppose, would dispute the fact that periphrasis tends much to sublimity. For, as in music the simple air is rendered more pleasing by the addition of harmony, so in language periphrasis often sounds in concord with a literal expression, adding much to the beauty of its tone,--provided always that it is not inflated and harsh, but agreeably blended.

2 To confirm this one pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sage, he gives to his eulogy a much wider and loftier range of sentiment. Let us add that inimitable phrase in Herodotus: "Those Scythians who pillaged the temple were smitten from heaven by a female malady."

[Footnote 2: _Cyrop._ i. 5. 12.]

XXIX

But this figure, more than any other, is very liable to abuse, and great restraint is required in employing it. It soon begins to carry an impression of feebleness, savours of vapid trifling, and arouses disgust. Hence Plato, who is very bold and not always happy in his use of figures, is much ridiculed for saying in his _Laws_ that "neither gold nor silver wealth must be allowed to establish itself in our State,"[1] suggesting, it is said, that if he had forbidden property in oxen or sheep he would certainly have spoken of it as "bovine and ovine wealth."

[Footnote 1: _De Legg._ vii. 801, B.]

2 Here we must quit this part of our subject, hoping, my dear friend Terentian, that your learned curiosity will be satisfied with this short excursion on the use of figures in their relation to the Sublime. All those which I have mentioned help to render a style more energetic and impa.s.sioned; and pa.s.sion contributes as largely to sublimity as the delineation of character to amus.e.m.e.nt.

x.x.x

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 ...

x.x.xI

... 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 a.n.a.logy, 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 pa.s.sages 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 s.h.i.+p 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.]

x.x.xII

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.