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.2It 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.3If 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.4In 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.2Now if he made this omission from a belief that the Sublimeand 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 Aloëus—
“Highly they raged
To pile huge Ossa on the Olympian peak,And Pelion with all his waving treesOn Ossa’s crest to raise, and climb the sky;”
and the yet more tremendous climax—
“And now had they accomplished it.”
3And 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.4If, 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 “finemadness” 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.2How, 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 eleventhOdyssey11is great, and grander than anything he could have said.3It 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.4Hence 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 earth12—a measure, one might say, not less appropriate to Homer’s genius than to the stature of his discord.5How different is that touch of Hesiod’s in his description of sorrow—if theShieldis really one of his works: “rheum from her nostrils flowed”13—an image not terrible, but disgusting. Now consider how Homer gives dignity to his divine persons—
“As far as lies his airy ken, who sitsOn some tall crag, and scans the wine-dark sea:So far extends the heavenly coursers’ stride.”14
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.6Sublime 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 aloudWith fearful voice, lest the earth, rent asunderBy Neptune’s mighty arm, forthwith revealTo mortal and immortal eyes those hallsSo drear and dank, which e’en the gods abhor.”15
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.7A 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.8Far 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 charmèd billows parted: on they flew.”16
9And 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.”
10I 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.”17
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.”11In 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.”18
12But there is another and a very interesting aspect of Homer’s mind. When we turn to theOdysseywe 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 theIliad, in proof of which we may mention, among many other indications, the introduction in theOdysseyof 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. TheOdysseyis, in fact, a sort of epilogue to theIliad—
“There warrior Ajax lies, Achilles there,And there Patroclus, godlike counsellor;There lies my own dear son.”19
13And for the same reason, I imagine, whereas in theIliad, which was written when his genius was in its prime, the whole structure of the poem is founded on action and struggle, in theOdysseyhe generally prefers the narrative style, which is proper to old age. Hence Homer in hisOdysseymay 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.14In saying this I am not forgetting the fine storm-pieces in theOdyssey, the story of the Cyclops,20and 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 Isaid, 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,21the tale of Odysseus’s comrades being changed by Circe into swine22(“whimpering porkers” Zoïlus called them), and how Zeus was fed like a nestling by the doves,23and how Odysseus passed ten nights on the shipwreck without food,24and the improbable incidents in the slaying of the suitors.25When Homer nods like this, we must be content to say that he dreams as Zeus might dream.15Another reason for these remarks on theOdysseyis 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, thatone 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 blestWho sits, and, gazing on thy face,Hears thee discourse with eloquent lips,
And marks thy lovely smile.
This, this it is that made my heartSo wildly flutter in my breast;Whene’er I look on thee, my voice
Falters, and faints, and fails;
My tongue’s benumbed; a subtle fireThrough 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.”
3Is it not wonderful how at the same momentsoul, 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.4The 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 rangeWith 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.5One 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 heartIn terror dire: death lours on every wave.”26
6Aratus has tried to give a new turn to this last thought—
“But one frail timber shields them from their doom,”27—
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.7Similarly Archilochus in his description of the shipwreck, and similarly Demosthenes when he describes how the news came of the taking of Elatea28—“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.
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.2Now 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 thesoul from the body. No sooner is the support of sublimity removed than the whole becomes lifeless, nerveless, and dull.
3There 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,29but amplification can only subsist with a certain prolixity and diffusiveness.2The most general definition of amplification wouldexplain 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.3Hence 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.4And, 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.5Such points, however, I resign to your more competent judgment.
To resume, then, the high-strung sublimity ofDemosthenes 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 hisRepublic: “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 anotherwith horns and hoofs of iron, and slay one another in their insatiable desires.”30
2We 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.3Thus 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 illustratethis point, had not Ammonius and his school already classified and noted down the various examples.4Now 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.”31And 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?
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 withsublimity, 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.2And 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?3Yet 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.32Theterm 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.2Poets 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 meThose maids with bloody face and serpent hair:See, see, they come, they’re here, they spring upon me!”33
And again—
“Ah, ah, she’ll slay me! whither shall I fly?”34
The poet when he wrote like this saw the Erinyes with his own eyes, and he almost compels his readers to see them too.3Euripides 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, butby 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.”35
4Take, 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 boundForth on the void and cavernous vault of air.His father mounts another steed, and ridesWith warning voice guiding his son. ‘Drive there!Turn, turn thy car this way.’”36
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.”37
5Aeschylus is especially bold in forming imagessuited to his heroic themes: as when he says of his “Seven against Thebes”—
“Seven mighty men, and valiant captains, slewOver an iron-bound shield a bull, then dippedTheir fingers in the blood, and all invokedAres, Enyo, and death-dealing FlightIn witness of their oaths,”38
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.6Aeschylus with a strange violence of language represents the palace of Lycurgus aspossessedat the appearance of Dionysus—
“The halls with rapture thrill, the roof’s inspired.”39
Here Euripides, in borrowing the image, softens its extravagance40—
“And all the mountain felt the god.”41
7Sophocles 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,42and where he tells how Achilles appeared to the Greeks over his tomb just as they wereputting out to sea on their departure from Troy.43This 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.
8To return, then,44in 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 Furies45—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 armsAbout me cast, to drag me down to hell,”46
these are the hallucinations of a madman?
9Wherein, 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 merelyconvince the hearer, but enthralls him. Such is the effect of those words of Demosthenes:47“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!”10Compare 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.11In 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.
12On 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.48
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.
2Demosthenes 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.Theydid 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 themen who faced the foe at Marathon!”49He 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.3It 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!”50
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; andthe 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.4And 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.51Let us mark his words: “Those whofaced the foeat Marathon; those whofought in the sea-fightsof Salamis and Artemisium; those whostood in the ranksat Plataea.” Note that he nowhere says “those whoconquered,” artfully suppressing any word which might hint at the successful issue of thosebattles, 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.”
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.52If 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 anotherword; 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.2To 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 itisa 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.3A 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.