I

utterly wrong to reduce these matters to precepts of art. For they say that “the Sublime is innate and cannot be learnt," the only method to obtain it being to possess it naturally. And they think that nature loses half her sublimity when regulated with the pedantic precision of grammarians. This, however, you will not find to be the case, if you bear in mind that, though nature in pathetic subjects likes to be unfettered, she does not at the same time degenerate into a random and unmethodical essence. She is the archetype of all existence, and determines quantities and opportunities, just as method defines their application and use. Moreover, pathos is much more difficult to deal with, left alone, without prop or ballast, and relying merely on its own impetus and force the curb is wanted as often as the spur.2 Demosthenes says the greatest blessing in life is success, and the second greatest prudence, neither of which can exist without the other. A similar remark may be applied to composition, Nature holding the place of success and Art of prudence. But it is from Art alone that we can learn the most important truth of all, namely, that there is much in composition which depends solely on Nature; 3 so that if those who sneer at zealous students would but pay a little attention to these matters, they would cease to consider the present investigation as useless or unnecessary.

1. On the subject of this chapter consult Spectator, No. 414. 2. "Tis more to guide than spur the Muse's steed,

3.

Restrain his fury than provoke his speed."

Illud tamen inprimis testandum est, nihil præcepta atque artes valere, nisi adjuvante naturâ." Quinctilian.

III.

And of the furnace check the lengthening flare.
If some householder I shall only see,

I will insert a coil of storm-sped flame,
And so the house to ashes I'll reduce.

But now I've not yet yelled my noble strain.1

This is not tragedy but bombast ;-coils, vomiting to heaven-making Boreas a piper— and such absurdities as these. The conceit is spoilt by the diction, and rendered obscure rather than terrible by such images. which, if separately and carefully examined, are found to be more contemptible than dreadful. Even in tragedy, which is meant especially for the exhibition of grandiloquence, bombast is unpardonable; still less, then, can it be allowed in the relation of facts. For that is what makes Gorgias the Leontine laughable when he calls Xerxes "the Jupiter of the Persians," and talks about "vultures" being "living tombs." 3 So also there are many passages of Callisthenes 4 which are not sublime but mediocre; and chiefly in the works of Clitarchus,5 who was all tinsel and "blew," Sophocles says, "on small pipes, but without a regu

I. From a lost tragedy by Eschylus.

2. A Sicilian rhetorician, born B.C. 480.

3. "Viva videns vivo sepeliri viscera busto." Lucretius, V, 291. So Ennius, Vulturus in silvis miserum mandebat homonem,

Heu, quam crudeli condebat membra sepulcro!"

4. Recommended by Aristotle to Alexander the Great, but subsequently put to death by that monarch for being concerned in a plot against his life.

5. Author of an account of the exploits of Alexander the Great.

6

lator." Amphicrates,' Hegesias, and Matris, have all the same fault; they fancy themselves uttering inspired thoughts, when in reality they are talking childish nonsense. Nothing is more difficult to guard against than bombast, since all men have a strong tendency in this direction, afraid of being thought to want power of language, and trusting to the old saying that “to fail in great attempts is a great failure."

Compositions, like the human body, should be free from swellings where there are no pretensions on the one side, no expectations can be disappointed on the other. Hence it is they say "Nothing is dryer than a dropsical man." Bombast oversteps the bounds of

6. See Cicero ad Atticum, II, 19.

7. An Athenian rhetorician who flourished about B. C. 70. He was exiled from Athens, and went to Seleuceia, the inhabitants of which place asked him to teach rhetoric, but he refused, saying the vessel was too small for a dolphin.

8. A Magnesian, mentioned by Cicero, de Oratore, 226. The following story is told by Plutarch in illustration of his style. It chanced that Alexander the Great was born the same night that the temple of Diana was burned to the ground. "No wonder," says Hegesias, "the goddess couldn't be there to save her shrine, as she was away assisting at the birth of the hero." "Such frigidity," observes the biographer, was enough to put the fire out of itself."

the sublime, but puerility is directly opposed to it. The latter is a pedantic conception, which sinks, from overelaboration, into frigidity. This is the mistake of those who aim at what is grandiose and perfect, or still more what is pleasing, and rush into a mean and falsely imitative style. A third kind of imperfection, closely allied to the former, is what Theodorus " called unseasonable inflation, that is to say, pathos where it is not wanted, or free from restraint when it should be kept within bounds. 12 For many orators are carried away into private emotions of their own, and such as are quite distinct from the point at issue, so that they look foolish in the eyes of dispassionate hearers, like drunkards before sober men. But of the pathetic we will speak elsewhere.

IV.

RESPECTING Frigidity, that other failing of which we spoke, Timæus,' though a scholar and a man of some tact, is full of it. He is fond of finding faults in the writings of others, but blind to his own, and, from his love for extravagant conceits, ever degenerating into childishness. I will only quote one or two examples, as Cæcilius has already noticed a great number. In

II. A rhetorician who taught at Rhodes.

12. "Let us, instead of writing finely, try to write naturally; not to hunt after lofty expressions to deliver mean ideas, nor be for ever gaping, when we only mean to deliver a whisper." Goldsmith, Present state of Polite Learning, ch. xi.

1. A Sicilian historian, surnamed the " Censurer," from his habit of perpetually finding fault.

praise of Alexander the Great he says, “A man who conquered Asia in a shorter time than it took Isocrates' to write the panegyric on the war against the Persians." Fancy his comparing the Macedonian hero to a rhetorician! O Timæus, you might as well say that the Spartans are not as brave as Isocrates, since it took them thirty years to reduce Messina, and Isocrates only ten to compose his panegyric. About the Athenians who were defeated in Sicily he says: "It was because they did not sufficiently venerate Hermes, 3 and it happened that in the enemy's camp there was a man named Hermocrates, the son of Hermon, who was descended from the injured deity." I wonder he did not say it was "because Dionysius the Tyrant treated Dia and Heracles 4 in an impious manner, that Dion and Heraclides deprived him of his crown." But why speak of Timæus and his faults, when those mighty masters, Xenophon and Plato, though of the Socratic school, sometimes forget themselves and descend to trivialities? The former writes in his Spartan Republic, "Their voice is heard less than that of stone statues: you will turn aside their gaze less easily than

2. Born B.C. 436. Author of many beautiful orations, which were intended for private perusal rather than for public speeches. Mentioned thus by Quinctilian, X, iv. 4. "Temporis quoque debet esse modus. Nam quod Cinnæ Smyrnam novem annis accepimus scriptam, et Panegyricum Isocratis, qui parcissime decem annis dicunt elaboratum, ad oratorem nihil pertinet; cujus nullum erit, si tam tardum fuerit, auxilium."

3. Mercury.

4. Jupiter and Hercules: thus written to preserve the pun.