Part 8 (1/2)

x.x.xVIII

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 surpa.s.sed that of Sparta in her services to h.e.l.las, 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 ma.s.sacre 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 a.s.sailants, and that they were buried with javelins, are perhaps hard sayings, but not incredible, for the reasons already explained. We can see that these circ.u.mstances have not been dragged in to produce a hyperbole, but that the hyperbole has grown naturally out of the circ.u.mstances.

[Footnote 5: vii. 225.]

5 For, as I am never tired of explaining, in actions and pa.s.sions 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 s.p.a.ce severely pinches; 'Twas smaller than the last despatch from Sparta by some inches.”

6 For mirth is one of the pa.s.sions, 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.

x.x.xIX

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 a.s.similate 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 ???? ????e a???, and putting a full stop at p?st??.]

4 Now to give an instance: that is doubtless a sublime thought, indeed wonderfully fine, which Demosthenes applies to his decree: t??t? t?

??f?sa t?? t?te t? p??e? pe??st??ta ???d???? pa?e??e?? ?p???se? ?spe?

??f??, ”This decree caused the danger which then hung round our city to pa.s.s 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 n.o.blest and most magnificent of all measures, and hence forming the chief const.i.tuent in the finest metre we know, the heroic.

[And it is with great judgment that the words ?spe? ??f?? are reserved till the end.[2]] Supposing we transpose them from their proper place and read, say t??t? t? ??f?sa ?spe? ??f?? ?p???se t?? t?te ???d????

pa?e??e??--nay, let us merely cut off one syllable, reading ?p???se pa?e??e?? ?? ??f??--and you will understand how close is the unison between harmony and sublimity. In the pa.s.sage before us the words ?spe?

??f?? move first in a heavy measure, which is metrically equivalent to four short syllables: but on removing one syllable, and reading ??

??f??, the grandeur of movement is at once crippled by the abridgment.

So conversely if you lengthen into ?spe?e? ??f??, 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 pa.s.sage.