From “On the Sublime.” Chapters ix. and x. complete. From the text of Morley.

BUT though the first and most important of these divisions, I mean elevation of thought, be rather a natural than an acquired qualification, yet we ought to spare no pains to educate our souls to grandeur, and impregnate them, as it were, with generous and enlarged ideas.

  “But how,” it will be asked, “can this be done?” I hinted in another place that this sublimity is an echo of the inward greatness of the soul. Hence it comes to pass that a bare thought without words challenges admiration for the sake of its grandeur alone. Such is the silence of Ajax in the “Odyssey” (Book XI., v. 565), which is undoubtedly great, and far loftier than anything he could have said.

  To arrive at excellence like this, then, we must needs presuppose as the primary cause of it that an orator of the true genius must have no mean and ungenerous way of thinking. For it is impossible for those who have groveling and servile ideas, or are engaged in sordid pursuits all their lives, to produce anything worthy of admiration and the praise of all posterity. But grand and sublime expressions must in reason flow from them alone whose conceptions are stored and big with greatness. And thus it is that grand thoughts are commonly found to have been uttered by men of the loftiest minds. When Parmenio cried, “I would accept these proposals if I were Alexander,” Alexander replied, “And so would I if I were Parmenio.” His answer showed the greatness of his mind.

  So the space between heaven and earth marks out the vast reach and capacity of Homer’s genius when he says:—

	“While scarce the skies her horrid head can bound,
	She stalks on earth.”

  This description may with no less justice be applied to Homer’s genius than to Discord.

  But what disparity, what a fall there is in Hesiod’s description of Melancholy, if, at least, the poem of “The Shield” may be ascribed to him:—

“A filthy moisture from her nostrils flowed.”

  He has not represented his image as terrible, but hateful.

  On the other hand, with what majesty and pomp does Homer exalt his deities:—

	“Far as a shepherd from some spot on high
	O’er the wide main extends his boundless eye,
	Through such a space of air, with thundering sound,
	At one long leap th’ immortal coursers bound.”

  He measures the leap of the horses by the extent of the world. And who is there that, considering the exceeding greatness of the space, would not, with good reason, cry out that, “if the steeds of the Deity were to take a second leap, the world itself would want room for it”?

  How grand, too, are those creations of the imagination in the combat of the gods:—

	“Heaven in loud thunders bids the trumpet sound,
	And wide beneath them groans the rending ground.
	Deep in the dismal regions of the dead
	Th’ infernal monarch reared his horrid head.
	Leaped from his throne, lest Neptune’s arm should lay
	His dark dominions open to the day,
	And pour in light on Pluto’s drear abodes,
	Abhorred by men, and dreadful ev’n to gods.”

  What a prospect is here, my friend! The earth laid open to its centre; Tartarus itself disclosed to view; the whole world turned upside down and rent in twain; all things at once—heaven, hell, things mortal and immortal share alike the toil and danger of that battle! These are terrific representations, but if not allegorically understood, are inapplicable to deity, and violate the laws of propriety. For Homer, in my opinion, when he relates the wounds, the seditions, the retaliations, imprisonments, and tears of the deities, with those evils of every kind under which they languish, has to the utmost of his power exalted the heroes who fought at Troy into gods, and degraded the gods into men. Nay, he makes their condition worse than human; for when man is overwhelmed with misfortunes, he has a reserve in the peaceful haven of death. But he makes the infelicity of the gods as everlasting as their nature.

  But how far does he excel those descriptions of the combats of the gods, when he sets a deity in his true light, and paints him in all his majesty, purity, and perfection; as in that description of Neptune, which has been handled already by several writers:—

	“Fierce as he passed the lofty mountains nod,
	The forests shake, earth trembled as he trod,
	And felt the footsteps of the immortal god.
	His whirling wheels the glassy surface sweep;
	Th’ enormous monsters, rolling o’er the deep,
	Gambol around him on the wat’ry way,
	And heavy whales in awkward measures play;
	The sea subsiding spreads a level plain,
	Exults and owns the monarch of the main:
	The parting waves before his coursers fly;
	The wond’ring waters leave the axle dry.”

  So likewise the Jewish legislator,—no ordinary person,—having conceived a just idea of the power of God, has nobly expressed it in the beginning of his law. “And God said: What? ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. ‘Let the earth be,’ and the earth was.”

  I hope my friend will not think me tedious if I add another quotation from the poet, where he treats of mortal things; that you may see how he is accustomed to mount along with his heroes to heights of grandeur. A thick cloud and embarrassing darkness as of night envelops the Grecian army, and suspends the battle. Ajax, perplexed what course to take, prays thus:—

	“Accept a warrior’s prayer, eternal Jove;
	This cloud of darkness from the Greeks remove;
	Give us but light, and let us see our foes,
	We’ll bravely fall, though Jove himself oppose.”

  The feelings of Ajax are here expressed to the life: it is Ajax himself. He begs not for life; a request like that would be beneath a hero. But because in that hampering darkness he could display his valor in no illustrious exploit, and his great heart was unable to brook a sluggish inactivity in the field of action, he prays for instant light, not doubting to crown his fall with some meritorious deed, though Jove himself should oppose his efforts. Here, indeed, Homer, like a brisk and favorable gale, swells the fury of the battle; he is as warm and impetuous as his heroes, or (as he says of Hector)—

	“With such a furious rage his steps advance,
	As when the god of battles shakes his lance,
	Or baleful flames, on some thick forest cast,
	Swift marching, lay the wooded mountain waste:
	Around his mouth a foamy moisture stands.”

  Yet Homer himself shows in the “Odyssey” (the remark I am going to add is necessary on several accounts) that when a great genius is in decline, a fondness for the fabulous clings fast to age. Many arguments may be brought to prove that this poem was written after the “Iliad”; but this especially, that in the “Odyssey” he has introduced the sequel of those calamities which began at Troy as so many episodes of the Trojan War; and that therein he renders to his heroes the tribute of mourning and lamentations, as that which he had previously resolved to be due to them. For, in reality, the “Odyssey” is no more than the epilogue of the “Iliad”—

	“There warlike Ajax, there Achilles lies,
	Patroclus there, a man divinely wise;
	There, too, my dearest son.”

  It proceeds, I suppose, from the same cause, that having written the “Iliad” in the youth and vigor of his genius, he has furnished it with continued scenes of action and combat; whereas the greatest part of the “Odyssey” consists of narrative, the characteristic of old age. So that in the “Odyssey,” Homer may with justice be likened to the setting sun, whose grandeur still remains, without the meridian heat of his beams. For the style is not so grand and majestic as that of the “Iliad”; the sublimity not kept up in so uniform and sustained a manner throughout; the tides of passion flow not so copiously, nor in such rapid succession; there is not the same fertility of invention and oratorical energy; nor is it adorned with such a throng of images drawn from real life; but like the ocean when he retires within himself, and forsakes his proper bounds, so the genius of Homer still exhibits the ebbing of a mighty tide even in those fabulous and incredible ramblings of Ulysses. Not that I am forgetful of those storms which are described in several parts of the “Odyssey”; of Ulysses’s adventures with the Cyclops, and some other instances of the true sublime. No; I am speaking indeed of old age, but it is the old age of Homer. However, it is evident, from the whole series of the “Odyssey,” that there is far more of fiction in it than of real life.

  I have digressed thus far merely for the sake of showing, as I observed, that, in the decline of their vigor, the greatest geniuses are apt to turn aside into trifles. Those stories of shutting up the winds in a bag; of the men fed by Circe like swine, whom Zoilus calls weeping porkers; of Jupiter’s being nursed by doves like one of their young; of Ulysses in a wreck, when he took no sustenance for ten days; and those improbabilities about the slaughter of the suitors;—all these are undeniable instances of what I have said. Dreams, indeed, they are, but such as even Jove might dream.

  Accept, my friend, in further excuse of this inquiry into the character of the “Odyssey,” my desire of convincing you that a decrease of the pathetic in great orators and poets often ends in the moral kind of writing. Thus the “Odyssey,” furnishing us with ethical narratives relating to that course of life which the suitors led in the palace of Ulysses, has in some degree the air of a comedy, wherein the various manners of men are described.

  Let us consider next whether we cannot find out some other means to infuse sublimity into our style. Now, as there are no subjects which are not attended by certain circumstances which are always found where they exist, a judicious choice of the most suitable of these adjuncts, and a faculty of accumulating them into one body, as it were, must necessarily produce the sublime. For what by the judgment displayed in the circumstances selected, and what by the skillful combination of them, they cannot but attract the hearer.

  Sappho is an instance of this; who, in portraying the characteristics of intense love, always selects her materials from its attendant circumstances, and from the passion as it really exists in nature. But in what particular has she shown her excellence? In her ability to select those circumstances which are most striking and effective, and afterwards to connect them together:—

	“Blest as the immortal gods is he,
	The youth who fondly sits by thee,
	And hears and sees thee all the while
	Softly speak and sweetly smile.
	“’Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
	And raised such tumults in my breast;
	For while I gazed, in transport tost,
	My breath was gone, my voice was lost.
	“My bosom glowed; the subtle flame
	Ran quick through all my vital frame;
	O’er my dim eyes a darkness hung;
	My ears with hollow murmurs rung.
	“In dewy damps my limbs were chilled;
	My blood with gentle horrors thrilled;
	My feeble pulse forgot to play,
	I fainted, sunk, and died away.”

    Are you not amazed, my friend, to find how in the same moment she is to seek for her soul, her body, her ears, her tongue, her eyes, her color, all of them as much absent from her as if they had never belonged to her? And what contrary affections she feels together! How she glows, chills, raves, reasons; for either she is in tumults of alarm, or she is dying away. The effect of which is, that she seems not to be attacked by one alone, but by a combination of affections.

  All the symptoms of this kind are true effects of love; but the excellence of this ode, as I observed before, consists in the judicious choice and connection of the most striking circumstances. And it proceeds from his due application of the most formidable incidents, that the poet excels so much in describing tempests. The author of the poem on the Arimaspians deems these things full of terror:—

	“Ye powers, what madness! How on ships so frail
	(Tremendous thought!) can thoughtless mortals sail?
	For stormy seas they quit the pleasing plain,
	Plant woods in waves, and dwell amidst the main.
	Far o’er the deep, a trackless path, they go,
	And wander oceans in pursuit of woe.
	No ease their hearts, no rest their eyes can find,
	On heaven their looks, and on the waves their mind
	Sunk are their spirits, while their arms they rear,
	And gods are wearied with their fruitless prayer.”

But every impartial reader will discern that these lines are more florid than terrible. But how does Homer raise a description, to mention only one example amongst a thousand!—

	“He bursts upon them all:
	Bursts as a wave that from the cloud impends,
	And swelled with tempests on the ship descends;
	White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud
	Howl o’er the masts, and sing through every shroud:
	Pale, trembling, tired, the sailors freeze with fears,
	And instant death on every wave appears.”

  Aratus has attempted a refinement upon the last thought, and turned it thus:—

“A slender plank preserves them from their fate.”

But instead of exciting terror, he only lessens and refines it away; and besides, he sets a bound to the impending danger, by saying, “a plank preserves them,” and thus removes it. But the poet does not once for all limit the danger, but paints them as all but swallowed up ever and anon by each successive wave. Nay, more, by forcing into unnatural composition propositions which ought not to be compounded, and clashing them one against another, as in ὑπέκ θανάτοιο he has made the verse exhibit signs of agony corresponding with the calamity it represents; has modeled a striking image of it by the jarring of the words; and has all but stamped the peculiar character of the danger upon his diction. So Archilochus in describing a wreck, and Demosthenes, where he relates the confusion at Athens upon the arrival of ill news. “It was,” says he, “in the evening,” etc. So to speak, they reviewed their forces, and culling out the flower of them, combined them into one body, from which everything trumpery, or undignified, or puerile, was excluded. For such expressions, like unsightly bits of matter, or fissures, entirely mar the beauty of those parts which, when fitly framed together and built up coherently, constitute the sublime.