Longinus on the sublime Author:Longinus Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: X. On the choice of Materials, and kow to combine them. We are now to enquire whether we have any further means that can make our words sublime. And since ... more »every subject has a natural and fundamental connexion with certain lines of thought, we should necessarily find a source of sublimity in the uniform selection of the most appropriate among our materials, and in working them up by mutual adaptation and arrangement into a united whole, charming the hearer as well by the selection of the materials as by the ordering of what is selected: as Sappho, for instance, invariably fetches out of natural effects and living reality, "Trie" incidents proper to the jealousies and extravagances of love: but there above all shews her genius, where it is exertedboth to select and to bring into concert those of the highest and the noblest kind:— " Peer of immortals he appears to my mind, Who before thy face sitting is enchanted With the soft voice-tones, and the merry peals of Loveliest laughter. How they make my heart flutter in my bosom, Timidly cowering: when I look upon thee, Voice and all living faculty of language Sinks in confusion. All through my veins a subtle flame of passion Glides in its swift course, and a pall of darkness Falls on mine eye-sight, while reverberating Murmurs assail me. Down the chill sweat pours, tremor seizes on me Breathless and blanching to a hue more pallid Than the pale-green grass, and the gates of death seem Closing upon me. Yet we must dare all, since unto the poor man," andc. Catullus addressed to Lesbia a Latin version of this celebrated ode. His poem is elegantly rendered by Mr. Theodore Martin as follows: — " Peer for the gods he seems to me, And mightier, if that may be, Who sitting face to face with thee, Can there serenely...« less