1pFFjZK

1
ARISTOTLE 73
carry the harshness into the voice and countenance and the
other appropriate menus oj expression ; for the result of so
fining is that the nature of each becomes conspicuous, whereas,
if
you use some and omit others, although you equally make
use of art, you succeed in escaping detection.
It is a general result oj these considerations that, if a tender
subject is expressed in harsh language or a harsh subject in
tender language, there is a certain loss of persuasiveness.
words or epithets and the
The multiplication of compound
use of strange words are most appropriate to the language of
emotion ;
for a person in a state of passion may be pardoned,
if he speaks of an evil as " heaven-high " or " colossal."
The siitne
excuse holds good when the speaker has mastered
his audience and has roused them to enthusiasm by praise or
blame or passion or devotion, as * Isocrates e.g. does in his
panegyrical speech, where he says at the end " sentence and
''
(riM teal yvwfjLrj), and again
"
seeing that they
brooked " it (OITIV& crXrjcrav). For this is the language
of enthusiasm and is
consequently acceptable to an audience
in a state of enthusiasm. It is suitable to poetry for the
same reason, as poetry is inspired. It must be used thus
or else ironically, as by Gorgias and in the f I'h&drus of
Plato.
The- -tructure of the style should IK- neither metrical nor
wholly unrhythmical
If it is the former, it lacks
persu;: from its appearance of artificiality,
stmcturcof
and at same time divrrts tin- minds of the l
the
audience from the subject by fixing their attention upon
* Of thr r\pp
.i
misquotation;
eems to consist in the jingle of words, the original 0'JM'?*' ^
KO.I nv-tiwv KO.I d6ap (Panfg. 220) would be more appropriate. In the
(T \rjff
'
(Paneg. no, not at tin- eml of the sjK-edi), it is the p.
win unh the MSS of Isocrates have ^T6\M^