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112 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
My purpose in making this digression was, as I said,
to point out into what trifles the second childhood of
genius is too apt to be betrayed ; such, I mean, as the bag
in which the winds are confined,* the tale of Odysseus's
comrades being changed by Circe into swine f ("whimpering
porkers" Zoilus called them), and how Zeus was fed like a
nestling by the doves,! and how. Odysseus passed ten nights"
on the shipwreck without food, and the improbable incidents
in the slaying of the suitors.
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When Homer nods like
this, we must be content to say that he dreams as Zeus
might dream. Another reason for these remarks on the
Odyssey is that I wished to make you understand that great
poets and prose-writers, after they have lost their power of
depicting the passions, turn naturally to the delineation of
character. Such, for instance, is the lifelike and characteristic
picture of the palace of Odysseus, which may be called
a sort of comedy of manners.
Let us now consider whether there is
anything further
which conduces to the Sublime in writing. It is a law of
Nature that in all things there are certain constituent parts,
coexistent with their substance. It necessarily follows,
therefore, that one cause of sublimity
is the choice of the
most striking circumstances involved in whatever we are
describing, and, further, the power of afterwards combining
them into one animate whole. The reader is attracted partly
by the selection of the incidents, partly by the skill which
has welded them together. For instance, Sappho, in dealing
with the passionate manifestations attending on the frenzy
of lovers, always chooses her strokes from the signs which she
* Od. x. 17. ] Od. x. 237. J Od. xii. 62.
Od. xii. 447.
II
Od. xxii. passim.