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" We passed at thy command the woodland's shade ;
128 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
answer. The orator replies to himself as though he were
meeting another man's objections. And this figure not
only raises the tone of his words but makes them more convincing.
For an exhibition of feeling has then most effect
on an audience when it
appears to flow naturally from the
occasion, not to have been labored by the art of the speaker;
and this device of questioning and replying to himself reproduces
the moment of passion. For as a sudden question
addressed to an individual will sometimes startle
him into
a reply which is an unguarded expression of his genuine sentiments,
so the figure of question and interrogation blinds the
judgment of an audience, and deceives them into a belief
that what is really the result of labor in every detail has been
struck out of the speaker by the inspiration of the moment.
There is one passage in Herodotus which is generally
credited with extraordinary sublimity.
. . .
XIX
. . . The removal of connecting particles gives a quick rush
and " torrent rapture " to a passage, the writer appearing
to be actually almost left behind by his own words. There
is an example
in
Xenophon: " Clashing their shields together
And the
they pushed, they fought, they slew, they fell." *
words of Eurylochus in the Odyssey
We found a stately hall built in a mountain glade." f
Words thus severed from one another without the intervention
of stops give a lively impression of
one who through
distress of mind at once halts and hurries in his speech.
And this is what Homer has expressed by using the figure
Asyndeton.
* Xen. Hel. iv. 3. 19. t Od. x. 251.