1pFFjZK

142 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
account that even Plato comes in for a large share of disparagement,
because he is often carried away by a sort of
frenzy of language into an intemperate use of violent meta^
phors and intlated "
allegory. It is not easy to remark" (he
says in one place) " that a city ought to be blended like a bowl,
in which the mad wine boils when it is
poured out, but being
disciplined by another and a sober god in that fair society
produces a good and temperate drink." * Really, it is said, to
speak of water as a " sober god," and of the process of mixing
as a " discipline," is to talk like a poet, and no very sober
one either. It was such defects as these that the hostile
critic f Caecilius made his ground of attack, when he had the
boldness in his essay " On the Beauties of Lysias" to pronounce
that writer superior in every respect to Plato. Now
Caecilius was doubly unqualified for a judge
: he loved Lysias
better even than himself, and at the same time his hatred of
Plato and all his works is greater even than his love for Lysias.
Moreover, he is so blind a partisan that his very premises are
open to dispute. He vaunts Lysias as a faultless and immaculate
writer, while Plato is, according to him, full of
blemishes. Now this is not the case: far from it.
XXXIII
But supposing now that we assume the existence of a really
unblemished and irreproachable writer. Is it not worth
while to raise the whole question whether in poetry and prose
we should prefer sublimity accompanied by some faults, or a^
style which never rising above moderate excellence never
stumbles and never requires correction? and again, whether
the first place in literature is justly to be assigned to the more
numerous, or the loftier excellences? For these are questions
* Legg. vi. 773, G.
f Reading 6 fjnawv avr6v, by a conjecture of the translator.