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156 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
despicable, unless very hard pressed by some urgent necessity.
If we would write becomingly, our utterance should be worthy^
of our theme. We should take a lesson from nature, who
when she planned the human frame did not set our grosser
parts, or the ducts for purging the body, in our face, but as far
as she could concealed them, " diverting," as Xenophon says,
" those canals as far as possible from our * senses," and thus
shunning in any part to mar the beauty of the whole creature.
However, it is not incumbent on us to specify and enumerate
whatever diminishes a style. We have now pointed out the
various means of giving it nobility and loftiness. It is clear,
then, that whatever is contrary to these will generally degrade
and deform it.
XLIV
There is still another point which remains to be cleared
up, my dear Terentian, and on which I shall not hesitate to
add some remarks, to gratify your inquiring spirit.
It
relates to a question which was recently put to me by a certain
philosopher. "To me," he said,
" in common, I may say,
with many others, it is a matter of wonder that in the present
age, which produces many highly skilled in the arts of popular
persuasion, many of keen and active powers, many especially
rich in every pleasing gift of language, the growth of highly
exalted and wide-reaching genius has with a few rare exceptions
almost entirely ceased. So universal is the dearth of
eloquence which prevails throughout the world. Must we
really," he asked, " give credit to that oft-repeated assertion
that democracy is the kind nurse of genius, and that high
literary excellence has flourished with her prime and faded
with her decay? Liberty,
it is said, is all-powerful to feed the
aspirations of high intellects, to hold out hope, and keep alive
* Mem. i. 4. 6.