1pFFjZK

ARISTOTLE 65
want to express is destitute of a name and the word they
use is easily compounded, as e.g. pastime (xpovorpiftclv)-, if
this is overdone, the effect is
wholly poetical. Hence it is
that compound words are eminently serviceable to dithyrambic
poets, whose style is noisy; rare words to epic poets, as
epic poetry is a stately and austere style of composition; and
metaphors to iambic writers, for the iambic is now the vehicle
oj tragic poetry, as I have remarked. There is a fourth and last
fault of taste which is shown in the use of metaphors; for
metaphors too may be inappropriate,
whether from their absurdity
for they are used by comic as well as by tragic poets
or from an excess of dignity and tragic effect, or again they
such ex-
may be obscure, if they are far-fetched. Take e.g.
pressions as Gorgias's, " a business green and raw " (a case
of obscurity), or " you sowed in shame and reaped in misery, "
which is too poetical, or Alcidamas's description of philosophy
as " an outpost against the laws," and of the Odyssey as
" a fair mirror of human life," or his phrase " importing no
such bauble into poetry," all which for the reasons stated fail
in persuasiveness. Gorgias's address to the swallow, when
she dropped her leavings on his head, is in the best style of
" "
tragic diction, For shame," he said, Philomela." The
point is that was it not a shame to a bird to have behaved so,
but it was to a maiden. It was a happy thought then in his
ure to speak of her as she was rather than as she is.
The simile too is a metaphor, the difference between them
being only slight. Thus when Homer says of
Adiilk-s that * " he rushed on like a lion," it is a
simile; but when he says that "he rushed on, a
very lion,"
it is a metaphor, for here, as valor is an
attribute common to both, he tran-fers to Achilles the
* The words quoted are not found in tin exiting poems of Homer, but for
the simile see Iliad, xx. 164.