Page:On the Sublime 1890.djvu/107

 XXXVI 

To return, however, from this long digression; closely allied to metaphors are comparisons and similes, differing only in this * * *  

Such absurdities as, "Unless you carry your brains next to the ground in your heels." Hence it is necessary to know where to draw the line; for if ever it is overstepped the effect of the hyperbole is spoilt, being in such cases relaxed by overstraining, and producing the very opposite to the effect desired. Isocrates, for instance, from an ambitious desire of lending everything a strong rhetorical colouring, shows himself in quite a childish light. Having in his Panegyrical Oration set himself to prove that the Athenian state has surpassed that of Sparta in her services to Hellas, he starts off at the very outset with these words: "Such is the power of language that it can extenuate what is great, and lend greatness to what is little, give freshness to what is antiquated, and describe what is recent so that it seems to be of the past." Come, Isocrates (it might be asked), is