Page:On the Sublime 1890.djvu/126

90 passage. Longinus has just said that a writer should always work with an eye to posterity. If (he adds) he thinks of nothing but the taste and judgment of his contemporaries, he will have no chance of "leaving something so written that the world will not willingly let it die." A book, then, which is, is a book which is in advance of its own times. Such were the poems of Lucretius, of Milton, of Wordsworth.

XV. 5. 23., lit. "like raw, undressed wool."

XVII. 1. 25. I construct the infinit. with, though the ordinary interpretation joins : "proprium est verborum lenociniis suspicionem movere" (Weiske).

2. 8. . This word has given much trouble; but is it not simply a continuation of the metaphor implied in ? , in the sense of calling in an ally, is a common enough use. This would be clearer if we could read. I have omitted in translating, as it seems to me to have evidently crept in from above (p. 33, l. 25). , "the art of playing the villain," is surely, in Longinus's own words,, "a startling novelty" of language.

12. . The words may remind us of Shelley's "Like a poet hidden in the light of thought."

XVIII. 1. 24. The distinction between or  and  or  is said to be that  is a