Page:On the Sublime 1890.djvu/95

 XXXII his country her fairest members, who have toasted away their liberty, first to Philip, now to Alexander, who measure happiness by their belly and their vilest appetites, who have overthrown the old landmarks and standards of felicity among Greeks,—to be freemen, and to have no one for a master." Here the number of the metaphors is obscured by the orator's indignation against the betrayers of his country. And to effect this Aristotle and Theophrastus recommend the softening of harsh metaphors by the use of some such phrase as "So to say," "As it were," "If I may be permitted the expression," "If so bold a term is allowable." For thus to forestall criticism mitigates, they assert, the boldness of the metaphors. And I will not deny that these have their use. Nevertheless I must repeat the remark which I made in the case of figures, and maintain that there are native antidotes to the number and boldness of metaphors, in well-timed displays of strong feeling, and in unaffected sublimity, because these have an innate power by the dash of their movement of sweeping along and carrying all else before them. Or should we not rather say that they absolutely demand as indispensable the use of daring metaphors, and will not allow the hearer to pause and criticise the number of them, because he shares the passion of the speaker?