“Longinus on the Sublime”[1] will for many years continue to name the most captivating of ancient treatises, though its author, whoever he was, was not the rhetorician Longinus, and though its subject is wider than our word _sublime_. The Latin _sublimitas_ translates precisely enough the ὕψος of the Greek title; but our words _sublime_ and _sublimity_ are reserved for special application to such lofty passages as we quote from Dante and Milton. Sappho’s love poem, quoted by the author as a typical instance, though we feel at once its vivid beauty, we should not call sublime. The Greek word is more general. Meaning literally height, it includes in this treatise all such effects of style as lift us, as move us beyond comprehension or assent to sympathy or resolve. But though the meaning is clear, an equivalent English term is still to seek. _Elevation_ has unfortunate suggestions of the rhetorical; _height_ is too vague; _heightening_, though nearer, is not generally used in this sense. Falling back on such a periphrasis as _heightening of style_, we become aware that our word _style_, as used generally and untechnically, is not far from the author’s intention. Though in text-books and works of criticism it is often extended, in ordinary parlance it means that very heightening, or lift, which is discussed by the Great Unknown. So we shall convey his intention as fairly as seems feasible by translating his title _Style_. In the following digest Roman numerals indicate the chapters, or sections. _The heights of style are such passages as please always and please all._ (i) The heights of authorship are seen in eminence and excellence of words. Experience in subject-matter (_inventio_) and cogency of order (_dispositio_) are effects of the whole; but the orator’s power flashes in his happy moments of style (_elocutio_). (ii) Nor because we see genius here are we to think that style is beyond art. (iii, iv) [Contrast] the turgid, the pretty, the frigid, (v) faults arising from the search for novelties. (vi) Though judgment of style is the final fruit of much experience, we must attempt definition of heightening. (vii) Count those passages wholly beautiful and true instances of the heights of style which please always and please all. _The first source of height in style is intellectual power of conception._