4 Yet why speak of Timaeus, when even men like Xenophon and Plato--the very demi-gods of literature--though they had sat at the feet of Socrates, sometimes forgot themselves in the pursuit of such paltry conceits. The former, in his account of the Spartan Polity, has these words: “Their voice you would no more hear than if they were of marble, their gaze is as immovable as if they were cast in bronze; you would deem them more modest than the very maidens in their eyes.”[1] To speak of the pupils of the eye as “modest maidens” was a piece of absurdity becoming Amphicrates[2] rather than Xenophon. And then what a strange delusion to suppose that modesty is always without exception expressed in the eye! whereas it is commonly said that there is nothing by which an impudent fellow betrays his character so much as by the expression of his eyes. Thus Achilles addresses Agamemnon in the _Iliad_ as “drunkard, with eye of dog.”[3] [Footnote 1: _Xen. de Rep. Laced._ 3, 5.] [Footnote 2: C. iii. sect. 2.] [Footnote 3: _Il._ i. 225.] 5 Timaeus, however, with that want of judgment which characterises plagiarists, could not leave to Xenophon the possession of even this piece of frigidity. In relating how Agathocles carried off his cousin, who was wedded to another man, from the festival of the unveiling, he asks, “Who could have done such a deed, unless he had harlots instead of maidens in his eyes?” 6 And Plato himself, elsewhere so supreme a master of style, meaning to describe certain recording tablets, says, “They shall write, and deposit in the temples memorials of cypress wood”;[4] and again, “Then concerning walls, Megillus, I give my vote with Sparta that we should let them lie asleep within the ground, and not awaken them.”[5] [Footnote 4: _Plat. de Legg._ v. 741, C.] [Footnote 5: _Ib._ vi. 778, D.] 7 And Herodotus falls pretty much under the same censure, when he speaks of beautiful women as “tortures to the eye,”[6] though here there is some excuse, as the speakers in this passage are drunken barbarians. Still, even from dramatic motives, such errors in taste should not be permitted to deface the pages of an immortal work. [Footnote 6: v. 18.] V Now all these glaring improprieties of language may be traced to one common root--the pursuit of novelty in thought. It is this that has turned the brain of nearly all the learned world of to-day. Human blessings and human ills commonly flow from the same source: and, to apply this principle to literature, those ornaments of style, those sublime and delightful images, which contribute to success, are the foundation and the origin, not only of excellence, but also of failure. It is thus with the figures called transitions, and hyperboles, and the use of plurals for singulars. I shall show presently the dangers which they seem to involve. Our next task, therefore, must be to propose and to settle the question how we may avoid the faults of style related to sublimity. VI