2 How, it may be asked, is this to be done? I have hinted elsewhere in my writings that sublimity is, so to say, the image of greatness of soul. Hence a thought in its naked simplicity, even though unuttered, is sometimes admirable by the sheer force of its sublimity; for instance, the silence of Ajax in the eleventh _Odyssey_[1] is great, and grander than anything he could have said. [Footnote 1: _Od._ xi. 543.] 3 It is absolutely essential, then, first of all to settle the question whence this grandeur of conception arises; and the answer is that true eloquence can be found only in those whose spirit is generous and aspiring. For those whose whole lives are wasted in paltry and illiberal thoughts and habits cannot possibly produce any work worthy of the lasting reverence of mankind. It is only natural that their words should be full of sublimity whose thoughts are full of majesty. 4 Hence sublime thoughts belong properly to the loftiest minds. Such was the reply of Alexander to his general Parmenio, when the latter had observed, “Were I Alexander, I should have been satisfied”; “And I, were I Parmenio”... The distance between heaven and earth[1]--a measure, one might say, not less appropriate to Homer’s genius than to the stature of his discord. [Footnote 1: _Il._ iv. 442.] 5 How different is that touch of Hesiod’s in his description of sorrow--if the _Shield_ is really one of his works: “rheum from her nostrils flowed”[2]--an image not terrible, but disgusting. Now consider how Homer gives dignity to his divine persons-- “As far as lies his airy ken, who sits On some tall crag, and scans the wine-dark sea: So far extends the heavenly coursers’ stride.”[3] He measures their speed by the extent of the whole world--a grand comparison, which might reasonably lead us to remark that if the divine steeds were to take two such leaps in succession, they would find no room in the world for another. [Footnote 2: _Scut. Herc._ 267.] [Footnote 3: _Il._ v. 770.] 6 Sublime also are the images in the “Battle of the Gods”-- “A trumpet sound Rang through the air, and shook the Olympian height; Then terror seized the monarch of the dead, And springing from his throne he cried aloud With fearful voice, lest the earth, rent asunder By Neptune’s mighty arm, forthwith reveal To mortal and immortal eyes those halls So drear and dank, which e’en the gods abhor.”[4] Earth rent from its foundations! Tartarus itself laid bare! The whole world torn asunder and turned upside down! Why, my dear friend, this is a perfect hurly-burly, in which the whole universe, heaven and hell, mortals and immortals, share the conflict and the peril. [Footnote 4: _Il._ xxi. 388; xx. 61.]