4 Nevertheless (to reiterate the advice which we gave at the beginning of this essay), since that success which consists in avoidance of error is usually the gift of art, while high, though unequal excellence is the attribute of genius, it is proper on all occasions to call in art as an ally to nature. By the combined resources of these two we may hope to achieve perfection.
Such are the conclusions which were forced upon me concerning the points at issue; but every one may consult his own taste.
To return, however, from this long digression; closely allied to metaphors are comparisons and similes, differing only in this * * *[1]
[Footnote 1: The asterisks denote gaps in the original text.]
Such absurdities as, “Unless you carry your brains next to the ground in your heels.”[1] Hence it is necessary to know where to draw the line; for if ever it is overstepped the effect of the hyperbole is spoilt, being in such cases relaxed by overstraining, and producing the very opposite to the effect desired.
2 Isocrates, for instance, from an ambitious desire of lending everything a strong rhetorical colouring, shows himself in quite a childish light. Having in his Panegyrical Oration set himself to prove that the Athenian state has surpassed that of Sparta in her services to Hellas, he starts off at the very outset with these words: “Such is the power of language that it can extenuate what is great, and lend greatness to what is little, give freshness to what is antiquated, and describe what is recent so that it seems to be of the past.”[2] Come, Isocrates (it might be asked), is it thus that you are going to tamper with the facts about Sparta and Athens? This flourish about the power of language is like a signal hung out to warn his audience not to believe him.
3 We may repeat here what we said about figures, and say that the hyperbole is then most effective when it appears in disguise.[3] And this effect is produced when a writer, impelled by strong feeling, speaks in the accents of some tremendous crisis; as Thucydides does in describing the massacre in Sicily. “The Syracusans,” he says, “went down after them, and slew those especially who were in the river, and the water was at once defiled, yet still they went on drinking it, though mingled with mud and gore, most of them even fighting for it.”[4] The drinking of mud and gore, and even the fighting for it, is made credible by the awful horror of the scene described.