3 There is a different use of the change of persons in the speech of Demosthenes against Aristogeiton, which places before us the quick turns of violent emotion. “Is there none to be found among you,” he asks, “who even feels indignation at the outrageous conduct of a loathsome and shameless wretch who,--vilest of men, when you were debarred from freedom of speech, not by barriers or by doors, which might indeed be opened,”[2] etc. Thus in the midst of a half-expressed thought he makes a quick change of front, and having almost in his anger torn one word into two persons, “who, vilest of men,” etc., he then breaks off his address to Aristogeiton, and seems to leave him, nevertheless, by the passion of his utterance, rousing all the more the attention of the court.
4 The same feature may be observed in a speech of Penelope’s--
“Why com’st thou, Medon, from the wooers proud? Com’st thou to bid the handmaids of my lord To cease their tasks, and make for them good cheer? Ill fare their wooing, and their gathering here! Would God that here this hour they all might take Their last, their latest meal! Who day by day Make here your muster, to devour and waste The substance of my son: have ye not heard When children at your fathers’ knee the deeds And prowess of your king?”[3]
None, I suppose, would dispute the fact that periphrasis tends much to sublimity. For, as in music the simple air is rendered more pleasing by the addition of harmony, so in language periphrasis often sounds in concord with a literal expression, adding much to the beauty of its tone,--provided always that it is not inflated and harsh, but agreeably blended.
2 To confirm this one passage from Plato will suffice--the opening words of his Funeral Oration: “In deed these men have now received from us their due, and that tribute paid they are now passing on their destined journey, with the State speeding them all and his own friends speeding each one of them on his way.”[1] Death, you see, he calls the “destined journey”; to receive the rites of burial is to be publicly “sped on your way” by the State. And these turns of language lend dignity in no common measure to the thought. He takes the words in their naked simplicity and handles them as a musician, investing them with melody,--harmonising them, as it were,--by the use of periphrasis.