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the circumstances.5 For, as I am never tired of explaining, in actions and passions verging on frenzy there lies a kind of remission and palliation of any licence of language. Hence some comic extravagances, however improbable, gain credence by their humour, such as—

"He had a farm, a little farm, where space severely pinches;
'Twas smaller than the last despatch from Sparta by some inches."

6For mirth is one of the passions, having its seat in pleasure. And hyperboles may be employed either to increase or to lessen since exaggeration is common to both uses. Thus in extenuating an opponent's argument we try to make it seem smaller than it is.

 

XXXIX

We have still left, my dear sir, the fifth of those sources which we set down at the outset as contributing to sublimity, that which consists in the mere arrangement of words in a certain order. Having already published two books dealing fully with this subject—so far at least as our investigations had carried us—it will be sufficient for the purpose of our present inquiry to add that harmony is an instrument which has a natural power, not only to win and to delight, but also in a remarkable degree