Page:On the Sublime 1890.djvu/111

embraces, gains a complete mastery over our minds? It would be mere infatuation to join issue on truths so universally acknowledged, and established by experience beyond dispute.^[1]

4Now to give an instance: that is doubtless a sublime thought, indeed wonderfully fine, which Demosthenes applies to his decree: τοῦτο τὸ ψήφισμα τὸν τότε τῇ πόλει περιστάντα κίνδυνον παρελθεῖν ἐποίησεν ὥσπερ νέφος, "This decree caused the danger which then hung round our city to pass away like a cloud." But the modulation is as perfect as the sentiment itself is weighty. It is uttered wholly in the dactylic measure, the noblest and most magnificent of all measures, and hence forming the chief constituent in the finest metre we know, the heroic. [And it is with great judgment that the words ὥσπερ νέφος are reserved till the end.^[2]] Supposing we transpose them from their proper place and read, say τοῦτο τὸ ψήφισμα ὥσπερ νέφος ἐποίησε τὸν τότε κίνδυνον παρελθεῖν—nay, let us merely cut off one syllable, reading ἐποίησε παρελθεῖν ὡς νέφος—and you will understand how close is the unison between harmony and sublimity. In the passage before us the words ὥσπερ νέφος move first in a heavy measure, which is metrically equivalent to four short syllables but on removing

1. Reading ἀλλ᾽ ἔοικε μανίᾳ, and putting a full stop at πίστις.
2. There is a break here in the text; but the context indicates the sense of the words lost, which has accordingly been supplied.