passage. Longinus has just said that a writer should always work with an eye to posterity. If (he adds) he thinks of nothing but the taste and judgment of his contemporaries, he will have no chance of "leaving something so written that the world will not willingly let it die." A book, then, which is τοῦ ἰδίου βίου καὶ χρόνου ὑπερήμερος, is a book which is in advance of its own times. Such were the poems of Lucretius, of Milton, of Wordsworth.[1]
XV. 5. 23. ποκοειδεῖς καὶ ἀμαλάκτους, lit. "like raw, undressed wool."
XVII. 1. 25. I construct the infinit. with ὕποπτον, though the ordinary interpretation joins τὸ διὰ σχημάτων πανουργεῖν: "proprium est verborum lenociniis suspicionem movere" (Weiske).
2. 8. παραληφθεῖσα. This word has given much trouble; but is it not simply a continuation of the metaphor implied in ἐπικουρία? παραλαμβάνειν τινα, in the sense of calling in an ally, is a common enough use. This would be clearer if we could read παραληφθεῖσι. I have omitted τοῦ πανουργεῖν in translating, as it seems to me to have evidently crept in from above (p. 33, l. 25). ἡ τοῦ πανουργεῖν τέχνη, "the art of playing the villain," is surely, in Longinus's own words, δεινὸν καὶ ἔκφυλον, "a startling novelty" of language.
12. τῷ φωτὶ αὐτῷ. The words may remind us of Shelley's "Like a poet hidden in the light of thought."
XVIII. 1. 24. The distinction between πεῦσις or πύσμα and ἐρώτησις or ἐρώτημα is said to be that ἐρώτησις is a
- ↑ Compare the "Geflügelte Worte" in the Vorspiel to Goethe's Faust:
Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren,
Das Aechte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.
