term image in its most general acceptation includes every thought, howsoever presented, which issues in speech. But the term is now generally confined to those cases when he who is speaking, by reason of the rapt and excited state of his feelings, imagines himself to see what he is talking about, and produces a similar illusion in his hearers.2 Poets and orators both employ images, but with a very different object, as you are well aware. The poetical image is designed to astound; the oratorical image to give perspicuity. Both, however, seek to work on the emotions.
"Mother, I pray thee, set not thou upon me
Those maids with bloody face and serpent hair:
See, see, they come, they're here, they spring upon me I"[1]
And again—
"Ah, ah, she'll slay me! whither shall I fly?"[2]
The poet when he wrote like this saw the Erinyes with his own eyes, and he almost compels his readers 3 to see them too.3 Euripides found his chief delight in the labour of giving tragic expression to these two passions of madness and love, showing here a real mastery which I cannot think he exhibited elsewhere. Still, he is by no means diffident in venturing; on other fields of the imagination. His genius was far from being of the highest order, but
- ↑ Eur. Orest. 255.
- ↑ Iph. Taur. 291.
