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for saying in his Laws that "neither gold nor silver wealth must be allowed to establish itself in our State,"^[1] suggesting, it is said, that if he had forbidden property in oxen or sheep he would certainly have spoken of it as "bovine and ovine wealth."

2Here we must quit this part of our subject, hoping, my dear friend Terentian, that your learned curiosity will be satisfied with this short excursion on the use of figures in their relation to the Sublime. All those which I have mentioned help to render a style more energetic and impassioned; and passion contributes as largely to sublimity as the delineation of character to amusement.

 

XXX

But since the thoughts conveyed by words and the expression of those thoughts are for the most part interwoven with one another, we will now add some considerations which have hitherto been overlooked on the subject of expression. To say that the choice of appropriate and striking words has a marvellous power and an enthralling charm for the reader, that this is the main object of pursuit with all orators and writers, that it is this, and this alone, which causes the works of literature to exhibit the glowing perfections of the finest statues, their grand-

1. De Legg. vii. 801, B.