ordingly, of unfamiliar terms
is necessary. These, the strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental
equivalent, etc.. will save the language from seeming mean and prosaic,
while the ordinary words in it will secure the requisite clearness. What
helps most, however, to render the Diction at once clear and non-prosaic
is the use of the lengthened, curtailed, and altered forms of words.
Their deviation from the ordinary words will, by making the language
unlike that in general use give it a non-prosaic appearance; and their
having much in common with the words in general use will give it the
quality of clearness. It is not right, then, to condemn these modes of
speech, and ridicule the poet for using them, as some have done; e.g.
the elder Euclid, who said it was easy to make poetry if one were to
be allowed to lengthen the words in the statement itself as much as
one likes--a procedure he caricatured by reading '_Epixarhon eidon
Marathonade Badi--gonta_, and _ouk han g' eramenos ton ekeinou helle
boron_ as verses. A too apparent use of these licences has certainly a
ludicrous effect, but they are not alone in that; the rule of moderation
applies to all the constituents of the poetic vocabulary; even with
metaphors, strange words, and the rest, the effect will be the same,
if one uses them improperly and with a view to provoking laughter. The
proper use of them is a very different thing. To realize the difference
one should take an epic verse and see how it reads when the normal words
are introduced. The same should be done too with the strange word, the
metaphor, and the rest; for one has only to put the ordinary words in
their place to see the truth of what we are saying. The same iambic, for
instance, is found in Aeschylus and Euripides, and as it stands in the
former it is a poor line; whereas Euripides, by the change of a single
word, the substitution of a strange for what is by usage the ordinary
word, has made it seem a fine one. Aeschylus having said in his
_Philoctetes_:

_phagedaina he mon sarkas hesthiei podos_

Euripides has merely altered the hesthiei here into thoinatai. Or
suppose

_nun de m' heon holigos te kai outidanos kai haeikos_

to be altered by the substitution of the ordinary words into

_nun de m' heon mikros te kai hasthenikos kai haeidos_

Or the line

_diphron haeikelion katatheis olingen te trapexan_

into

_diphron moxtheron katatheis mikran te trapexan_

Or heiones boosin into