nevertheless it was not without
advantage to him: "for strife like this," as Hesiod says, "is good for
men."[2] And where shall we find a more glorious arena or a nobler crown
than here, where even defeat at the hands of our predecessors is not
ignoble?

[Footnote 2: _Opp._ 29.]

XIV

Therefore it is good for us also, when we are labouring on some subject
which demands a lofty and majestic style, to imagine to ourselves how
Homer might have expressed this or that, or how Plato or Demosthenes
would have clothed it with sublimity, or, in history, Thucydides. For by
our fixing an eye of rivalry on those high examples they will become
like beacons to guide us, and will perhaps lift up our souls to the
fulness of the stature we conceive.

2
And it would be still better should we try to realise this further
thought, How would Homer, had he been here, or how would Demosthenes,
have listened to what I have written, or how would they have been
affected by it? For what higher incentive to exertion could a writer
have than to imagine such judges or such an audience of his works, and
to give an account of his writings with heroes like these to criticise
and look on?

3
Yet more inspiring would be the thought, With what feelings will future
ages through all time read these my works? If this should awaken a fear
in any writer that he will not be intelligible to his contemporaries it
will necessarily follow that the conceptions of his mind will be crude,
maimed, and abortive, and lacking that ripe perfection which alone can
win the applause of ages to come.

XV

The dignity, grandeur, and energy of a style largely depend on a proper
employment of images, a term which I prefer to that usually given.[1]
The 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.

[Footnote 1: +eidolopoiiai+, "fictions of the imagination," Hickie.]

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 blood