The juxtaposition of different cases, the enumeration of particulars,
and the use of contrast and climax, all, as you know, add much vigour,
and give beauty and great elevation and life to a style. The diction
also gains greatly in diversity and movement by changes of case, time,
person, number, and gender.
2
With regard to change of number: not only is the style improved by the
use of those words which, though singular in form, are found on
inspection to be plural in meaning, as in the lines--
"A countless host dispersed along the sand
With joyous cries the shoal of tunny hailed,"
but it is more worthy of observation that plurals for singulars
sometimes fall with a more impressive dignity, rousing the imagination
by the mere sense of vast number.
3
Such is the effect of those words of Oedipus in Sophocles--
"Oh fatal, fatal ties!
Ye gave us birth, and we being born ye sowed
The self-same seed, and gave the world to view
Sons, brothers, sires, domestic murder foul,
Brides, mothers, wives.... Ay, ye laid bare
The blackest, deepest place where Shame can dwell."[1]
Here we have in either case but one person, first Oedipus, then Jocasta;
but the expansion of number into the plural gives an impression of
multiplied calamity. So in the following plurals--
"There came forth Hectors, and there came Sarpedons."
[Footnote 1: _O. R._ 1403.]
4
And in those words of Plato's (which we have already adduced elsewhere),
referring to the Athenians: "We have no Pelopses or Cadmuses or
Aegyptuses or Danauses, or any others out of all the mob of Hellenised
barbarians, dwelling among us; no, this is the land of pure Greeks, with
no mixture of foreign elements,"[2] etc. Such an accumulation of words
in the plural number necessarily gives greater pomp and sound to a
subject. But we must only have recourse to this device when the nature
of our theme makes it allowable to amplify, to multiply, or to speak in
the tones of exaggeration or passion. To overlay every sentence with
ornament[3] is very pedantic.
[Footnote 2: _Menex._ 245, D.]
[Footnote 3: Lit. "To hang bells everywhere," a metaphor from
the bells which were attached to horses' trappings on festive
occasions.]