None, I suppose, would dispute the fact that periphrasis tends much to
sublimity. For, as in music the simple air is rendered more pleasing by
the addition of harmony, so in language periphrasis often sounds in
concord with a literal expression, adding much to the beauty of its
tone,--provided always that it is not inflated and harsh, but agreeably
blended.
2
To confirm this one passage from Plato will suffice--the opening words
of his Funeral Oration: "In deed these men have now received from us
their due, and that tribute paid they are now passing on their destined
journey, with the State speeding them all and his own friends speeding
each one of them on his way."[1] Death, you see, he calls the "destined
journey"; to receive the rites of burial is to be publicly "sped on your
way" by the State. And these turns of language lend dignity in no common
measure to the thought. He takes the words in their naked simplicity and
handles them as a musician, investing them with melody,--harmonising
them, as it were,--by the use of periphrasis.
[Footnote 1: _Menex._ 236, D.]
3
So Xenophon: "Labour you regard as the guide to a pleasant life, and you
have laid up in your souls the fairest and most soldier-like of all
gifts: in praise is your delight, more than in anything else."[2] By
saying, instead of "you are ready to labour," "you regard labour as the
guide to a pleasant life," and by similarly expanding the rest of that
passage, he gives to his eulogy a much wider and loftier range of
sentiment. Let us add that inimitable phrase in Herodotus: "Those
Scythians who pillaged the temple were smitten from heaven by a female
malady."
[Footnote 2: _Cyrop._ i. 5. 12.]