But this figure, more than any other, is very liable to abuse, and great
restraint is required in employing it. It soon begins to carry an
impression of feebleness, savours of vapid trifling, and arouses
disgust. Hence Plato, who is very bold and not always happy in his use
of figures, is much ridiculed 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."
[Footnote 1: _De Legg._ vii. 801, B.]
2
Here 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.