But supposing now that we assume the existence of a really unblemished
and irreproachable writer. Is it not worth while to raise the whole
question whether in poetry and prose we should prefer sublimity
accompanied by some faults, or a style which never rising above moderate
excellence never stumbles and never requires correction? and again,
whether the first place in literature is justly to be assigned to the
more numerous, or the loftier excellences? For these are questions
proper to an inquiry on the Sublime, and urgently asking for settlement.
2
I know, then, that the largest intellects are far from being the most
exact. A mind always intent on correctness is apt to be dissipated in
trifles; but in great affluence of thought, as in vast material wealth,
there must needs be an occasional neglect of detail. And is it not
inevitably so? Is it not by risking nothing, by never aiming high, that
a writer of low or middling powers keeps generally clear of faults and
secure of blame? whereas the loftier walks of literature are by their
very loftiness perilous?
3
I am well aware, again, that there is a law by which in all human
productions the weak points catch the eye first, by which their faults
remain indelibly stamped on the memory, while their beauties quickly
fade away.
4
Yet, though I have myself noted not a few faulty passages in Homer and
in other authors of the highest rank, and though I am far from being
partial to their failings, nevertheless I would call them not so much
wilful blunders as oversights which were allowed to pass unregarded
through that contempt of little things, that "brave disorder," which is
natural to an exalted genius; and I still think that the greater
excellences, though not everywhere equally sustained, ought always to be
voted to the first place in literature, if for no other reason, for the
mere grandeur of soul they evince. Let us take an instance: Apollonius
in his _Argonautica_ has given us a poem actually faultless; and in his
pastoral poetry Theocritus is eminently happy, except when he
occasionally attempts another style. And what then? Would you rather be
a Homer or an Apollonius?
5
Or take Eratosthenes and his _Erigone_; because that little work is
without a flaw, is he therefore a greater poet than Archilochus, with
all his disorderly profusion? greater than that impetuous, that
god-gifted genius, which chafed against the restraints of law? or in
lyric poetry would you choose to be a Bacchylides or a Pindar? in
tragedy a Sophocles or (save the mark!) an Io of Chios? Yet Io and
Bacchylides never stumble, their style is always neat, always pretty;
while Pindar and Sophocles sometimes move onwards with a wide blaze of
splendour, but often drop out of view in sudden and disastrous eclipse.
Nevertheless no one in his senses would deny that a single play of
Sophocles, the _Oedipus_, is of higher value than all the dramas of Io
put together.