of words to immoderate and unpleasant metaphors, and an allegoric
magnificence of diction. Longinus excuses this by saying that whatever
naturally excels in magnitude possesses very little of purity. For that,
says he, which is in every respect accurate is in danger of littleness.
He adds, "and may not this also be necessary, that those of an abject and
moderate genius, because they never encounter danger, nor aspire after
the summit of excellence, are for the most part without error and remain
in security; but that great things become insecure through their magnitude?"
Indeed it appears to me, that whenever this exuberance, this Bacchic
fury, occurs in the diction of Plato, it is owing to the magnitude of the
inspiring influence of deity with which he is then replete. For that he
sometimes wrote from divine inspiration is evident from his own confession
in the Phaedrus, a great part of which is not so much like an orderly
discourse as a dithyrambic poem. Such a style therefore, as it is the
progeny of divine mania, which, as Plato justly observes, is better than
all human prudence, spontaneously adapts itself to its producing cause,
imitates a supernatural power as far as this can be effected by words,
and thus necessarily becomes magnificent, vehement, and exuberant; for
such are the characteristics of its source. All judges of composition
however, both ancient and modern, are agreed that his style is in general
graceful and pure; and that it is sublime without being impetuous and
rapid. It is indeed no less harmonious than elevated, no less accurate[27]
than magnificent. It combines the force of the greatest orators with the
graces of the first of poets; and in short; is a river to which those
justly celebrated lines of Denham may be most pertinently applied:

Tho' deep, yet clear; tho' gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o'erfowing full.

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