importance) to point out how and by what methods we may become masters
of it ourselves. And yet Caecilius, while wasting his efforts in a
thousand illustrations of the nature of the Sublime, as though here we
were quite in the dark, somehow passes by as immaterial the question how
we might be able to exalt our own genius to a certain degree of progress
in sublimity. However, perhaps it would be fairer to commend this
writer’s intelligence and zeal in themselves, instead of blaming him for
his omissions.

2
And since you have bidden me also to put together, if only for your
entertainment, a few notes on the subject of the Sublime, let me see if
there is anything in my speculations which promises advantage to men of
affairs. In you, dear friend--such is my confidence in your abilities,
and such the part which becomes you--I look for a sympathising and
discerning[1] critic of the several parts of my treatise. For that was a
just remark of his who pronounced that the points in which we resemble
the divine nature are benevolence and love of truth.

[Footnote 1: Reading φιλοφρονέστατα καὶ ἀληθέστατα.]

3
As I am addressing a person so accomplished in literature, I need only
state, without enlarging further on the matter, that the Sublime,
wherever it occurs, consists in a certain loftiness and excellence of
language, and that it is by this, and this only, that the greatest poets
and prose-writers have gained eminence, and won themselves a lasting
place in the Temple of Fame.

4