7
Sophocles has also shown himself a great master of the imagination in
the scene in which the dying Oedipus prepares himself for burial in the
midst of a tempest,[11] and where he tells how Achilles appeared to the
Greeks over his tomb just as they were putting out to sea on their
departure from Troy.[12] This last scene has also been delineated by
Simonides with a vividness which leaves him inferior to none. But it
would be an endless task to cite all possible examples.

[Footnote 11: _Oed. Col._ 1586.]

[Footnote 12: In his lost “Polyxena.”]

8
To return, then,[13] in poetry, as I observed, a certain mythical
exaggeration is allowable, transcending altogether mere logical
credence. But the chief beauties of an oratorical image are its energy
and reality. Such digressions become offensive and monstrous when the
language is cast in a poetical and fabulous mould, and runs into all
sorts of impossibilities. Thus much may be learnt from the great orators
of our own day, when they tell us in tragic tones that they see the
Furies[14]--good people, can’t they understand that when Orestes cries
out

“Off, off, I say! I know thee who thou art,
One of the fiends that haunt me: I feel thine arms
About me cast, to drag me down to hell,”[15]

these are the hallucinations of a madman?