For as, if you were to bind two runners together, they will forthwith be
deprived of all liberty of movement, even so passion rebels against the
trammels of conjunctions and other particles, because they curb its free
rush and destroy the impression of mechanical impulse.


XXII

The figure hyperbaton belongs to the same class. By hyperbaton we mean a
transposition of words or thoughts from their usual order, bearing
unmistakably the characteristic stamp of violent mental agitation. In
real life we often see a man under the influence of rage, or fear, or
indignation, or beside himself with jealousy, or with some other out of
the interminable list of human passions, begin a sentence, and then
swerve aside into some inconsequent parenthesis, and then again double
back to his original statement, being borne with quick turns by his
distress, as though by a shifting wind, now this way, now that, and
playing a thousand capricious variations on his words, his thoughts, and
the natural order of his discourse. Now the figure hyperbaton is the
means which is employed by the best writers to imitate these signs of
natural emotion. For art is then perfect when it seems to be nature, and
nature, again, is most effective when pervaded by the unseen presence of
art. An illustration will be found in the speech of Dionysius of Phocaea
in Herodotus: “A hair’s breadth now decides our destiny, Ionians,
whether we shall live as freemen or as slaves--ay, as runaway slaves.
Now, therefore, if you choose to endure a little hardship, you will be
able at the cost of some present exertion to overcome your enemies.”[1]

[Footnote 1: vi. 11.]