77, G; 78, E; 85, E.]

6
These, and a hundred similar fancies, follow one another in quick
succession. But those which I have pointed out are sufficient to
demonstrate how great is the natural power of figurative language, and
how largely metaphors conduce to sublimity, and to illustrate the
important part which they play in all impassioned and descriptive
passages.

7
That the use of figurative language, as of all other beauties of style,
has a constant tendency towards excess, is an obvious truth which I need
not dwell upon. It is chiefly on this account that even Plato comes in
for a large share of disparagement, because he is often carried away by
a sort of frenzy of language into an intemperate use of violent
metaphors and inflated allegory. “It is not easy to remark” (he says in
one place) “that a city ought to be blended like a bowl, in which the
mad wine boils when it is poured out, but being disciplined by another
and a sober god in that fair society produces a good and temperate
drink.”[7] Really, it is said, to speak of water as a “sober god,” and
of the process of mixing as a “discipline,” is to talk like a poet, and
no very _sober_ one either.

[Footnote 7: _Legg._ vi. 773, G.]

8
It was such defects as these that the hostile critic[8] Caecilius made
his ground of attack, when he had the boldness in his essay “On the
Beauties of Lysias” to pronounce that writer superior in every respect