[Footnote 2: There is a break here in the text; but the context
indicates the sense of the words lost, which has accordingly been
supplied.]


XL

There is another method very efficient in exalting a style. As the
different members of the body, none of which, if severed from its
connection, has any intrinsic excellence, unite by their mutual
combination to form a complete and perfect organism, so also the
elements of a fine passage, by whose separation from one another its
high quality is simultaneously dissipated and evaporates, when joined in
one organic whole, and still further compacted by the bond of harmony,
by the mere rounding of the period gain power of tone.

2
In fact, a clause may be said to derive its sublimity from the joint
contributions of a number of particulars. And further (as we have shown
at large elsewhere), many writers in prose and verse, though their
natural powers were not high, were perhaps even low, and though the
terms they employed were usually common and popular and conveying no
impression of refinement, by the mere harmony of their composition have
attained dignity and elevation, and avoided the appearance of meanness.
Such among many others are Philistus, Aristophanes occasionally,
Euripides almost always.

3
Thus when Heracles says, after the murder of his children,