Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to
improbable possibilities. The tragic plot must not be composed of
irrational parts. Everything irrational should, if possible, be excluded;
or, at all events, it should lie outside the action of the play (as, in
the Oedipus, the hero's ignorance as to the manner of Laius' death); not
within the drama,--as in the Electra, the messenger's account of the
Pythian games; or, as in the Mysians, the man who has come from Tegea to
Mysia and is still speechless. The plea that otherwise the plot would
have been ruined, is ridiculous; such a plot should not in the first
instance be constructed. But once the irrational has been introduced and
an air of likelihood imparted to it, we must accept it in spite of the
absurdity. Take even the irrational incidents in the Odyssey, where
Odysseus is left upon the shore of Ithaca. How intolerable even these
might have been would be apparent if an inferior poet were to treat the
subject. As it is, the absurdity is veiled by the poetic charm with which
the poet invests it.

The diction should be elaborated in the pauses of the action, where there
is no expression of character or thought. For, conversely, character and
thought are merely obscured by a diction that is over brilliant.



XXV

With respect to critical difficulties and their solutions, the number and
nature of the sources from which they may be drawn may be thus exhibited.

The poet being an imitator, like a painter or any other artist, must of
necessity imitate one of three objects,--things as they were or are,