D.--some say in the 1st: it is no great matter--wrote a
little book [Greek: PERI UPSOUS] commonly cited as "Longinus on
the Sublime." The title is handy, but quite misleading, unless
you remember that by 'Sublimity' Longinus meant, as he expressly
defines it, 'a certain distinction and excellence in speech.' The
book, thus recovered, had great authority with critics of the
17th and 18th centuries. For the last hundred years it has quite
undeservedly gone out of vogue.
It is (I admit) a puzzling book, though quite clear in argument
and language: pellucidly clear, but here and there strangely
modern, even hauntingly modern, if the phrase may be allowed. You
find yourself rubbing your eyes over a passage more like Matthew
Arnold than something of the 3rd century: or you come without
warning on a few lines of 'comparative criticism,' as we call it
--an illustration from Genesis--'God said, Let there be Light,
and there was Light' used for a specimen of the exalted way of
saying things.
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