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[118]
“Yes, my young friends,” said
Eumolpus, "poetry has led many astray. As soon as a man has shaped his verse in feet
and woven into it a more delicate meaning with an ingenious circumlocution, he
thinks that forthwith he has scaled Helicon. In this fashion people who are tired
out with forensic oratory often take refuge in the calm of poetry as in some happier
haven, supposing that a poem is easier to construct than a declamation adorned with
quivering epigrams. But nobler souls do not love such coxcombry, and the mind cannot
conceive or bring forth its fruit unless it is steeped in the vast flood of
literature. One must flee away from all diction that is, so to speak, cheap, and
choose words divorced from popular use, putting into practice, “I hate the
common herd and hold it afar.”1 Besides, one must take care that the epigrams do not stand out
from the body of the speech: they must shine with a brilliancy that is woven into
the material. Homer proves this, and the lyric poets, and Roman Virgil, and the
studied felicity of Horace. The others either did not see the path that leads to
poetry, or saw it and were afraid to walk in it For instance, anyone who attempts
the vast theme of the Civil War2 will sink under the
burden[p. 253] unless he is full of literature. It is not a question of
recording -real events in verse; historians can do that far better. The free spirit
of genius must plunge headlong into allusions and divine interpositions, and rack
itself for epigrams coloured by mythology, so that what results seems rather the
prophecies of an inspired seer than the exactitude of a statement made on oath
before witnesses: the following effusion will show what I mean, if it take your
fancy, though it has not yet received my final touches. . . .
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