. will save the language from seeming
mean and prosaic, while the ordinary words in it will secure the
requisite clearness. What helps most, however, to render the Diction
at once clear and non-prosaic is the use of the lengthened, curtailed,
and altered forms of words. Their deviation from the ordinary words
will, by making the language unlike that in general use.g.ve it a
non-prosaic appearance; and their having much in common with the words
in general use will give it the quality of clearness. It is not right,
then, to condemn these modes of speech, and ridicule the poet for
using them, as some have done; e.g. the elder Euclid, who said it was
easy to make poetry if one were to be allowed to lengthen the words in
the statement itself as much as one likes--a procedure he caricatured
by reading '_Epixarhon eidon Marathonade Badi--gonta_, and _ouk han g'
eramenos ton ekeinou helle boron_ as verses. A too apparent use of
these licences has certainly a ludicrous effect, but they are not
alone in that; the rule of moderation applies to all the constituents
of the poetic vocabulary; even with metaphors, strange words, and the
rest, the effect will be the same, if one uses them improperly and
with a view to provoking laughter.
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