Note 48 — INTRODUCTION

Compare especially the speeches in Il. ix., and the warm eulogies they have drawn from Quintilian (x. 1. 47; cp. x. 1. 27, with reference to Theophrastus) and from many others since his time. Dionysius’ versification of Demosthenes, and prosification of Simonides, in c. 25 and c. 26, may not seem altogether happy, but one or two points should be remembered in his favour. He does not recognize merely mechanical conceptions of literature: such as are implied in the Latin-derived words prose and verse, or in literature itself. He would probably have agreed with Aristotle that “Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the metre, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet” (Aristot. Poet. i. 9, S. H. Butcher). He might probably have also maintained that, in essentials, Theognis is less of a poet than Plato. And in modern times, if he had known them, he might have called attention to the rhymed rhetoric which often passed as poetry in eighteenth-century England, and have asked whether the elevation of thought and the measured cadences of Demosthenes did not entitle him to a higher poetic rank than that.