n
of his mentioning a complex Cretic rhythm; also a dactylic or heroic,
and he arranged them in some manner which I do not quite understand,
making the rhythms equal in the rise and fall of the foot, long and
short alternating; and, unless I am mistaken, he spoke of an iambic as
well as of a trochaic rhythm, and assigned to them short and long
quantities. Also in some cases he appeared to praise or censure the
movement of the foot quite as much as the rhythm; or perhaps a
combination of the two; for I am not certain what he meant. These
matters, however, as I was saying, had better be referred to Damon
himself, for the analysis of the subject would be difficult, you know.

Rather so, I should say.

But there is no difficulty in seeing that grace or the absence of grace
is an effect of good or bad rhythm.

None at all.

And also that good and bad rhythm naturally assimilate to a good and
bad style; and that harmony and discord in like manner follow style;
for our principle is that rhythm and harmony are regulated by the
words, and not the words by them.

Just so, he said, they should follow the words.

And will not the words and the character of the style depend on the
temper of the soul?

Yes.

And everything else on the style?

Yes.

Then beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on
simplicity,--I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered
mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only an
euphemism for folly?

Very true, he replied.

And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not make these
graces and harmonies their perpetual aim?

They must.

And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and
constructive art are full of them,--weaving, embroidery, architecture,
and every kind of manufacture; also nature, animal and vegetable,--in
all of them there is grace or the absence of grace. And ugliness and
discord and inharmonious motion are nearly allied to ill words and ill
nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and
virtue and bear their likeness.

That is quite true, he said.

But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to
be required by us to express the image of the good in their works, on
pain, if they do anything else, of expulsion from our State? Or is the
same control to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be
prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of