all means necessary to point this out--that the truly
eloquent must be free from base and ignoble (or ill-bred)
thoughts. For it is not possible that men who live their lives
with mean and servile aims and ideas should produce what is
admirable and worthy of immortality. Great accents we expect to
fall from the lips of those whose thoughts are dignified.

Believe this and it surely follows, as concave implies convex,
that by daily converse and association with these great ones we
take their breeding, their manners, earn their magnanimity, make
ours their gifts of courtesy, unselfishness, mansuetude, high
seated pride, scorn of pettiness, wholesome plentiful jovial
laughter.

He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his soul so strong
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers, nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!

And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil!
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood; where honour, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem....

Knowing the heart of man is set to be
The centre of this world, about the which
These revolutions of disturbances
Still roll; where all th' aspects of misery
Predominate; whose strong effects are such
As he must bear, being powerless to redress;
And that, unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man![2]

IX

If the exhortation of these verses be somewhat too high and
stoical for you, let me return to Longinus and read you, from his
concluding chapter, a passage you may find not inapposite to
these times, nor without a moral:

'It remains' [he says] 'to clear up, my dear Terentianus, a
question which a certain philosopher has recently mooted. I
wonder,' he says, 'as no doubt do many others, how it happens
that in our time there are men who have the gift of persuasion
to the utmost extent, and are well fitted for public life, and
are keen and ready, and particularly rich in all the charms of
language, yet there no longer arise really lofty and
t