[41]. “Episode” is here defined in quite a new sense as the dialogue between choruses; “Exodus” as that which no chorus follows. The chapter is doubtful—or something more.
[42]. In all modern languages, though no doubt not in Greek, “Imitation” carries with it a fatal suggestion of copying previous examples of art, and not going direct to Nature at all. I think there is no reasonable doubt that this suggestion is responsible by itself for much of the mistakes of modern “Classical” criticism in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. You must “imitate” Homer, Virgil, Milton, not “represent” Nature.
[43]. Those who do not care to “grapple with whole libraries” will find excellent handlings of the question in Butcher, op. cit., pp. 236-237, and Egger, op. cit., pp. 267-300.
[44]. No edition with commentary can here be recommended to English readers with quite such confidence as Professor Butcher’s Poetics. That of E. M. Cope (3 vols., Cambridge, 1877), with a fourth, but earlier, volume of Introduction (London, 1867), is extremely full and useful, though the Germans (see Römer’s edition after Spengel, Pref., p. xxxiv) scoff at its text. Dr Welldon’s translation is well spoken of: and the old “Oxford” version, reprinted with some corrections in Bohn’s Library, is not contemptible, while Hobbes’s “Brief” (or Analysis), which accompanies it, is very valuable indeed. But here, as elsewhere, he who neglects the original neglects it at his peril.
[45]. Professor Butcher rather doubts this stress of mine on the prepositions, and points out to me that ἐπιλέγομαι (in the sense of reading) is almost exclusively Herodotean, and never established itself generally in Greek. But he admits that the more usual employment of ἀναγιγνώσκω for “reading aloud” bears on my point.
[46]. Τὸ περὶ τὴν λέξιν ὀψὲ προῆλθεν· καὶ δοκεῖ φορτικὸν εἶναι, καλῶς ὑπολαμβανόμενον. See [note] at end of chapter.
[47]. He had earlier, in the most grudging context, admitted that lexis gives character to a speech, that συμβάλλεται πολλὰ πρὸς τὸ φανῆναι ποιόν τινα τὸν λόγον—a confession from which can be extracted, at least in germ, all that a very fanatic of style need contend for.
[48]. Metre being neither more nor less than definitely recurrent rhythm, first within the line, then in corresponding lines.
[49]. In the Greek εἰρομένη, “strung together,” and κατεστραμμένη, “inter-twisted.”
[50]. Op. cit., p. 194 sq.