33. He has powers, dignity, and fire, who can inspire a trifle with importance.
34. Know that nothing is trifling in the hand of genius, and that importance itself becomes a bauble in that of mediocrity:—the shepherd's staff of Paris would have been an engine of death in the grasp of Achilles; the ash of Peleus could only have dropped from the effeminate fingers of the curled archer.
35. Art either imitates or copies, selects or transcribes; consults the class, or follows the individual.
36. Imitative art, is either epic or sublime, dramatic or impassioned, historic or circumscribed by truth. The first astonishes, the second moves, the third informs.
37. Whatever hides its limits in its greatness—whatever shows a feature of immensity, let the elements of Nature or the qualities of animated being make up its substance, is sublime.