[51] Aristot. Rhet. iii. 1. 9; 8. 1 and 3; 2. 1. Cp. Cic. Orat. 56. 187 “perspicuum est igitur numeris astrictam orationem esse debere, carere versibus; sed ei numeri poëticine sint an ex alio genere quodam deinceps est videndum”; 57. 195 “ego autem sentio omnes in oratione esse quasi permixtos et confusos pedes; nec enim effugere possemus animadversionem, si semper eisdem uteremur, quia nec numerosa esse, ut poëma, neque extra numerum, ut sermo vulgi, esse debet oratio: alterum nimis est vinctum, ut de industria factum appareat, alterum nimis dissolutum, ut pervagatum ac vulgare videatur.” Also ibid. 51. 172; 57. 194-196; 58. 198; 68. 227. Cicero’s correct attitude is the more noticeable that he is commonly supposed to have been swayed by Asiatic rather than by Attic influences.
[52] C.V. c. 25 χωρὶς δὲ τῆς Ἀριστοτέλους μαρτυρίας, ὅτι ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν ἐμπεριλαμβάνεσθαί τινας τῇ πεζῇ λέξει ῥυθμούς, εἰ μέλλοι τὸ ποιητικὸν ἐπανθήσειν αὐτῇ κάλλος, ἐκ τῆς πείρας τις αὐτῆς γνώσεται.
[53] The modern custom is to view with some suspicion these inversions when found in prose composition, though in German prose they are common enough. It would be interesting to take two such sentences of the New Testament as μεγάλη ἡ Ἄρτεμις Ἐφεσίων (Acts xix. 28, 34) and ἔπεσεν, ἔπεσεν Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη (Apoc. xiv. 8), and see how they have been rendered into various modern languages by translators generally (both in authorised and unauthorised versions). It would probably be found that the French language here has been true to what Dionysius would call its λογοείδεια, or essentially prose character. In English the justification of the inversion would be the emotional nature of the original passages, which may be held to raise them to the same plane as poetry. [It would, on the other hand, be not good but bad journalism to write, “Uproarious were the proceedings at yesterday’s meeting of the Grand Committee.”] For the effect of word-order in English verse see an extract from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria in the notes, p. [79] infra. Coleridge was fond of offering, as a rough definition of poetry, “the best words in the best order.”
[54] See the notes on c. 25; particularly that on [256] 11.
[55] The words “How art thou” are, it will be noticed, differently divided in these two lines with a kind of Dionysian freedom.
[56] Ruskin continually, and Carlyle often (e.g. Sartor Resartus bk. iii. c. 8), provides examples of iambic rhythm. So George Eliot Mill on the Floss bk. vii.: “living through again, in one supreme moment, the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together.” And Blackmore, in Lorna Doone c. 3: “The sullen hills were flanked with light, and the valleys chined with shadow, and all the sombrous moors between awoke in furrowed anger.” [Blackmore sometimes falls also into the hexameter rhythm, as in the same chapter: “And suddenly a strong red light, cast by the cloud-weight | downwards, | spread like | fingers | over the | moorland, || opened the | alleys of | darkness, and | hung on the | steel of the | riders.”]
[57] Cicero’s conception of the requirements of rhythmical prose (as compared with those of verbal fidelity) is curiously illustrated by the way in which he is supposed to have recast the letter sent by Lentulus to Catiline. Sallust Cat. 44 “quis sim ex eo quem ad te misi cognosces: fac cogites in quanta calamitate sis et memineris te virum esse: consideres quid tuae rationes postulent: auxilium petas ab omnibus etiam ab infimis.” Cicero Cat. iii. 12 “quis sim scies ex eo quem ad te misi: cura ut vir sis et cogita quem in locum sis progressus: vide ecquid tibi iam sit necesse et cura ut omnium tibi auxilia adiungas, etiam infimorum.” Cp. A. C. Clark (reviewing Zieliňski) Classical Review xix. 172.
[58] Cp. C.V. [176] 20 οὐ γὰρ ἀπελαύνεται ῥυθμὸς οὐδεὶς ἐκ τῆς ἀμέτρου λέξεως, ὥσπερ ἐκ τῆς ἐμμέτρου. With regard to the occasional presence in prose of metrical or quasi-metrical lines, the likely explanation seems often to be one which Dionysius does not favour (πολλὰ γὰρ αὐτοσχεδιάζει μέτρα ἡ φύσις, [256] 19), rather than one which recognizes μέτρα καὶ ῥυθμούς τινας ἐγκατατεταγμένους ἀδήλως ([254] 3).
[59] D. B. Monro Modes of Ancient Greek Music p. 118.
[60] From the essay (already mentioned) on Style in Literature.