When we labour over a piece that calls for elevation and great-mindedness, it is well to imagine in our souls how Homer, if it had so chanced, would have said this very thing, how Plato or Demosthenes would have made it sublime, or in history Thucydides. For those great figures, presenting themselves to our emulation and as it were standing eminent before us, will somehow lift our souls toward the standards we have imagined. §1
Better still, suppose we sketch this further to ourselves: how, were he present, would Homer or Demosthenes have heard this very passage I am uttering, and how would they have been disposed by it? It is in truth a great test, to set up such a tribunal and theatre for one's own writing, and to render account of what one has written before such heroes as judges and witnesses, with sport intended. §2
More stirring than these is to add: how, when I have written these things, would all the after-time hear them? Whoever fears, on the spot, that he will utter anything beyond his own life and time, the very offspring of such a soul must come forth incomplete and blind, like aborted births, never brought to maturity for the time of after-fame. §3