The composition of members magnifies what is said, just as it does our bodies; no one of these, taken by itself, has anything notable, but all together they fill out a perfect system. So great matters, when scattered apart, dissipate sublimity along with themselves; embodied by the partnership and further bound about by the band of harmony, by their very circle they become voiced; and well-nigh in the period the sublimities are a club-feast of multitude. §1
But that many writers and poets, neither sublime by nature nor perhaps gifted with any greatness, yet using common and popular words, words bringing in nothing extraordinary as a rule, by the mere setting and joining of these have nevertheless thrown around themselves bulk and reach and the appearance of not being mean, has been adequately shown by us in the cases of many others, of Philistus, of Aristophanes here and there, and most of all of Euripides. §2
After the killing of his children Heracles says: ‘I am full to the brim of evils, and there is no more place to put them.’ The expression is exceedingly common, but it has become sublime by being moulded into harmony. If you put it together otherwise, you will see that Euripides is a poet of composition rather than of thought. §3
Of Dirce dragged by the bull: ‘And if anywhere he chanced to wheel round, he hauled along whatever he caught — woman, rock, oak — exchanging them ever.’ The conception is itself noble, but it has grown more solid because the harmony is not hurried, nor borne, as it were, in a rolling tumble; rather, the words have stays against one another, and supports of beats spaced firmly to a settled greatness. §4