Theatre of the Greeks ... information relative to the rise, progress, and exhibition of the drama; together with an account of dramatic writers from Thespis to Menander: to which is added, a chronology and an appendix [compiled by P.W. Buckham].

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1860
 

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Page 329 - Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of analogy.
Page 315 - A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something...
Page 306 - But as the objects of imitation are the actions of men, and these men must of necessity be either good or bad (for on this does character principally depend; the manners being, in all men, most strongly marked by virtue and vice), it follows that we can only represent men either as better than they actually are, or worse, or exactly as they are...
Page 315 - Hence it is that no very minute animal can be beautiful; the eye comprehends the whole too instantaneously to distinguish and compare the parts. Neither, on the contrary, can one of a prodigious size be beautiful; because, as all its parts cannot be seen at once, the whole (the unity of object) is lost to the spectator, — as it would be, for example, if he were surveying an animal of many miles in length. As, therefore, in animals and other objects, a certain magnitude is requisite, but that magnitude...
Page 430 - Etruscan glosses, and the reprint of fragments and inscriptions, may render the treatise an indispensable addition to the dictionary, and a convenient manual for the professed student of Latin, it is hoped that the classical traveller in Italy will find the information amassed and arranged in these pages, sufficient to spare him the trouble of carrying with him a voluminous library of reference in regard to the subjects of which it treats.
Page 319 - ... the discovery most appropriated to the fable and the action is that above defined, because such discoveries and revolutions must excite either pity or terror; and tragedy we have defined to be an imitation of pitiable and terrible actions, and because, also, by them the event, happy or unhappy, is produced. Now discoveries, being relative things, are sometimes of one of the persons only, the other being already known; and sometimes they are reciprocal. Thus Iphigenia is discovered to Orestes...
Page 335 - The surprising is necessary in Tragedy ; but the Epic Poem goes farther, and admits even the improbable and incredible, from which the highest degree of the surprising results, because there the action is not seen.
Page 313 - For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse.
Page 306 - ... poets, ie makers of hexameter verse ; thus distinguishing poets, not according to the nature of their imitation, but according to that of their metre only. For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated poets : yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of poet; while the other should rather be called a physiologist than a poet.
Page 308 - ... meanest and most disgusting animals, dead bodies, and the like. And the reason of this is, that to learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all men; with this difference only, that the multitude partake of it in a more transient and compendious manner. Hence the pleasure they receive from a picture: in viewing it they learn, they infer, they discover what every object is; that this, for instance, is such a particular man, etc.

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