18
‘But now here is another great advantage that I consider you have over me. The poetic faculty has a single aim; from which it follows that Homer’s glory must be laid hold of at once and as a whole. You on the other hand, if you were to attempt dealing with the whole Demosthenes all at once, would never know what to say; you would waver and not be able to set your thoughts to work. You would be like the gourmand at a Sicilian banquet, or the aesthete who has a thousand delightful sights and sounds presented to him at once; they do not know which way to turn for their conflicting desires. I suspect that you too are distracted and find concentration impossible; all round you are the varied attractions—his magnanimity, his fire, his orderly life, his oratorical force and practical courage, the endless opportunities of gain that he scorned, his justice, humanity, honour, spirit, sagacity, and each of all his great services to his country.
18
It may well be that, when you behold on this side decrees, ambassadors, speeches, laws, on the other, fleets, Euboea, Boeotia, Chios, Rhodes, the Hellespont, Byzantium, you are pulled to and fro among these too numerous invitations, and cannot tell which to accept.
19
‘Pindar once found himself in a similar difficulty with an overabundant theme: Ismenus? Melia’s distaff golden-bright? Cadmus? the race from dragon’s teeth that came? Thebe’s dark circlet? the all-daring might Of Heracles? great Bacchus’ merry fame? White-armed Harmonia’s bridal?—Ay, but which? My Muse, we’re poor in that we are too rich.
19
You, I dare say, are in the same quandary. Logic and life, rhetoric and philosophy, popularity and death—ay, but which? The maze is quite easy to escape from, though;
