Dionysius Longinus on the Sublime - Taschenbuch

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: iv The Life and Writings curious pillar ftill erect, excites the forrowfal remembrance of what noble edifices and how fine a city once crown'd the place. Tyrants and barbarians are not lefs pernicious to learning and improvement, than to cities and nations. Bare names are preferved and handed down to us, but little more. Who were the deftroyers of all the reft, we know with regret, but the value of what is deftroyed, we can only guefs and deplore. . STU0ldfS. What countryman Longinus was, cannot Dr.p.Micc. certainly be discovered. Some fancy him a Syrian, and that he was born at Emifa, be- caufe an uncle of his, one Pronto a rhetorician, is called by Suidas an Emifenian. But others, w.ith greater probability, fuppofe him an Athenian. That he was a Grecian, is plain from two. paflages in the following Treatife; ki one of which he ufes this expremon, If we Grecians; and in the other he exprefsly calls Demojlhenes his countryman. His name was Dionyjius Longinus, to which Suidas makes the addition of Caffius; but that of his father is entirely unknown; a point (it is true) of fmall importance, fince a fon of excellence and worth, refledts a glory upon, inftead of receiving any from, his father. By his mother Frontonis he was allied, after two or three re- . XII. .. moves, moves, to the celebrated Plutarch, We are alfoat a lofs for the employment of his parents, their ftation in life, and the beginning of his education; but a -)- Remnant of his own writings informs us, that his youth was fpent in travelling with them, which gave him an opportunity to increafe his knowledge, and open his mind with that generous enlargement, which men of fenfe and judgment will unavoidably receive, from variety of objects and diverfity of converfation. The improvement of his mind was always...