Tag: Beauty

Bulletin

Inhabiting Classical Wholes in Music

On Thursday, I boarded a plane for Florence, Italy. By Sunday evening, I was wandering starry-eyed through the Piazza della Signoria at twilight, surrounded by a living museum of Renaissance sculptures standing at the foot of the 14th century stone tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, once the palace of the Medicis, now the city’s seat of government. I was among throngs of people, most of whom, like me, had traveled halfway across the world to be dazzled by the proud commanding figures of idealized human form. 

I came here to immerse myself in the fierce beauty of a culture that sought to reflect the order of the cosmos in every sculpture, cathedral, fresco, and yes, even that divinely anointed ritual: the cappuccino. 

Making time for contemplative encounters with beautiful art is essential for our survival. As a species, we long for narrative and wholeness. We weave tapestries, paint images, write stories, and compose symphonies because we sense at our core that all the fragments and experiences of our earthly existence belong to something greater than the individual parts. Yet in our digital era, it is entirely possible to suppress this. If we let ourselves, we can live out our lives in a safe sameness constructed out of our fears, desires and preferences, unclouded by disagreement, discomfort or change. And yet, there in our self-made bubbles, we will ache with our apart-ness, for at our core, to be human is to long for wholeness, which by necessity contains variety and communion. 

Art, if great, can give us glimpses of this all-encompassing integration. An artist aiming to reflect the harmonious nature of all creation will not shy away from disagreement, discomfort or rupture, but will lovingly arranging in truthful hues the ugly and the beautiful, the painful and the joyful, the defeats and the triumphs in light of the unified whole that redeems the ruptures and wrongs of its individual parts. 

Since a young age I’ve been acutely aware of the beautifully woven fabric that this world and all its varying parts form. I was raised in a home of strong faith and values, where I was taught how to be a good member of my family and society through conversation, prayer, great books, art, nature, and music. Each of these areas played an important role in forming my character, but it was primarily in classical music that I heard the tensions, aches, and longings of this world resolved with the ideals and virtues taught to me in my education and Christian faith. 

In the richly varied, powerful strains of conflict and resolution, I heard a world in which disagreements resolved into clarified harmonies, where the dark, despairing elements could transform into soaring melodies of exquisite hope. Classical music formed a stream of sound that washed over me; beauty, truth and goodness became not just knowable, but habitable. 

As a ten-year-old, I would often sit on our couch, enraptured by the instrumental world of Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Listening to the orchestra’s careful disassembly and reassembly, I found myself not only learning about the structure of orchestral music but also discovering how the world around me was intricately designed—each piece fitting seamlessly into a magnificent cosmic puzzle.

Music enables submersion in this revealed reality, for we can quite literally step into its waters and let the waves of sound wash over us, baptizing us in the healed unity of all things. The specific genre of classical music ensures this experience, since it is founded on the principles of cohesion and integration, in which each musical line and the notes within it function according to a clear direction, purpose and relationship to everything above, below, before and after the sounded notes of each moment. 

It developed this way because of origins in medieval chant, which sought to bring heavenly realities down to earth through notation. As monks learned the art of stacking musical lines to create a new vertical sense in addition to the horizontal, music began to climb, building a rich, transcendent texture that resembled the cathedrals of its cities. After an exhilarating period of innovation and experimentation during the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composers of the Classical era enshrined all that had come before them into musical forms that reflected the Enlightenment ideals of equality and justice for all. 

While the Founding Fathers of America were building a new democratic order founded on these ideals, Joseph Haydn, fondly referred to as the “Father of the Symphony,” was fine-tuning the sonata form—a pinnacle musical construct that gave contrasting musical ideas a clear map in which they could converse, develop and resolve. In a piece of music that follows the sonata form, we hear musical themes blossom then explore and discuss, as they react to new key areas and melodic content. By the end, all musical themes introduced at the start of the piece have transformed into a new landscape made richer by the musical journey and conversation.

In the prized classical genre of the concerto, a soloist shines in the spotlight while the orchestra supports it with accompanying harmonies, offering a fitting musical portrayal of an individual interacting with his surroundings. Derived from the Italian word “concertare” which is in turn derived from Latin, “concerto” quite aptly has two opposing meanings: “to dispute/contend” and “to agree/arrange.” A concerto displays both meanings of the word: as we listen to the interplay between the soloist and the orchestra, we are struck by the vulnerability of an individual as both uniquely set apart from and deeply embedded within the world at large. 

Classical music offers cathartic moments of “dispute” and “agreement,” whereby conflicts resolve into shared communions oriented toward the true, the good and the beautiful. Whether it be sacred polyphonic strains reaching to the cosmos, an enlightened conversation poured into a sonata mold, or a concerto soloist showcasing the unique dignity of each individual within society, notes assemble all of the pieces-–bright, dark, and everything in between—into richly cohesive, redemptive wholes. 

Sadie Hoyt is a classical pianist, music educator, and founder of Classical Encounters, a business dedicated to helping families, schools, and adult learners deepen their appreciation and knowledge of classical music. You can peruse her curricula, book, courses, listening guides, and free resources at sadiehoyt.com

Bulletin

Gimli Eulogizes the Glittering Caves

by J. R. R. Tolkien

In this excerpt from The Two Towers, Gimli the Dwarf beautifully evangelizes his friend, Legolas the Elf, about the exquisite beauties he has discovered in a cave of refuge. The scene opens with their troop faced with journeying through a mysterious wood which suddenly appeared to turn the tide of the battle of Helm’s Deep.

In the afternoon the King’s company prepared to depart. The work of burial was then but beginning; and Théoden mourned for the loss of Háma, his captain, and cast the first earth upon his grave. ‘Great injury indeed has Saruman done to me and all this land,’ he said; ‘and I will remember it, when we meet.’

The sun was already drawing near the hills upon the west of the Coomb, when at last Théoden and Gandalf and their companions rode down from the Dike. Behind them were gathered a great host, both of the Riders and of the people of Westfold, old and young, women and children, who had come out from the caves. A song of victory they sang with clear voices; and then they fell silent, wondering what would chance, for their eyes were on the trees and they feared them.

The Riders came to the wood, and they halted; horse and man, they were unwilling to pass in. The trees were grey and menacing, and a shadow or a mist was about them. The ends of their long sweeping boughs hung down like searching fingers, their roots stood up from the ground like the limbs of strange monsters, and dark caverns opened beneath them. But Gandalf went forward, leading the company, and where the road from the Hornburg met the trees they saw now an opening like an arched gate under mighty boughs; and through it Gandalf passed, and they followed him. Then to their amazement they found that the road ran on, and the Deeping-stream beside it; and the sky was open above and full of golden light. But on either side the great aisles of the wood were already wrapped in dusk, stretching away into impenetrable shadows; and there they heard the creaking and groaning of boughs, and far cries, and a rumour of wordless voices, murmuring angrily. No Orc or other living creature could be seen.

Legolas and Gimli were now riding together upon one horse; and they kept close beside Gandalf, for Gimli was afraid of the wood. ‘It is hot in here,’ said Legolas to Gandalf. ‘I feel a great wrath about me. Do you not feel the air throb in your ears?’

‘Yes,’ said Gandalf.

‘What has become of the miserable Orcs?’ said Legolas.

‘That, I think, no one will ever know,’ said Gandalf.

They rode in silence for a while; but Legolas was ever glancing from side to side, and would often have halted to listen to the sounds of the wood, if Gimli had allowed it.

‘These are the strangest trees that ever I saw,’ he said; ‘and I have seen many an oak grow from acorn to ruinous age. I wish that there were leisure now to walk among them: they have voices, and in time I might come to understand their thought.’

‘No, no!’ said Gimli. ‘Let us leave them! I guess their thought already: hatred of all that go on two legs; and their speech is of crushing and strangling.’

‘Not of all that go on two legs,’ said Legolas. ‘There I think you are wrong. It is Orcs that they hate. For they do not belong here and know little of Elves and Men. Far away are the valleys where they sprang. From the deep dales of Fangorn, Gimli, that is whence they come, I guess.’

‘Then that is the most perilous wood in Middle-earth,’ said Gimli. ‘I should be grateful for the part they have played, but I do not love them. You may think them wonderful, but I have seen a greater wonder in this land, more beautiful than any grove or glade that ever grew: my heart is still full of it. ‘Strange are the ways of Men, Legolas! Here they have one of the marvels of the Northern World, and what do they say of it? Caves, they say! Caves! Holes to fly to in time of war, to store fodder in! My good Legolas, do you know that the caverns of Helm’s Deep are vast and beautiful? There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely to gaze at them, if such things were known to be. Aye indeed, they would pay pure gold for a brief glance!’

‘And I would give gold to be excused,’ said Legolas; ‘and double to be let out, if I strayed in!’

‘You have not seen, so I forgive your jest,’ said Gimli. ‘But you speak like a fool. Do you think those halls are fair, where your King dwells under the hill in Mirkwood, and Dwarves helped in their making long ago? They are but hovels compared with the caverns I have seen here: immeasurable halls, filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools, as fair as Kheled-zâram in the starlight.

‘And, Legolas, when the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors under the echoing domes, ah! then, Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities. such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in

his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come. And plink! a silver drop falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea. Then evening comes: they fade and twinkle out; the torches pass on into another chamber and another dream. There is chamber after chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; and still the winding paths lead on into the mountains’ heart. Caves! The Caverns of Helm’s Deep! Happy was the chance that drove me there! It makes me weep to leave them.’

‘Then I will wish you this fortune for your comfort, Gimli,’ said the Elf, ‘that you may come safe from war and return to see them again. But do not tell all your kindred! There seems little left for them to do, from your account. Maybe the men of this land are wise to say little: one family of busy dwarves with hammer and chisel might mar more than they made.’

‘No, you do not understand,’ said Gimli. ‘No dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin’s race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the spring-time for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap – a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day – so we could work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in Khazaddûm; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let the night return.’

‘You move me, Gimli,’ said Legolas. ‘I have never heard you speak like this before. Almost you make me regret that I have not seen these caves. Come! Let us make this bargain-if we both return safe out of the perils that await us, we will journey for a while together. You shall visit Fangorn with me, and then I will come with you to see Helm’s Deep.’

‘That would not be the way of return that I should choose,’ said Gimli. ‘But I will endure Fangorn, if I have your promise to come back to the caves and share their wonder with me.’

‘You have my promise,’ said Legolas. ‘But alas! Now we must leave behind both cave and wood for a while: See! We are coming to the end of the trees. How far is it to Isengard, Gandalf?’

‘About fifteen leagues, as the crows of Saruman make it.’ said Gandalf: ‘five from the mouth of Deeping-coomb to the Fords: and ten more from there to the gates of Isengard. But we shall not ride all the way this night.’

‘And when we come there, what shall we see?’ asked Gimli. ‘You may know, but I cannot guess.’

‘I do not know myself for certain,’ answered the wizard. ‘I was there at nightfall yesterday, but much may have happened since. Yet I think that you will not say that the journey was in vain – not though the Glittering Caves of Aglarond be left behind.’

Bulletin

The Power of Art: Making the Ordinary Romantic

For quite a number of years now, art has become an important part of my life. One of the main values I take from art is its ability to change how I see the world. It helps me see beyond the ordinary and see essentials. Each branch of art can do this in a different way. I’d like to share a story from a recent trip to Paris and Israel that I think can demonstrate the power of art and, hopefully, convince you to make it part of your life.

World War II has always fascinated me – the scale of the conflict, the righteousness of the cause, and the stories of heroism have captured my imagination and interest. When I found myself in France last spring, I knew I had to make the trip to the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy.

Throughout the day we toured the various battle sites, hearing tales of heroism. Our tour ended at the American cemetery at Omaha beach. It’s a beautiful place. The gardens are immaculate. The setting is beautiful and peaceful.


Overlooking the rows of grave markers is a statue of a young man. When I first saw it I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I was not expecting it. I couldn’t help but feel in awe looking up at him towering over me. His body is triumphant and yet there’s a sadness in his face. It’s beautiful and tragic. The title of this statue is “The Spirit of American Youth Rising From The Waves”. I felt overwhelmed. Even writing about it now is difficult.

This statue made everything I had experienced that day more vivid. It captured my feelings on the triumph and tragedy of World War 2 and the immense gratitude I feel for those people who fought for something they believed in. The statue embodies the spirit of the American youth who went on to defeat the Nazis but also the tragedy of the price that was paid. The statue and what it represented would come back to me in an unexpected way.

A week later I arrived in Israel. For those of you who don’t know, Israel has a mandatory army service starting at 18. Nearly every Israeli does at least a few years of service. It’s common to see young off-duty soldiers walking the streets of Tel Aviv in their army fatigues, a gun slung over their shoulder, enjoying their day. This is normal in Israel. It’s ordinary. I was expecting to see this. What I didn’t expect was how I would react. Each time I passed one of these soldiers, I saw the statue from Omaha beach. I would well up with emotion. Instead of seeing a young adult doing their grocery shopping, I would see “The Spirit of American Youth Rising From The Waves” and everything it represented to me.

My experience in Israel demonstrates one of the most powerful ways art can enhance life. Art can change how you look at the world. It can capture the essence of an idea and value and present it to you in a way that is intense and vivid. It can become a lens through which you can see the world in a different way. It allows you to see your values embedded in the ordinary world around you. Instead of seeing a young soldier, I saw the statue and felt a wave of gratitude.

As you go out into the world, I hope you’ll look for art that you can use in a similar way. I hope you will look for art that will help make the world around you more vivid and that will allow you to experience your values.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to use art in this way, I recommend visiting Touching the Art. Luc Travers has a method of reading artworks that can help you connect with art and make it part of your life.

Bulletin

Only the Lover Sings: The Secret to Teaching Literature

I have spent my twenty-five years as a teacher further and further refining my purpose, to its present obsessive focus. My animating ambition, the one I live, sleep, and breathe, is to help people learn to love – to love – great literature.

In the span of that time, the task has become only tougher, primarily because of the omnipresence of technology. The quick and ready entertainment, meme and soundbite style content, and constant din of calls for our attention that come with a smartphone in every hand mean it has become increasingly difficult to get anyone to read.

Nevertheless, when my students are in the classroom, held as a captive audience, their devices all turned off and set aside, and we have in our hands one of the beloved books of my carefully chosen curriculum, I still feel an almost infallible power to turn them into thoughtful, eager, and passionate lovers of books.

While I myself am always learning more about what it takes to teach literature well – whether that means conceptualizing techniques that come to me as instinct, or gaining new insights from the world’s great teachers, present and past – I am confident I can name the fundamental principle behind my (perhaps immodest) boast of infallibility.

To be an effective guide and mentor, you must be in love with literature yourself. 

I say “be in love with” rather than “love” to give emphasis to the personal and passionate form the attachment has to take. If familiarity with great books feels to you like some duty of cultural literacy, if the experience of reading is more cerebral than it is of the soul, if the books you teach do not reverberate in the very core of your being, then you are not “in love with” literature.

Most of my memories of studying books in school involve, at best, dry discussions of literary devices, and, at worst, no discussion at all, but only multiple-choice tests to prove I’d done the reading. Almost never do I recall a teacher modeling an earnest emotional investment in the work, and rarely did I myself come to feel that kind of intense and personal connection.

By contrast, someone recently described to me how, as a boy, reading Lord of the Rings had made him desire to be good. He found himself unable to abide the thought of doing anything that, in his mind, would make him a disappointment to heroes like Frodo and Gandalf. That is what it means to be in love with a book. He saw the novel’s theme, he felt its import, and he made it a part of himself.

One of the problems endemic to education is that this love of literature has been lost. We cannot teach that which we are not capable of ourselves. So, if our capacity for that love has atrophied, or was never properly developed, what are we to do?

It is important for me to note here that I myself did not learn to love books until I was in my mid-twenties, and already working as a teacher. I have a vivid memory from my youth of watching a performance of The Miracle Worker and finding it painfully dull. Today, it is painful for me to confess that, because this play has come to stand in my mind for what it means to awaken a child’s soul to “a consciousness of her immortal nature” – to be a teacher, in the truest sense of the word. And after teaching this play every year for two decades, I still cannot read the climactic scene without crying.

My own eyes were first opened when I read Victor Hugo’s novel Ninety-Three aloud to my little group of homeschooled students so many years ago. We were wholly absorbed and focused. We were riveted by the plot. We gasped in chorus at the sudden twists and sighed over sentimental passages. We discussed our reactions as we read, and we worked to decipher Hugo’s message. The experience was as much a life-altering one for me as it was for them.

The point is, even if a passionate approach to literature does not now come naturally to you, it is a skill that can be revived or learned afresh.

  • Connect again with that classic that really made you feel – in love with the aloof Mr. Darcy, awed by the integrity of Atticus, pitying of poor Jane Eyre.
  • Find a mentor. When I discovered a great literature teacher, I consumed every word of his I could, and, afterward, strove to emulate his process. I am now trying to offer mentorship myself through a program called Read With Me, whose mission is “to help people connect emotionally with the classics.”
  • Take a close look at Mark Edmundson’s Why Read? or Arnold Bennett’s Literary Taste. Hear the former tell you in impassioned tones why “real reading is reincarnation,” and let the latter explain how literature helps us raise the plane of our existence “to the top level of the peaks.”
  • Recall that reading great books is meant to be a pleasure – not an idle one, but the profoundest kind we can know. Don’t consider a book part of your personal repertoire or eligible for your curriculum until you are able to consume it as a life-enhancing pleasure yourself.

Now, in one sense, a love of literature is only the precondition of effective teaching; it doesn’t give you a process. But it another sense, it is necessary and sufficient.

If you yourself have mastered a book’s meaning, felt its import, and made it a part of yourself, then you will know that all your efforts must be integrated around helping your students do the same. You won’t allow yourself to be distracted by too much talk of literary devices, you won’t be content for your students to prove only a rudimentary grasp of the content, and your discussions won’t be soulless and cerebral. You will be better able to trust your instincts, because you will know, deeply, the purpose you hope to achieve.

With my own faithful repertoire of books I dearly love, I can now be sure that every year a student will, for example, beg to keep her copy of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House so she can share it with a sister, or create a year-long calligraphic log of favorite literary quotes, or declare indignantly that I have ruined her for romance because no man will ever be a Cyrano de Bergerac, or weep with me more than once over scenes in Les Misèrables, or ask for keepsake versions of the books we read for Christmas.

I am in love with these books, and they learn to love them too.

Bulletin

Don Quixote Excerpt on Creative Writing

Miguel Cervantes’ masterpiece, Don Quixote, was considered “the final and greatest utterance of the human mind” by Doestoevsky, and was voted the best book ever written in a survey of top authors. Cervantes begins his prologue by speaking to the “Idle Reader”; the work presents a sustained reflection on the impact that the new reading culture had on 17th century Spanish society. Near the end of volume one, a learned clergyman reflects on the good, bad, and ugly of fictional writing, in words from which today’s creative writers can learn.

Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter XLVII

The canon and his servants were surprised anew when they heard Don Quixote's strange story, and when it was finished he said, "To tell the truth, senor curate, I for my part consider what they call books of chivalry to be mischievous to the State; and though, led by idle and false taste, I have read the beginnings of almost all that have been printed, I never could manage to read any one of them from beginning to end; for it seems to me they are all more or less the same thing; and one has nothing more in it than another; this no more than that.

“And in my opinion this sort of writing and composition is of the same species as the fables they call the Milesian, nonsensical tales that aim solely at giving amusement and not instruction, exactly the opposite of the apologue fables which amuse and instruct at the same time. And though it may be the chief object of such books to amuse, I do not know how they can succeed, when they are so full of such monstrous nonsense. For the enjoyment the mind feels must come from the beauty and harmony which it perceives or contemplates in the things that the eye or the imagination brings before it; and nothing that has any ugliness or disproportion about it can give any pleasure.

“What beauty, then, or what proportion of the parts to the whole, or of the whole to the parts, can there be in a book or fable where a lad of sixteen cuts down a giant as tall as a tower and makes two halves of him as if he was an almond cake? And when they want to give us a picture of a battle, after having told us that there are a million of combatants on the side of the enemy, let the hero of the book be opposed to them, and we have perforce to believe, whether we like it or not, that the said knight wins the victory by the single might of his strong arm. And then, what shall we say of the facility with which a born queen or empress will give herself over into the arms of some unknown wandering knight? What mind, that is not wholly barbarous and uncultured, can find pleasure in reading of how a great tower full of knights sails away across the sea like a ship with a fair wind, and will be to-night in Lombardy and to-morrow morning in the land of Prester John of the Indies, or some other that Ptolemy never described nor Marco Polo saw?

“And if, in answer to this, I am told that the authors of books of the kind write them as fiction, and therefore are not bound to regard niceties of truth, I would reply that fiction is all the better the more it looks like truth, and gives the more pleasure the more probability and possibility there is about it. Plots in fiction should be wedded to the understanding of the reader, and be constructed in such a way that, reconciling impossibilities, smoothing over difficulties, keeping the mind on the alert, they may surprise, interest, divert, and entertain, so that wonder and delight joined may keep pace one with the other; all which he will fail to effect who shuns verisimilitude and truth to nature, wherein lies the perfection of writing.

“I have never yet seen any book of chivalry that puts together a connected plot complete in all its numbers, so that the middle agrees with the beginning, and the end with the beginning and middle; on the contrary, they construct them with such a multitude of members that it seems as though they meant to produce a chimera or monster rather than a well-proportioned figure. And besides all this they are harsh in their style, incredible in their achievements, licentious in their amours, uncouth in their courtly speeches, prolix in their battles, silly in their arguments, absurd in their travels, and, in short, wanting in everything like intelligent art; for which reason they deserve to be banished from the Christian commonwealth as a worthless breed."

The curate listened to him attentively and felt that he was a man of sound understanding, and that there was good reason in what he said; so he told him that, being of the same opinion himself, and bearing a grudge to books of chivalry, he had burned all Don Quixote's, which were many; and gave him an account of the scrutiny he had made of them, and of those he had condemned to the flames and those he had spared.

The canon was not a little amused, adding that though he had said so much in condemnation of these books, still he found one good thing in them, and that was the opportunity they afforded to a gifted intellect for displaying itself; for they presented a wide and spacious field over which the pen might range freely, describing shipwrecks, tempests, combats, battles, portraying a valiant captain with all the qualifications requisite to make one, showing him sagacious in foreseeing the wiles of the enemy, eloquent in speech to encourage or restrain his soldiers, ripe in counsel, rapid in resolve, as bold in biding his time as in pressing the attack; now picturing some sad tragic incident, now some joyful and unexpected event; here a beauteous lady, virtuous, wise, and modest; there a Christian knight, brave and gentle; here a lawless, barbarous braggart; there a courteous prince, gallant and gracious; setting forth the devotion and loyalty of vassals, the greatness and generosity of nobles.

"Or again," said he, "the author may show himself to be an astronomer, or a skilled cosmographer, or musician, or one versed in affairs of state, and sometimes he will have a chance of coming forward as a magician if he likes. He can set forth the craftiness of Ulysses, the piety of Aeneas, the valour of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector, the treachery of Sinon, the friendship of Euryalus, the generosity of Alexander, the boldness of Caesar, the clemency and truth of Trajan, the fidelity of Zopyrus, the wisdom of Cato, and in short all the faculties that serve to make an illustrious man perfect, now uniting them in one individual, again distributing them among many; and if this be done with charm of style and ingenious invention, aiming at the truth as much as possible, he will assuredly weave a web of bright and varied threads that, when finished, will display such perfection and beauty that it will attain the worthiest object any writing can seek, which, as I said before, is to give instruction and pleasure combined; for the unrestricted range of these books enables the author to show his powers, epic, lyric, tragic, or comic, and all the moods the sweet and winning arts of poesy and oratory are capable of; for the epic may be written in prose just as well as in verse."