and if his mind had been as much imbued with a sympathy for what was great as with a sense of what was useful.' Many more pages follow. The whole is wound up by the following touching words: This out talent against mediocrity, clever at playing off parliamentary majorities against those mysterious unanimities which keep growling beneath a throne; open-hearted, sometimes open to the verge of imprudence, but catching himself when thus tripping with wonderful address; fertile in finding expedients, and in putting on a face and Louis Philippe having been judged severely a mask; making Europe a bugbear to France, and France to Europe; loving beyond all dispute by some, harshly by others, it is only natural his country, but preferring his family; prizing who is himself at present nothing more than a that one who has known that monarch, and mastery more than authority and authority more than dignity-a tendency this which is so far shadowy being, should come and give his evidence for him in the face of History. untoward, that, being bent on compassing success, it counts cunning among its instruments evidence, be it what it may, is at least disinand does not exclude baseness, but which is so terested; one shadow may be allowed to console far beneficial that it preserves the policy of a another; to share a common darkness gives a country from violent crises, the state from frac-right to praise; and we need not fear of its tures, and society from catastrophies; painstak- flattered the other.' being said of two tombs in exile: This one ing, accurate, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable; sometimes giving himself the lie; showing a bold front to Austria at Ancona, making a dead set at England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying Pritchard; sing ing the Marseillaise and singing it with zest; inaccessible to dejection, languor, to a taste for the Beautiful and the Ideal, to inconsiderate generosity, to Utopias, to chimæras, to anger, to vanity, and to fear; capable of every known form of personal valour; at Valmy a general, at Jemappes a common soldier; eight times the butt of a regicide, and never with a smile off his face; brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker; never uneasy but at the prospect of a European convulsion, and ill-suited for great political schemes; always ready to risk his life, never his throne; making his will felt rather than seen, that the obedience might be paid to the mind more than to the monarch; gifted with observation, not with divination; not troubling himself about currents of thought, but a good judge of men, that is, forced to see before he could decide; full of good sense, prompt and keen, of practical wisdom, ready of speech and with a prodigious memory; to that memory having hourly recourse-his only point of resemblance with Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing facts, details, dates, names, bat ignorant of the tendencies, the passions, the habits of thought of the multitude, the inward aspirations, the hidden and obscure fermentations of the soul, in a word, of everything which might be called the invisible currents of the conscience; accepted by the surface of France, but not much liked by the lower strata; getting out of the difficulty by finessing; governing too much and not reigning enough; his own Premier; dexterous at stemming the immensity of ideas with the trifles of realities; combining a genuine creative power of civilisation, order, and organisation, with a kind of pettifogging and quibbling spirit; the founder and the Procureur of a dynasty; having in him a dash of Charlemagne and a dash of an attorney; in a word, a man of lofty and original mind, a prince who made his rule felt in spite of the uneasiness of France, and his influence in spite of the jealousy of Europe, Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his time, and would be ranged among the illustrious Rulers of history, if he had only had a little love of glory, On the social and political opinions of which these numerous digressions are made the vehicle, it is difficult for an Englishman to speak without impatience and surprise; impatience at the amazing ignorance of the rudiments of social and political philosophy which even such a man as Victor Hugo displays in every line; surprise at the stolidity which prevents the author from seeing that the events which are either the pretext or the cause of his becoming and remaining an exile were but the natural and only possible fruit of those doctrines, which are paraded with so much emphasis and apparent sincerity. Not often has greater genius been placed at the service of greater nonsense. Had we followed the example of certain critics of Les Misérables,' we should have indulged in ridicule of these digressions and this nonsense, to the exclusion of almost all that really constitutes the true beauty and grandeur of the work. Nothing could have been easier than such a task. Possibly the love of detraction, which holds so firm a place in the human heart, might have rendered this treatment more palatable to the public than that which we have adopted. We venture to think, however, that we have chosen the better-we are certain that we have chosen the more laborious-part. We hold, with Winckelmann, that, of all canons of criticism, one of the most important to bear in mind is this-always to set yourself to find out what is beautiful in a work of art before you begin to criticise the defects. Whatever may be the blemishes observable in this work-and we have not been slow to point them out-it bears undoubted traces of having been the produce of much honest toil, and many noble aspirations. Qualities such as these are not of such common occurrence that we should treat their possessor with sarcasm and contempt because he indulges at times in extravagances which test the patience of the reader. ART. II.-The Platonic Dialogues for Eng-| lish Readers. By William Whewell, D.D. 3 Vols. 1859-1861. It is one of Mr. Ruskin's dicta that an intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much even in Plato by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.' Dr. Whewell is not less sanguine in his expectations. He has acted on the supposition that a large portion of the Platonic Dialogues' can be made intelligible and even interesting to ordinary readers of English literature.' We sympathize with him in his hope, and we applaud the spirit of his undertaking. It may be, indeed, that his endeavour to popularize the way of thinking' known as Greek Philosophy is not throughout inspired with the highest reverence for the genius of these writings, which he prizes chiefly for their educational value. He has not unsphered the spirit' of the great Athenian. But the work presents so many traces of a genuine liking and almost enthusiasm for Plato, and in many parts is executed with so much vigour, that we desire to accept it cordially, not only as an additional proof, if that were needed, of the universality of its author's interests and powers, but as a timely contribution to the Platonic literature of our country. by E. Poste, Esq., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. The first-named publication is already passing through a second edition, and is undoubtedly a very meritorious work. But it can scarcely convey to a reader who is unacquainted with the Greek anything like an adequate impression of the poetical and dramatic power manifested in the 'Republic.' The perusal of it will convince any one who is familiar with the original how difficult it is even for good scholars to translate Plato. The art of translating is like the art of preserving: it is impossible to keep the colour and the aroma in their first freshness, and yet the degree in which this point is approached is the test of skill. Many of the finer touches of Plato's masterpiece have disappeared in this copy. * Mr. Poste has been more suc cessful. His version, while fastidionsly accurate, combines a certain antique dignity with ease and smoothness. Still it tastes a little too much like the dried fruit. The 'Philebus' could not by any means be presented to English readers as a popular treatise; but with all the complexity of its massive struc ture, it has a light and graceful beauty and an harmonious movement, which we would fain have seen more perfectly rendered. The Platonic Dialogues, as Dr. Whewell has introduced them to us, come before us with a more engaging air. It must be admitted that they afford very pleasant reading. They have no lack of perspicuity, nor of freshness and vigour of expression. If other translators, in preserving some nicety of meaning, have occasionally suffered some of the pith and force of the original to escape them, Dr. Whewell, by keeping a tough hold of his author's drift, and of the Saxon idiom, moves with a firm step, even where he may have too hastily let go the finer clue of literal interpre tation. But as we have already hinted, we feel a want in reading him which troubles us more than mistakes of construing. The translator has not sufficient faith in his author. For what Wordsworth says of the poet ap There was certainly room enough in England for a fresh attempt to make Plato accessible to those who cannot 'enjoy' him in the original. Until late years the only English translation of the whole of Plato's works was that in five thick quarto volumes by Sydenham and Taylor (1804). Sydenham's dialogues (including the Symposium, Meno, and Philebus) leave comparatively little to be desired; but unfortunately the great bulk of the work is done by Taylor, who, though he has turned some things gracefully, is frequently deficient both in style and accuracy. Shelley's Symposium is in parts exquisite in point of language and rhythm, but he has fallen into some errors which were avoided by Sydenham. More recently a complete version of In some cases the rendering appears to be (we the Dialogues by different hands has been write under correction), not merely imperfect, but published by Mr. Bohn. The three volumes mistaken: eg p. 373 (St.)-i úr, 'to causes which;"' 882, ψεύδεσθαι τε καὶ εψεύσθαι, to lie or to be the are of unequal merit, but none of them can victim of a lie; 421, ¿riorápela, we are well aware pretend to first-rate excellence. To these, that we might; p. 449, ro opus robro, this word and to the elegant little volume of Selections right; p. 492, διαφθειρομένους τινὰς ὑπὸ σοφιστῶν νέους in which Lady Chatterton has brought togecertain individuals corrupted by Sophists in their ther some of the most impressive passages of youth; ib., dλotor nos mas aperiv, a character Plato, translated by herself, we can only al-528, OTL T The choiws Exe, because it is studied that will regard virtue with different feelings; lude in passing. Besides these, two transla- absurdly p. 536, otkov tos y' tpoi depoury. 'AM tions of separate dialogues have lately ap-sipoi, ty, propt, At least, in listening, I did peared, which have a more serious claim to be considered: of the Republic,' by Messrs. Davies and Vaughan, late Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; and of the Philebus,' 6 6 not think so. 6 ་ 6 Well, in speaking it struck me that for it; p. 612, rár ála dreλvránea re Xoye," And I did;' p. 579, obdiv dcóuevos, Without any excuse have we not divested ourselves of all secondary considerations in the course of the argument !" plies with at least equal force to the philoso- | ready to appreciate the moral grandeur of pher: You must love him, ere to you he will the whole position (even though coloured seem worthy of your love.' And Dr. Whe- here and there with 'Platonic exaggerations'). well is not in the fullest sense a lover of Plato. Had he lived in Athens at the time of its Either his mind has not been cast in the greatest glory, when philosophy had its birth same imaginative mould, or possibly a whole- there, it is more than doubtful whether he some reaction against the high-flying inter- would have accompanied Plato far, but he preters has carried him a little too far. What would have been found with Plato, Euclides, ever may be the cause, he does not appear to and Antisthenes at the feet of Socrates, and be quite an enthusiastic admirer of the Plato- would not have been lightly absent from his nie wisdom, and he is not always a satisfac- master's death. The aspect of Plato's mind tory interpreter of Plato's thoughts. which he has presented to us is perhaps the most universally interesting, and certainly has the nearest affinity to English modes of thought. To stimulate intelligence, to rouse the mind to seek for clear definitions of familiar notions, especially of those which are at once most familiar and most indefinite, namely, our moral ideas these objects, common to Plato and Socrates, Dr. Whewell fully recognises, and he exhibits with considerable pith and raciness the inductive' method of catechizing by which they are pursued. But Socrates was something more than an acute reasoner about ethics in their infancy; and the intensity of his personal character was accom lectual aim. He sought with religious pertinacity not merely knowledge of moral relations, but knowledge as such. And that which binds Plato's dialogues together is the continuation of this speculative impulse and the consciousness of it ever becoming more distinct until it has reached the whole extent of previous and contemporary thought, and has travelled over every surrounding aspect of Hellenic life. The same spirit rules amidst the rich variety of the Phædrus and the comparative simplicity of the Protagoras and The defect adverted to is not merely that the style is inadequately rendered-that for instance the various music of the Phædrus (παναρμόνιοι ρυθμοί) and the simple grace of the Protagoras are represented by the same rough and occasionally frigid manner-nor merely that the fragmentary mode of treatment is ill adapted for the reproduction of a work of art it is rather that some part of what lay deepest in Plato and of what he most valued is thrown into the background, if not ignored. Hence the gradations through which his philosophy unfolded itself are traced imperfectly, and the real harmony which pervades this diverse body of writings' is obscured and marred. There are elements, in-panied with a corresponding loftiness of inteldeed, of Plato's life-work, to which Dr.Whewell has given fresh prominence, and which a less cool and unexcited handling has sometimes eliminated. For the meteor-light of German philosophy our author has substituted the candle of English common sense; while in his command of geometry he holds a thread which reaches almost directly to the Academy. He has done wisely in protesting against certain crude methods by which Plato's meaning is overlaid with modern thought,' and disguised under the language of Descartes or Hegel. He has further avoid-Meno. ed the mistake of aiming at a formal con- This ever present spirit of inquiry is the sistency, while sacrificing the obvious mean- very life of Plato; and it is this which Dr. ing of a particular writing. One bond of Whewell appears frequently to overlook. The connexion between the several dialogues he cause may be partly gathered from his own has brought into full relief; the common pre-words in the preface to his first volume :— sence in them of the direct, unswerving, merciless appeal to common sense, and the absolute determination to uphold an immutable morality. Our author, if not deeply imbued with Platonism, is a genuine Socratic. He is strongly attracted by what Antisthenes called the Socratic vigour (Ewxpasiv iv), the inexorable sequence, the keen wit, the imperturbable good humour, the homely, yet sublime, moral attitude of the Father of Philosophy. He thoroughly enjoys the way in which Socrates sets the young men athinking; he is entertained with the discomfiture of the Sophist, though he is no less pleased when the adversary makes a good fight of it and dies hard; and he is ever 'If I have been led in many cases to views of the purport of these dialogues different from the views which have been put forth by modern translators and commentators, I have tried to discussed the interpretations proposed by others. give my reasons for my interpretation, and have To those who have been accustomed to the usual style of commenting upon the “ Platonic Dialogues," I shall probably appear, especially in the earlier Dialogues of this series, to see in Plato a less profound wisdom than has been com monly ascribed to him. But I hope the reader will find in the Dialogues themselves, as here presented, and in their connexion with each other, a justification of my views as to the purpose and object of the arguments used. In every part my rule has been to take what seemed the direct and natural import of the Dialogue as its true meaning. Some of the commentators are in the habit of extracting from Plato doctrines obliquely implied rather than directly asserted: indeed they sometimes seem to ascribe to their Plato an irony so profound, that it makes no difference in any special case whether he asserts a proposition or its opposite. I have taken a different course, and I have obtained, as I think, a more consistent result.' av pos μεspáxiα*) insinuates himself into the good graces of the boyish mind. But are we to suppose that he has no object beyond his own amusement in doing this? May he not be at the same time insinuating some true lesson? 'Laughing, to teach the truth What hinders?' Or is his main purpose simply to puzzle them? And is it a matter of indifference to Plato in what direction they are 'set a-thinking'? Before accepting such a conclusion, it would be prudent to compare the 'Symposium,' in which a cognate subject (Love) is nestness. Here we find several of the hints thrown out in the Lysis' carefully elaborated. Thus the suggestion that what is neither good nor evil loves the good because of the presence of evil in itself is paralleled by the thought that 'Love is neither wise nor unwise, neither a God nor a mortal, neither a want accompanying him: that he is the son of Invention and Poverty." The vague notion of an Absolute ground of Friendship We have already granted that it is possible to find too much in Plato; that is, to attribute to him associations which are of another age. But when fully guarded against this danger, and wholly apart from any desire to give a profound meaning to common-treated more fully and with undoubted earplace language, an attentive reader is soon led to suspect him of a very deep irony and a love of indirect expression. Further, as he becomes familiar with Plato's writings, he will be made aware of a continuity of growth pervading them, as he perceives the germs of later. thoughts appearing in the earlier dialogues: theories stated tentatively and relin-rich nor utterly poor; yet that he has always quished, which are afterwards accepted when put differently; the same idea appearing at one time in a mythical, at another time in a severer, form; while sometimes, what has been in one place worked out with strict dialectical exactness, seems in a later passage to be weakened or softened down. And thus an intention or tendency may often be quite fairly deduced from the comparison of other dialogues, which is by no means evident on the surface of a particular writing. No analysis of Plato can be searching, no account of him can be adequate, which omits these plain facts. It is possible to assign to Plato notions which are foreign to him; it is possible, in treating him as a philosopher, to forget that he is a dramatist and poet; to draw a sort of bust of him instead of the full-length figure. But it is no less a fault to give us the limbs without the head, or the body without the inspiring soul. In avoiding the error of imagining an ideal Plato, Dr. Whewell has fallen into the opposite extreme. He has discarded the help of imagination, and his Plato is sometimes a very matter-of-fact person indeed. The little dialogue which bears the name of Lysis' or 'On Friendship' affords a good illustration of our meaning. This Dr. Whewell regards as a series of puzzles, fitted well enough to exercise the intellect of boys, and of men in the infancy of speculation, and employed mainly for that purpose by Plato.' It is true that the scene of the conversation is a boys' school, and that the only actual interlocutors besides Socrates are boys; and Dr. Whewell has very happily rendered the playful manner in which Socrates (maí 6 prov pixov)§ is more distinctly set forth in the Symposium' as Absolute Beauty (avrò xaλóv), and its relation to particu lar objects is similarly described; while the anticipation with which the Lysis' closes, that the ground of Friendship is that which is at once Good and Proper to the person aiming at it (ayadov xai oixstov), is strikingly confirmed by the doctrine of Diotima, that the real aim of Love is that the Beautiful should be realized as our own.** This last thought, as Dr. Whewell himself remarks, becomes the centre of Aristotle's deeply philosophical analysis of Friendship, in which other questions raised in the 'Lysis' are also noticed; such as, whether friendship is always mutual, and whether it arises naturally between similar or opposite characters? Hence it is not unreasonable to think that real difficulties may lie at the root of these, which Dr. Whewell considers merely verbal questions. To the Greek philosophers, at all events, they were not merely ver bal. And, gathering boldness in the face of these analogies, we venture to ask, whether Socrates' advice to Hippothales at the opening is not intended to convey the impres sion that truth is the real ground of love, and hence that the true way to conciliate love in another is to awaken in him the love of truth, * Plat. 'Theæt., p. 168. Lys,' p. 217. S'Lys.,' p. 219. ¶ 'Lys.,' p. 222. 'Ar. Eth. N.,' b. ix. a long transition period, in which the Greek was no longer a child, but a growing boy; and when the state, mirrored in the Homeric poems, in which everything in and around. the life of man was met with an awestruck, yet loving and familiar reverence, no longer Lastly, when we remember how closely allied Themistocles and Pericles than the example, which seemed to animate them, of the heroes had retired to the inner chambers of memory, still ready to awake at the touch of the poet into more than imaginary being. Even with the poetical forms, the beginnings of philosophy were ere long inwoven. The fine sense of harmony and proportion inherent in the Greek race was puzzled in comparing past and present, elements of liberty and of order, the Fates and Justice, positive and unwritten law. The Prometheus' of Eschylus, and the Antigone' of Sophocles, had a deeper than the merely poetical interest. Moral reflections, like those of Pindar and Thucydides, began to insert themselves beneath the pictures of Olympus, and to supplant the fear We conclude, therefore, that the hypotheses of the Divine jealousy. The political history of the Lysis' were either seriously put forth of Athens had given scope for the display of by Plato before his own thought on the sub- the highest public qualities, and the exigenject was fully matured, or were seriously in-cies of the state had been a surer guide to tended by him to lead the mind of his reader a few steps in the direction which his own more advanced speculations had taken. The of old. The law-courts were training every fact that boys are the interlocutors rather fa- citizen in the arts of disputation. The more vours the latter view; that he is intentional- ambitious longed for the power of oratory to ly leading us only part of the way, as chil- sway the Demos. Meanwhile, an ideal philodren may be lifted to catch a momentary sophy had arisen, and came into contact with glimpse of some pageant which they are not this eager, nobile atmosphere of awakened allowed to follow. And it deserves to be re-intelligence. Thus Pericles strengthened his marked in confirmation of this, that the hy-mind with the converse of Anaxagoras. And pothesis already mentioned-that the indif- while the true meaning of the earliest thinkers ferent loves the good because of the presence passed over the heads of their contemporaries, of some evil-though it is relinquished be- and wandered, a mere bodiless creation, until cause of the difficulties surrounding the muit found harmonious utterance through the tual relations of good and evil in the world, mind of Plato, their words were eagerly is not expressly and finally set aside. caught up and applied. Hence philosophy stood in danger of being vulgarized, through being turned to popular uses. The lofty speculation of Parmenides in the form of the Zenonian logic was transformed into a mere gymnastic of the brain, a paradoxical means of pulling the world to pieces, and of binding fast the spirit of inquiry. The scarcely less exalted theory of Heraclitus became the occasion of the merely subjective doctrine of Protagoras, which threatened to make men indifferent to absolute truth. The singular attitude presented by Socrates was the only means of rescuing the world from this result. It was the reverse of dogmatism, yet it was not the attitude of scepticism but of inquiry. Two things are implied in this:* the belief This instance may suffice to indicate the The age * Compare Theæt, p. 176, ἀλλ ̓ οὔτε ἀπολέσθαι |