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571 Socrates^ Schleiermacher^ and Delbrueck. 57I weigh the evidence calmly, and to decide impartially. Nor would it perhaps indicate the spirit best fitted for conducting such investigations, that we felt the less interest in them be- cause our personal comfort was not affected by the issue. Those therefore who come to the same conclusion with Mr D. on the questions which he raises with respect to the Apology, may pos- sibly be edified by his narrative ; but others who would have no need of such consolation may still take a great interest in the questions themselves. And it is for this reason that they have here been stated at some length. The reluctant diffidence with which, as we have seen, Mr D. propounds these questions, under the impression that he was the first person to whom they had occurred, was probably founded on a mistake. For two or three years before his book was published, similar objections to the same parts of the Apo- logy had been brought forward, in a very different manner indeed, and with a different object, by another German author. This was Mr Ast, who in ISI6 published a work on Plato'^s life and writings", which obtained considerable celebrity. It had probably not fallen in Mr D/s way in November 1818, when he sent his little treatise to the press, as he has not mentioned it. He however informs the reader in his preface, that he had written the work four years before; but having just resumed his functions of professor at Bonn, he was induced to send it into the world, by way of greeting to distant friends. It is always instructive to compare the opinions of two persons who have, independently of each other, turned their thoughts, nearly at the same time, to the same subject : and as it is not so much Mr Delbrueck's work as the Apology itself in which we are interested, it will be very proper to consider Mr Ast's view of it. With the rest of his book we are not at present concerned. But yet it is fit that the reader should be apprised, that Mr Ast has distinguished himself by the bold- ness with which he has attacked several of Plato's most cele- brated works. Among the whole number only fourteen have escaped the stroke of his criticism ; and in the condemned list, among a crowd of the smaller dialogues, stand the Laws and the Apology, separated however by a very wide interval, which ''i Platons Leben unci Scbriften: von Frederich Ast. Vol.. II. No.. 4D