Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/585

575 Socrates^ Schleiermacher^ and Delbriieck. 575 the usual way, and then to take such opportunities as he could find, of drawing from his accuser a confession of his ignorance and injustice. And such is the course which we find him actually pursuing. It is therefore unnecessary to proceed to inquire Avith Mr Ast, whether, if Socrates had as might be expected conducted his defense in a dialogue, it is likely that Plato would have put the substance of it into the form of a continuous oration: a supposition, which, he thinks, the passage in the Gorgias sufficiently refutes. The question itself is ab- surd ; since we see that the author of the Apology has not in fact adopted such a form, but has retained or introduced collo- quial passages of considerable length, which it would have been just as easy for him to transform into the ordinary style of the bar as the rest of the speech. It appears then that this general objection is so far from stopping us in the outset of our inquiry, that upon examination it rather raises a presumption in favour of the Apology, and we have still to consider how far this is supported or rebutted by its contents. Mr Ast makes his next attack with a two-edged argument: a weapon, which notoriously requires to be handled with great delicacy, and may do great injury to the person who wields it, if he does not perceive its nature. Now this appears to be the case in the present instance with Mr Ast. Xenophon had described Socrates'' defense by the three -characteristics of truth, frankness, and justice {rrjv ^iKrjp dXrjOeaTara Kai eXev- OepicoraTu kuc hiKaioTara eiTrwr) which Montaigne has ex- pressed by saying, that the Apology is un plaidoyer veritable^ franc et juste^ au dela de tout eocemple^ adding (perhaps for Xenophon'^s fxeyaXrjyopLo) that it is dhcne haulteur inimagina- hie. The counterfeit Plato has, according to Mr Ast, fixed his eye upon these traditional qualities of the real defense (which by the way it is extremely difficult to understand if applied to a dialogue), and has endeavoured to convey a like impression by his imitation. For more than two thousand years he has suc- ceeded in imposing upon the world, so far as to make his readers believe that they perceived all these qualities in his work. This is certainly no proof that the effect has not been an illusion ; but yet it shews that the author, whoever he was, went carefully and thoughtfully to work, and understood what