Page:Plato (IA platocollins00colliala).pdf/27

 new pastures for thought and feeling. As a new phase of literature, we may well believe that they were received with the same interest and surprise as the appearance of the 'Spectator' in the last century, or the 'Waverley Novels' at the beginning of our own. They are, in fact, the causeries de Lundi of their age. Plato assuredly knew well the lively and versatile character of those for whom he was writing. The grave and didactic tone of modern treatise on philosophy would have fallen very flat on the ears of an Athenian audience, accustomed to see their gods, statesmen, and philosophers brought upon the stage in a grotesque medley, and unsparingly caricatured. But not Momus himself (as a Greek would have said) could have turned these Dialogues into ridicule; and their very faults—their want of method and general discursiveness—must have been a relief after the formal commonplaces of the Sophists. Plato himself makes no pretence of following any rules or system. "Whither the argument blows, we will follow it," he says in the "Republic," and he is fond of telling us that a philosopher has plenty of time on his hands. But the vivacity and variety, the subtle humour—which can never be exactly reproduced in a translation—the charming scenes which serve as a framework to the discussion, and above all, the purity and sweetness of the language, which earned for the writer the title of "The Attic Bee,"—all these were reasons for the popularity which these Dialogues undoubtedly enjoyed.

There is no means of fixing the order in which they were written, but they probably all belong to the last