Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/159



, after the completion of his campaigns, had, as we have seen above, a long tranquil life, probably from his fortieth till nearly his ninetieth year, devoted to literature, during which he not only collected materials for his 'Hellenica' (the contemporary history of Greece), but also wrote his 'Anabasis,' his 'Recollections of Socrates,' his 'Education of Cyrus,' and several minor works above enumerated. These opuscula, composed from time to time, as the fancy took him, show Xenophon as the earliest of essay-writers. His subjects were varied enough, and this circumstance gives an interest to his works; but yet we find that his ideas were somewhat limited. He constantly reproduces under different forms the same ideal type of human life and character. And this ideal type is nothing transcendental or impossible; it is thoroughly healthy, but it has a certain suggestion of mediocrity.

Xenophon had a great capacity for friendship, and a tendency to what in modern times has been called