Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/98

88 that we must refer, to explain and complete the Recollections of Xenophon. Those who know Plato can "read between the lines" of Xenophon, and see that much which the latter represents as bluntly said was in all probability accompanied by delicate intellectual turns, which the quick and impatient soldier's mind of Xenophon did not appreciate or think worth reproducing in detail. The ancients were agreed that nothing was more strikingly characteristic of Socrates than his "irony," which consisted in a sort of mock deference, always in good taste, to those whom he was going to instruct. Of the exact nature of this manner of his we should know nothing from Xenophon or any one else, were it not for the dramatic representation of it in Plato. Again, from Plato we learn to believe that Socrates was one of the finest "gentlemen" that ever lived; in the heat of argument not wounding the susceptibilities of any; answering insolence with superior repartee, but never triumphant or offensive; always entering into the feelings of others; and always conveying intellectual instruction under the forms of urbanity and good-breeding. The account of him in Xenophon is not inconsistent with this idea, but would never have fully suggested it. But the work of Xenophon has, after all, a certain value of its own. It gives a solid basis of facts, and prevents one from thinking that the Socrates of philosophy was a mere creation of the genius of Plato. We shall now take some of the most salient of those facts, and endeavour thus to put