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NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

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FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars.

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Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers.

PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS.

For 5 new subscribers (840.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10.

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Close in their litter 'neath the cowhouse walls, And panting sheep, together packed for warmth, Bleat 'neath the red-tiled shed: the homestead cock,

Long since, amid his dames, hath songht the perch,

At earliest symptom of the waning light,
Rest, warmth and rest, the whole creation seeks,
And men and maids sit by the inn-door hearth;
Cheerless and comfortless is all without,
Relentless, icy, grim, and pitiless,
The iron grip of Frost is on the earth.

All the Year Round.

WEARY,

OH, but to rest awhile! to rest from strife
That as a fretting chain wears out the soul
With endless thought; to gain and grasp the
whole

Dark mystery that shrouds our earthly life.
And then to rest, to strive with doubt no more;
Unmoved to sit and watch the ceaseless wave
Of changing creeds roll onward to the shore,
And cresting break and die; - unmoved to
brave

The taunts of wild fanatics, and the roar

Of halting crowds, that in their darkness rave Against the light of reason; - and to be Like some fair ship in sheltered haven moored,

Safe from the storm, by no vain meteor lured To track dark phantoms o'er the pathless sea. Dark Blue.

UNTO DEATH.

O, OFTTIMES in the twilight
I am sitting silently,
When the glory of the sunlight

Leaves its impress in the sky:
And a low voice seems to whisper,
With passion in each breath,
"I will love thee, love, for ever;
You may trust me unto death!"
And I live upon the echo

Of that passionate refrain;
And my hope is firm and steadfast
I shall hear it once again.
Though years may pass and vanish,
And life grow worn and cold,

I am waiting the reutterance
Of those pleading words of old.

It may be an illusion,

A myth, a fancy bare; But it keeps my heart from breaking, And my life from much despair. And as long as life shall linger Comes the echo of each breath, "I will love thee, love, for ever; You may trust me unto death!" Tinsley's Magazine.

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FAR off my dream, and yet unearthly fair
The vision of thy beauty in my heart,
Hov'ring between my thought and its despair,
And mercifully keeping them apart.
Sweet as the mother's lullaby which brings
Forgetfulness 'twixt infancy and tears;
Calm as the misty shade time wisely flings

Between to-day, and past and future years. Dear as the last fond look the lover holds Between his heart and doubt's oppressive gloom,

Blest as the radiant vista Faith unfolds,
To part the mourner from eternal doom.
Thus thou with me, my dream of comfort stay!
My Hope, my Life in Death, pass not away!
MILLICENT O'HARA.
Dark Blue.

From The Quarterly Review.
JOWETT'S PLATO.*

po

constantly giving way before the sense of mutual obligation and dependence, extending to all alike. As a consequence of this process, the sympathy and veneration of men will be increasingly directed towards those elements in the traditions of the past which are most cosmopolitan; and thus it will become, more and more, the office of literature to represent and interpret that comparatively hidden view of thought and knowledge in which the highest minds have had a part without distinction of race or nation.

THE publication within a short interval of two such works as Mr. Grote's "Plato" and Mr. Jowett's translation seems to point to a phase of no slight importance in the general revival of English philology which has marked the last twenty or thirty years. The verbal scholarship of the last century, brilliant as it undoubtedly was, and important as its results became as the basis of future attainment, was too limited in its scope and too isolated from other departments of knowledge to maintain its The work before us is eminently fitted hold on education. A period of barren- to aid and direct the movement which we ness and lethargy followed, from which have ventured to anticipate. It has been Arnold was one of the first to deliver the noble task of Mr. Jowett's life, like classical studies. The earlier work of Socrates, "to bring philosophy into the the great historian whom we have recent-market-place," to awaken the spirit of ly lost has been, perhaps, the main instru- research in active and growing minds, ment in sustaining and extending the and to gain for knowledge and the faith movement. Along with the value which it had for scholars as a series of investigations in the field of ancient history, it possessed a freshness and keenness of litical insight, and a sense of the reality and permanence of historical problems, which engaged the interest of a much larger class of readers. The idea of extending the range of popular reading to Platonic philosophy -to the speculations, namely, which exhibit the spirit of antiquity in its most abstract form - may be said to have been first carried out by Dr. Whewell in his "Platonic Dialogues." The two similar experiments since made, on a larger scale and by far more complete and exhaustive methods, are evidence of an awakening of interest amounting almost to a new intellectual movement in the educated classes of the country. Other considerations put the importance of such books in a still stronger light. There is much in the progress of civilization which tends to give increased value and significance to the history of thought. The separate national life which is fed by the recollection of the past struggles and triumphs of a nation has been slowly but

*The Dialogues of Plato translated into English, with Analysis and Introductions. By B. Jowett, M.A., Master of Baliol College, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. 4 vols. Oxford. 1871.

in knowledge their true place in human affairs. He has now sought to carry this work into a wider field; and he has aptly chosen as his subject the philosophers in whom the Socratic faith bore its worthy and lifelong fruits; who was raised by means of it above the narrow completeness of Athenian culture, beyond the limited horizon of Greek society; who created those ideals which are still the ideals of history and of science, but were then, in Mr. Jowett's words, "the vacant forms of light on which he sought to fix the eyes of mankind."

The translation demands more than a passing notice, not merely for its high intrinsic excellence as a work of literary art, but also for the less obvious merit which it has as being, in great measure, a new experiment. The problem, it need not be said, is of the highest order of difficulty. A complex Greek period, such as Plato is accustomed to write, is incapable, as a rule, of being rendered without a sacrifice either of the general effect or of the grammatical form. The separate clauses may often be exactly reproduced while the relation between them is expressed in a manner which belongs essentially to the idiom of the Greek language. A mere "scholarly rendering," in such a case, is no more a true copy of the original than a heap of Ionic columns is an Ionic tem

ple. On the other hand, all modern lan- The value of a translation, after all, is guages, through long familiarity with log- chiefly for those who are least able to critical forms, have analyzed many complex icize it. Those who are already acquainted or ambiguous terms, and have gained with Plato will turn to the Introductions, power of brief expression in dealing with and especially to the short essays which abstractions, which obliges the judicious they contain. To students of philosophy, translator sometimes to expand or com- these essays constitute the soul of the ment upon his text; more often, perhaps, book. Their object is to recapitulate the to prune down and condense its language arguments of a dialogue; to expose fallain a seemingly arbitrary way. The diffi- cies; to point out the element of permaculty of the task lies in deciding whether nent truth which Plato has reached, or to a particular redundancy or ambiguity is which the course of his thought is tending; one of language only, and should vanish to draw out his relation to other systems; in translation, or one of thought, which and, finally, to direct attention to artistic must be studiously preserved. Thus there touches and striking or original features are two leading aims, which may be called in the several pieces. They exhibit in the linear and aerial perspective of Pla- the highest degree the qualities which are tonic translation: the modern arrange- characteristic of Mr. Jowett's style: tersement of clauses, and the modern equiv-ness and point, without the hardness of alents for technical and half-technical mere epigram; and closeness of reasoning, terms. without the bewildering parade of logical form.

These observations may seem self-evident enough: but translators who come The principle of the arrangement to their task, as most modern scholars do, adopted in the work is that each dialogue full of the associations of grammatical should be separately discussed and anateaching, can seldom free themselves from lyzed, no attempt being made to unite the the habit of regarding the "construing" results in a complete or systematic form. as the first consideration. Mr. Jowett has Mr. Jowett evidently attaches considerable seen this danger, and has shown that by importance to this part of his plan, regardlooking to clearness and ease of expres- ing the dogmatic and harmonizing method sion, and using the simplest and most nat- as the most fruitful source of error in the ural English, without aiming at archaic interpretation of Plato. In the same purity or any other artificial style, it is spirit he is careful to preserve the drapossible to render the works of the most matic and conversational form, even when consummate master of language with a he is giving the briefest summary of confidelity of a new order. It is obvious that tents. In all this he is no more than Plathe work, as he has done it, needed the tonic. The dialogue was evidently adoptfinest sense of sustained rhythmical move-ed by Plato as the nearest approach which ment and a rare command of happy and a written composition could make to that suggestive phrases; but much of the suc- which he looked upon as the true instrucess depended upon following a true meth-ment of philosophical enquiry — the living od, or perhaps it would be more exact to play of thought and opinion in dissay, upon consciously avoiding false habits course : of translation.*

It was not to be expected that so vast a work should be everywhere free from inaccuracy. We have noted the following:

Phileb. p. 17 C. "What sounds are grave, and what acute" is too periphrastic for búrηTóc Tε πέρι καὶ βαρύτητος. Sounds are not divided into grave and acute, but the interval is constituted by a relative graveness and acuteness. The sense is best given, perhaps, by translating dinorhμara, "musical intervals," and omitting oÚTNTÓS K.T.λ.

Ib. p. 30 B. μeunxavñolaι, as Mr. Poste points

out, is active, and
makes it passive.

governs púow; Mr. Jowett Ib. p. 62 B. καὶ χρώμενος ἐν οἰκοδομία καὶ τοῖς άλλοις ὁμοίως κανόσι καὶ τοῖς κύκλιος. Mr. Jowett has not given sufficiently the force of ouoiws; "who uses in like manner rules as well as circles," i.e. in each case alike he uses the divine to the exclusion of the human.

Polit., 273 Α. ἀρχῆς τε καὶ τελευτῆς ἐναντίαν ópum opuεoεiç, "having received an opposite impulse at both ends," is hardly clear. The meaning seems to be an impulse which reverses beginning and end.

or political tendencies, is strongly marked both in Herodotus and Thucydides. It may not be too fanciful to say that Plato meant to oppose his ideal Socrates to the caricature which had already gained the ear of Athens through the genius of Aristoph

anes. But the character of the Socratic

"He who knows the just and good and hon- | to idealize a historical situation, to treat ourable," he says in the "Phædrus," "will the speakers as personifications of moral not seriously incline to write them in water with pen and ink or in dumb characters, which have not a word to say for themselves, and cannot adequately express the truth. . . . In the garden of letters he will plant them only as an amusement, or he will write them down as me morials, against the forgetfulness of old age, to be treasured by him and his equals when they like him have one foot in the grave. . . . But teaching, as Plato understood and applied nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician who finds a congenial soul, and then with knowledge engrafts and sows words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them seeds which may bear fruit in other natures, nurtured in other ways — making the seed everlasting, and the possessors happy to the utmost extent of human happiness.” — vol. i. p. 612.

it, pointed in an especial manner to Socra-
tes as the fitting protagonist in the new
cycle of dramas. The older philosophies,
he tells us, delivered their wisdom in a
somewhat oracular form; "they went on
their several ways with a good deal of dis-
dain of people like ourselves; they did not
care whether they took us with them or
left us behind them" (vol. iii. p. 506). Soc-
rates represented the principle of ceaseless
research: his method is a perpetual living
process. It is therefore in a manner inde-
pendent of any one life, for it is "
in the soul of him who has learned, and
can defend itself, and knows when to speak
and when to be silent" (vol. iii. p. 611).
No positive opinions or discoveries could
be attributed in a strict modern sense to
Socrates; yet all that was gained by his
method might be treated as implicitly be-
longing to him. But Plato's habit of en-
deavouring to carry on the thoughts of
his predecessors is not confined to Socra-

graven

It is true that in many of Plato's writings the dialogue is a mere form. In the greater part of the "Republic" there is no real discussion; all the arguments are put into the mouth of Socrates. The Eleatic Stranger in the "Sophist" prefers discussion, but only with a pleasant and facile respondent; and in the "Laws" the tone is almost wholly dogmatic. To the last, however, Plato retains the conversational form, and, it may be added, the theory of philosophical method of which it was the expression. For it is easily seen that to Plato's mind the merits of dialogue and the evils of sustained or "epideictic "tes. Thus in the "Theætetus" he is at speaking were in great measure symbolical. The one represented and exemplified the Socratic spirit - freedom from foregone conclusions, patience and mutual help in enquiry, acquiescence in ignorance in preference to the mere show of knowledge. The other contained in it all the opposite elements of passion and illusion; it was therefore the fitting weapon of pleaders and demagogues.

pains to draw out what Protagoras might say in answer to certain objections (vol. iii. p. 388 ff.); and he "makes a very valorous defence," sparing no artifice of dramatic effect. He admits, however, that he is a stranger to the cause of Protagoras, who might possibly have made a different defence for himself. With the thoughts of Socrates he has no such hesitation, for he is one of the heirs (to use his favourite It does not appear that Plato had any comparison) of his master's argument, predecessors in the form of composition entitled to speak without reserve on that which he adopted. Greek philosophy behalf. Yet he avoids representing him clothed herself first in the garb of the epic in contradiction with well-known traits: singer, and afterwards borrowed the fash-in the " Timæus," for example, the chief ion of the law-courts. Plato first went part of the dialogue is not assigned to back to living models, and created a fresh Socrates, probably because it was nototype of art from the conversations of Soc-rious that the real Socrates had not farates. In so doing, he obeyed the analo- voured purely physical speculations. gies of Greek literature. The disposition These considerations obviously prepare

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