ADVERTISEMENT. THE apparently unfinished state in which the present work comes before the public requires some explanation. The Author of the following Introductions died in the year 1834, having then completed the translation, into German, of all the Dialogues the Introductions to which are here given. It was his intention to have published the whole of the works of Plato upon this plan; and we have thus to regret the loss of Introductions to the Timæus, the Critias, the Laws, and all those smaller and spurious pieces not found in the Appendices to the first and second of the three parts into which Schleiermacher divided the Platonic works. The German translation, moreover, is furnished with various notes, critical and explanatory; a circumstance which I consider it necessary to mention, as the reader of these introductions will find in them occasional allusions to those notes. Such as referred immediately to passages in the Introductions themselves will be found at the end of the volume. |