the case in the days of Sir Thomas More! Nevertheless, though fully alive to all the evils and dangers to which the advocacy of popular government was likely to expose him, he fearlessly, with his eyes open, lent the sanction of his name to a theory of Reform, to adopt the mildest term, more radical and sweeping than any known to the history of legislation, from the days of Lycurgus to the present.

Many, indeed, may conceive that by its very extravagance it was rendered innoxious and unobjectionable. For even princes and nobles would discover little danger in a scheme which strikes at the root of all property and all luxury; which leaves the ambitious nothing to aspire to; the avaricious nothing to crave; the sensualist and voluptuary nothing to sigh after, nothing to covet; the vain, and idle, and time-waster, nothing but the prospect of toil, shared with the rudest and meanest members of the community. Milton speaks of Plato's "Republic" as an intellectual debauch, indulged in after dinner in the Groves of the Academy. Had he expressed an opinion of the UTOPIA, it is probable, considering the different geniuses of the men, that it would have been little more favourable; for Sir Thomas More had, in the strict sense, but a scanty share of the poet in his temperament, while Milton was "of imagination all compact." It is, therefore, somewhat surprising to find him among the censurers of Plato, who assuredly, whatever faults he might fall into, did not err on the side of dryness and commonplace, which the ima

gination abhors, but rather soared too high into the ideal world in search of an exemplar and pattern for human society.

Nevertheless, it was Plato's "Republic" which not merely suggested the UTOPIA, but was throughout its model, and the authority that tacitly sanctioned many of its most impracticable, and, indeed, undesirable regulations. But it is easier to adopt Plato's errors, than to acquire the art and the irresistible eloquence, amidst the blaze of which we scarcely discern them in his works. While advancing what he would have us believe, he appears much less to be engaged in defending a series of propositions by enthymeme and syllogism, than in delivering a revelation which it were criminal to reject. He always seems to have the Divinity on his side, to be in close communication with heaven, and merely to utter what has been entrusted to him, like a prophet. He writes not like other men. Some, as Demosthenes and Thucydides, may have more vigour; others, as Aristotle, may display more learning, shrewder common sense, a larger acquaintance with mankind; and others, again, as Aristophanes may excel him in wit, in the art of moving laughter, in the wild and marvellous power of transforming whatever he pleased into an object of ridicule, or a mark for scorn. This is true; yet Plato pleases more than any, more than all. There are sources of delight in his works, which burst forth like springs on a cloud-capped mountain, and refresh, and restore, and tranquillize us, though their origin be con

cealed from view. He absorbs the whole mind of those who gain his intimacy. There is a glory about his ideas, as about the heads of the apostles, which appears to be brightly reflected from our own fancy as we read, and to transform us into something like his resemblance. We feel ourselves in presence of the beautiful; it descends around us like a shower, but a shower that warms and fructifies, and clothes even the most barren and stony places of the soul with verdure. Hence the power and the charm of Plato. He possesses art in perfection, but possesses along with it something which transcends all art, and operates like an eternal source of energy upon whomsoever approaches him.

These qualities, which characterize all his genuine remains, are nowhere more visible than in the "Republic," which, as I have already remarked, excited in Sir Thomas More the wish to frame in imitation of it an ideal state, perfect in laws and manners, and more adapted to the notions and wants of the age in which he lived. Properly to comprehend the modern work, therefore, it will be necessary to form something like a just conception of the ancient one, which has served as the antitype not merely of the UTOPIA, but of the "Panchaia" of Euhemeros, the "City of the Sun" of Campanella, the "New Atlantis" of Lord Bacon, the "Gaudentio di Lucca," attributed to Bishop Berkeley, the "Oceana" of Harrington,' and a host of similar productions less renowned.

1 Gottling, Pref. ad. Aristot. Polit. p. xii. attributes to Harris the Oceana of Harrington, which, therefore, he had never read.

But the reader must by no means expect a complete analysis of the "Republic," which would greatly transcend the limits of an introduction. All I can here attempt is a description of the artificial structure of the work, with an explanation, necessarily brief and imperfect, of the principles according to which Plato builds up the frame of civil society. Much doubt has existed as to the object sought to be attained in this voluminous dialogue, some contending that it was simply to ascertain and illustrate the nature of justice, in order to which it was necessary to exhibit it in operation, not in an imperfect individual, but in a perfect community. This is the hypothesis of Schleiermacher and Morgenstern, who, though differing on minor points, agree upon the whole, and maintain their notions with great subtilty and force of argument. "If," says the former," we are to start upon the supposition that the representation of the state is the proper grand object, it would be hardly possible to conceive why the appearance of the contrary is pointedly produced. And even if it could be explained why Plato combined the investigation concerning justice with this grand

In his countryman Buhle's "History of Modern Philosophy," t. iv. pp. 424-448, he might, however, have discovered not only the real author of the work, but a very full and able analysis of its contents.

2 This is merely begging the question, and begging it, too, in that impudent way which implies that no one, save the writer, could see what the grand object of Plato might be. Gottling has a good remark on this point. "In qua republica," says he, "qui imprimis de justitia ocere voluisse Platonem,

object, still the form and the manner in which this is done would then be perfectly unmeaning and absurd. It would have been much more natural to introduce the main subject at once, and then, after the internal existence of the state had been described, to say in what the justice and discretion of such a whole consist; and then the application to the individual mind, and the ethical problems, still unsolved in this point of view, would have resulted most naturally; consequently, a perfectly converse relation between those two grand objects and the essential parts of the work referring to them must then have obtained." 3

Morgenstern, whose arguments are abridged and represented with much ingenuity by Stallbaum, arrives, after a lengthened discussion, at the conclusion, that Plato's design was to develope the nature of justice and of virtue in general, first in the abstract, and secondly in their operation on human happiness.4 And this question, which has afforded so many opportunities of disputation to the learned of Germany, had already, as we learn from Proclus, exercised for ages the abilities of the ancients themselves. Muretus, too, who has left behind him a commentary on the first and second books of the "Republic," enters at the very outset into the

atque eam ob causam non περὶ πολιτείας, sed περὶ δικαιοσύνης librum suum inscripsisse arbitrati sunt, ii eodem jure Aristotelem, quum de politicis scriberet, non politicam, sed ethicam docere voluisse dicerent."-Pref. ad Arist. Pol. p. xi.

3 Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato. 407. f.

4 De Argument. et Cons. Lib. Plat. de Repub. t. iii. p. 20. 5 Comment. ad Plat. Polit. p. 309. ff.