types of literature, but is distinguished from both by dealing with the thoughts, rather than the acts, of men. That Plato did not gather up the teachings of his master, interpenetrated as they are by his own thoughts and beliefs and imaginings, and present them in the form of treatise or essay, is due, of course, to the fact that his poet-mind saw things concretely, and realized that thought, with personality added to it, is a greater thing than thought alone. Man lives not by reason only. 'It was something more than modesty or loyalty,' writes Paul Elmer More, 'that made Plato put all his philosophy, even when it far transgressed his master's ideas, into the form of discussions between Socrates and the inquiring youths or sophisticated doubters of Athens; it was from an instinctive feeling that reason when severed from the other faculties is a dangerous guide.' ' He suggests a vital quality of the dialogue-form when he adds: 'The real Platonism, then, is not a dogmatic statement of the truth, but a continuous approximation thereto, which, for us as we are constituted, is more veracious than truth.'2 The Platonic dialogue, leading us now to a grassy seat beneath a plane-tree at the water's edge, now to that room where the disciples awaited their master's death, shows us men thinking, and not abstract thought. In subject-matter it is a search for philosophic truth-at least, for such simpler truths as affect one's daily life; but it is always dramatic, poetic. Real men and real life come before us as we read its pages.

The Platonic dialogues are almost as various in method as the scenes which form their background. Sometimes, as in the Charmides and the Republic, 1 Shelburne Essays 6. 326. 2 Shelburne Essays 6. 346.

Socrates himself is represented as repeating a conversation in which he took a leading part. Sometimes, as in the Symposium or the Phado, a conversation is repeated by some disciple or listener. Sometimes, as in the Meno, there is a direct plunge into the dialogue itself. 'Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice?' begins this inquirer. Sometimes the setting of the conversation stands out with much prominence sometimes it is barely mentioned. But always there are touches that keep our human interest in the speakers strong and vigorous, as when Socrates, while his friends are tense with doubt as to the soul's immortality, plays with the fair hair of Phædo, whom he loved.

In thinking of Plato as an influence upon English literature, it is important, above all, to remember the rich tissue into which his dialogues are woven, and their many strands. To say that the Phaedrus deals with rhetoric, or with love, or with both, is to tell far less than half the tale. A discussion carried on by A and B, who have no local habitation, is something other than that talk of Socrates and Phædrus by the waters of the Ilissus. The Platonic dialogue may almost be described as drama in which the character-element is strong, the action of minor importance, and the leading motive a struggle for intellectual and ethical truth. Sometimes the problem remains unsolved at the end; more often Socrates finds its solution.

There were many other writers of classic times, as, for example, Xenophon and Plutarch, whose dialogues were of considerable importance in their own ages; but as an influence upon English literature the dialogues of Plato are paralleled only by those of Cicero

and Lucian. In the numerous dialogues of Cicero, inspired chiefly by those of Aristotle, there is no such wrestling of thought with thought as in the Platonic dialogues. Plato gives us thought in the making, as it is formulated and shaped in the actual speech of men; Cicero puts his own developed thought, with such arguments as may naturally be raised against it, into the mouths of his various speakers. Superficially, indeed, he has imitated Plato. The introductions to the three parts of the De Oratore, for example, are lively, easy, and natural. In the De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum his definite aim is to portray Plato 'in a Latin dress,' and the result is by no means undramatic. Yet these dialogues of Cicero, with all the charm and polish which have made such of them as the De Senectute and the De Amicitia familiar classics, with all their easy progress of thought and finish of diction, lack the poet's touch that might have given them the gift of life. Hence we often speak of his works a treatises, or essays, 'in the form of dialogues.'

Let the De Oratore illustrate the sense in which this is true. Cicero begins this discussion with an address to his brother Quintus, referring to the wish of the latter that he should give more definitive expression to the rough draft of his views on oratory presented in earlier years. After writing of this matter, and of the importance of the subject, to the length of six pages he declares: 'I shall repeat, not a series of precepts drawn from the infancy of our old and boyish learning, but matters which I have heard were formerly argued in a discussion among some of our countrymen who were of the highest eloquence, and of the first rank in every kind of dignity.'1 Crassus, Scæ

1 Tr. J. S. Watson.

vola, and Mark Antony are then represented as holding forth at considerable length on the subject of oratory, ostensibly for the benefit of two youths who are listeners. The three books into which the dialogue is divided represent the conversations of one day, and of the morning and afternoon of the next, and the purpose of the whole, as the translator suggests, is 'to set before his reader all that was important in the rhetorical treatises of Aristotle, Isocrates, and other ancient writers on oratory, divested of technicalities, and presented in a pleasing form.' Such a purpose clearly distinguishes it from the Platonic dialogue, which deals with present and living truth.

Cicero's dialogues, then, though imitative of Plato's in their external form, must be considered as representing a distinct influence upon English literature.

After the classic ages of both Greece and Rome were past, a rhetorician of Syrian birth turned writer of dialogues at the age of forty, and, using the Greek tongue almost like a man of the Periclean age, gave to the literary form we are surveying a new and fresh impulse. This writer, of course, was Lucian. A master of 'raillerie,' as Croiset declares him, he turned the dialogue to uses before undreamed of, and he did so largely by infusing into it the spirit of comedy and of satire. He himself was inspired by at least three strains of influence-that of Aristophanes, that of Menander and the New Comedy, and that of Menippus. The first influence leads him to the broader humor of such dialogues as Zeus Tragœdus or The Sale of Creeds; the second, to such pictures of life as appear in the Dialogues of the Hetero; and the third, to the keen satirical thrusts of the Dialogues of the Dead or the Dialogues of the Gods. In his hands the dialogue discovers itself to

(

be a form of great plasticity, adapting itself to many and diverse ends. Save in a few such dialogues as the Hermotimus, which is seriously philosophical and much in the vein of Plato, his general spirit is that of a humorist, showing humanity its foibles and frailties under cover of fun and merriment. He gives something of his program in The Double Indictment, which is largely autobiographical. The bearded old

person yonder, whom you may know from his dress to be Dialogue,' complains that Lucian has brought him down from a high level to that of every day. Lucian replies: 'When I first took him in hand, he was regarded by the world at large as one whose interminable discussions had soured his temper and exhausted his vitality. His labors entitled him to respect, but he had none of the attractive qualities that could secure him popularity. My first step was to accustom him to walk upon the common ground like the rest of mankind; my next, to make him presentable by giving him a good bath, and teaching him to smile. Finally, I assigned him Comedy as his yokefellow, thus gaining him the confidence of his hearers, who until then would as soon have thought of picking up a hedgehog as of venturing into the thorny presence of Dialogue. But I know what the grievance is he wants me to sit and discourse subtle nothings with him about the immortality of the soul... It tickles his vanity most deliciously to be told that not every man can see so far into the ideal as he.' 1 When Lucian taught his protégé to smile, he not only created a new genre in literature, but, with Aristophanes, became an inspiration to some of the greatest humorists of after-times.

1 Tr. R. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler.