not the passionate admiration of Socrates have been transferred to the actual Son of Man, the model man indeed, God manifest in the flesh? However this may be, the mental analogies are clear and illustrative. We have no sympathy with that view of inspiration, which to secure, better it is thought, the absolute truth and infallibility of the testimony, would obliterate entirely all mental peculiarities in the testifiers. Hence, we may consider the Apostle John, not only as an organ of inspiration, but as a representative man also, agreeing perfectly with Paul and Peter in the generic excellence of Christianity, but distinct from them in the predisposing causes, which gave a special type to his subjective Christianity. In these predisposing causes, John the man, as distinguished from John the apostle, is the Jewish parallel of the Grecian Plato. If we would select an analogous mind, in modern times, to aid us in conceiving the mental peculiarities of Plato, it would be Shakspeare. But into the details of this, we cannot now enter. The mental antithesis of Plato, by which, in the way of contrast, we may be assisted to gain a clearer conception of his mind, is Aristotle, and in modern times Bacon, Aristotle Redivivus. The antithesis holds good in each of the particulars specified, as will readily occur to any one who has carefully noticed our previous analysis of the latter. Instead of ideality, as seen in Plato, we have matter of fact in Aristotle. In one, we see passion for the abstract; in the other, for the concrete. In the one, a large collation of individual instances gives rise to a generalization; in the other, a principle is seen actualizing itself in the particular. One begins with the Eternal idea, and comes down to the temporal fact or event; the other rises from the phenomenal to the immutable. With one, God is, and therefore the universe must be; with the other, the universe is, therefore there must be a God. Again, instead of the creative and poetic in Plato, we have the constructive and practical in Aristotle. We have genius, even rhapsody, in Plato. We have talent, and imperturbable intellect in Aristotle. With Plato we wander back to the everlasting, before the mountains were brought forth, or the earth and the world was made. With Aristotle, we witness the suc cessive epochs of time, in which gradually chaos becomes kosmos. We are disposed to attach a kind of inspiration to Plato, and marvel at his revelations; we acknowledge the industry of Aristotle, and admire his acquisitions. We can have a passion for Plato, which he might have reciprocated; we may have a very profound esteem for Aristótle, but passion is out of the question and seems a misnomer or a farce. Again, instead of the intuitive in Plato, we have the ratiocinative in Aristotle. What Plato beholds, and knows to be so, Aristotle proves, and obliges us to believe. In the rapidity of his mental intuitions, and the tenacity of his convictions, Plato sometimes reminds us of woman, especially the more gifted of the sex. There was nothing of the woman about Aristotle; he held nothing without a logical reason; knew nothing through faith or feeling; believed nothing he did not understand. Of Plato, it might have been said, by some Festus of the species fruges consumere nati, “thou art beside thyself, much learning hath made thee mad." We question much whether ever a jury "de lunatico inquirendo," was thought of, or could have made a case, in regard to the philosopher of Stagira. Aristotle was a paragon of understanding, as Plato of reason. Aristotle was satisfied to connect, Plato aimed always to comprehend. Aristotle rested in the law, Plato in the idea. Aristotle viewed the existing, Plato, the desirable. Even those who consider reason, in the sense we have mentioned, the highest form of mental excellence, still acknowledge understanding as an actual and important part of the mental structure. Transcendentalism may become nonsense, as readily as understanding may be sensuous. There is room in the world and a sphere in philosophy, both for Aristotle and Plato. The best regulated minds possibly are those who can see and admire the excellences of both, without blindly worshipping either. The modern antithesis of Plato is Bacon, who might be termed a metempsychosis of Aristotle. The points of contrast to the disparagement of Plato and the glorification of Bacon, have been drawn out in detail by Macauley, in his celebrated Review. When this Article was republished, about sixteen years ago, in the Southern Literary Messenger, we gave expression to some of our indignant thoughts, in vindication of the Grecian philosopher, whom then we greatly admired. Our passion for Plato has since somewhat cooled, and we are better able to appreciate the substantial excellences of Bacon. But these excellences are of an entirely different order. Bacon had great common sense, like Aristotle, and little ideality; great talents for observation; great industry in the collection of facts; remarkable powers of generalization from particulars. He was the father of the inductive philosophy; but he had no creative genius, was destitute of poetic enthusiasm, and had little regard for the excellence or results of the intuitional consciousness. He was a giant of understanding, but in reason, in the sense we have given it, he was not eminent; and the faculty for the absolute, he would hardly have allowed among the powers of men, certainly not as a very glorious distinction. Bacon had an eye for the "commoda vitæ," and, like his eulogist, would have thought Plato a transcendental trifler. Bacon walked after the flesh. Plato tried to live in the spirit. Plato believed in the divine in man, though he lived before the Incarnation. Bacon was intensely human, though he believed in that great mystery with childlike simplicity. Plato, if not the greatest, was one of the noblest of men. Bacon, alas! was at once "greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind." Thus we have tried, from the materials he has himself left, and by analogy and contrast, to convey the idea we have of Plato's mind; as historians not eulogists; not as blind admirers, but faithful witnesses and interested students. The very effort to reproduce the lineaments of one so long dead, and form an ideal of the man, is pleasant, and will serve as a suitable introduction to our analysis of his philosophy. But this we must defer until another Number. ARTICLE IV. 1. The Complete Poetical Works of WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Poet Edited by HENRY REED, Professor of English Laureate, &c., &c. Philadelphia: 2. Memoirs of William Wordsworth, Poet Laureate, D. C. L. By CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, D. D., Canon of Westminster. In two volumes. Edited by HENRY REED. Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields. 1851. IN our last Number, we arrested the sketch of Wordsworth's poetico-mental development, at the point where, returning from France and retiring to his native hills, his imaginative intellect and loving heart were prompting him to "grapple with some noble theme." It was at this point of his history, that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the most gifted men that ever lived, sought the poet's acquaintance and secured his friendship. Coleridge was some two and a-half years the junior of the two, and entered the University of Cambridge the same year* that Wordsworth left it. During the last year of his residence at Cambridge, he read Wordsworth's "Descriptive Sketches," then just published, "and seldom, if ever," as he afterward recorded his early impression, "was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." The impression which Coleridge received from reading these first poems, was confirmed and deepened by acquaintance. Writing to Cottle-the amiable Bristol bookseller, to whom the literary world should build a monument a few days after his introduction to Wordsworth's house, Coleridge says, "I speak with heartfelt sincerity, and I think unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself a little man by his side." Nine months later, Coleridge again says, "He has written near twelve hundred lines of blank verse,† superior, I hesitate not to aver, to any thing in our language which in any way resembles it." A dozen years and more thereafter, he again writes of his † Part of the Excursion. * 1791. friend, "Quem quoties lego, non verba mihi videor audire, sed tonitrua." Nor did Wordsworth hold Coleridge in less esteem. In the poem entitled, "Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence," he portrays, after delineating himself, his brother bard thus: Wordsworth and Coleridge sympathizing as thoroughly in political views as in literary tastes, were induced to make their residence in near neighborhood to each other, and whilst so residing, they became joint contributors to the first volume of the "Lyrical Ballads." The critical taste and acumen of Coleridge were, perhaps, never surpassed. He and Wordsworth were in the habit of discussing almost daily, during the time that they were neighbors, poetry and poets. The first volume of the Lyrical Ballads was the result of these discussions. In it they proposed to innovate upon the false poetic taste then so prevalent, by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature. The poems of which the volume was to consist were to be of two kinds. "In the one the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at, was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life. The characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they |