incorruptible integrity and constancy, capable of uttering truth in the face of all danger, and incapable of uttering falsehood to escape it, -all this history authenticates. Of his invincible love of justice, he gave a noble example on the only occasion on which he ever exercised the magisterial functions, opposing single-handed, and at the hazard of his life, the will of the Athenian democracy in one of their worst and most profligate acts of tyranny, and that, too, when all his colleagues cowered and bent before the storm. That he persisted to the close in the same consistent course, and died at last in the way so often told, and by Plato in particular with such inimitable pathos, as a martyr for truth and the victim of ignorance, calumny, and injustice, is also generally admitted.

It is more than probable that in the ideal representation which Plato has given of Socrates, some infirmities and foibles have been concealed or softened. History at least gives us reason to suspect it. In the dialogues of Plato his superiority of genius, and his skill in argument, are never displayed offensively; nor is there the slightest departure from the genuine humility which will ever be found to accompany that truest species of wisdom, of which alone Socrates claimed possession - the deep conviction of our own ignorance. But history does not altogether sanction this picture of perfect amiability and modesty; it more than hints at certain airs of dogmatism and superciliousness, and at a certain strut and portliness of manner, which remind us of the familiar moods of another great moralist nearer home, peculiarities, however, which, as in this last case, might well be pardoned to so much genius and worth.

If in these and some other respects, the moral as well as intellectual character of Socrates has gained

from the pencil of his disciples, there are other points, and those far more serious, in which no mean critics have supposed him to have greatly suffered. Instances will be found in some admirable critiques, full of vivacity and learning, which appeared in the Quarterly Review' more than twenty years ago. Some of the scenes in which Socrates is presented to us were calculated, it is there surmised, to inspire the same doubts in his contemporaries which he has since excited amongst posterity, whether he was the Silenus. that his exterior figure betokened, or the Silenus of the sculptors' shops, which, rude and grotesque to the outward view, opened to a touch, and disclosed within beautiful and exquisitely carved figures of the gods.'

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The suspicion of Socrates intimated in this passage, seems to us scarcely just: and, indeed, throughout those very spirited articles, there appears a sort of prejudice against him. It must be admitted that both Plato and Xenophon have introduced him into scenes. which are ineffably disgusting, and that in particular the eulogium of the drunken Alcibiades in the Banquet, wonderful as it is, contains a passage which no one who has ever read it would wish to read again; still we think it plain that Plato intended, even here, to intimate the superiority of Socrates to the worst vices of his countrymen, and his moral disapprobation of them. But though Socrates be thus exonerated, alas! what must have been the social condition of a people, in which a great writer could find in an exemption from the very lowest forms of human depravity so egregious a singularity, as to extort out of it a topic of compliment to the sage he revered and loved! What must have been their familiarity with the most infamous of vices, to induce even a drunken young profligate to point him out as a prodigy of temperance

and fortitude, because he was not stained with them! Fully admitting the interpretation of Quinctilian to be correct, and that Plato intended' ut Socratis invictam continentiam ostenderet, quæ corrumpi. - non posset,' - we feel that the compliment of Alcibiades to Socrates is much as if some youth had innocently expressed his astonishment that though he had repeatedly tempted and invited a Milton or a Newton to indulge in cannibalism, yet such was the wonderful fortitude and temperance of the men,' that they had resisted all his alluring importunities to partake of the choicest delicacies of a New Zealand cuisine! There are practices into which it is infamy indeed to fall; but which it can be no glory to shun.*

But whatever flatteries, intellectual or moral, may

• We must also admit, that, though Socrates himself had none but an honest meaning in his frequent inculcation of the pursuit of the supreme and essential beauty-that of wisdom and virtue -through all the lower forms of material beauty, as well as in his mystical, though not always wise, illustrations of the immortal through the medium of the mortal epas, yet, to a people in the moral condition of the Athenians, such a path to purity would be a somewhat precarious and dangerous one. The road to Elysium in this case ran straight through the infernal regions, and there would be some hazard of the mortal traveller being detained upon the road. In vain will the philosophic Orpheus strive to recal the lost Eurydice, Virtue, by such strains; she is not for him, if he has to seek her in the shades. But, for obvious reasons, we say no more on this topic. We are content to refer to the sentiments before expressed in this journal, in a review of Mitchell's Aristophanes,' vol. xxxiv. p. 303, note.

It is humiliating to think, in the case of the Greeks, on the contrast between their intense love of beauty and their familiarity with the most odious vices of human nature; and to see how little the utmost refinement of taste in the arts has to do with the correction of the passions. It is as if we beheld a being compounded of the angel and the demon; the intellect of the one, and the passions of the other.

be supposed to lurk in the Platonic portrait of Socrates, they cannot be said to extend to his personal peculiarities, which are given with no complimentary fidelity. Those peculiarities, indeed, are not all formally described in any one specific enumeration, but are dramatically produced in the natural development of the successive features of his character in the varied course of the dialogues, just as different incidents and conjunctures suggest their introduction. We there see the simplicity of his manners - his somewhat too philosophic negligence of appearances the oddities and eccentricities of an abstracted mind, such as history attributes to him and even that eminent grotesqueness of visage by which (with all reverence be it spoken) he was also distinguished. There is an amusing passage in the beautiful introduction to the Theaetetus, where Theodorus, after describing the early mental promise of the youth from whom the dialogue is named, and gravely adding, that he is far from being beautiful, begs Socrates not to be angry: 'but, in fact, he has a strong resemblance to you, in the prominence of his eyes and in the snubbishness of his nose only his eyes are not so prominent as yours, nor is his nose so snubbish.' Socrates receives the communication with imperturbable temper, as usual, and bids him call Theætetus to him. The youth approaches, and Socrates says, 'I have sent for you, Theætetus, just that I may look upon myself, and see what sort of a face I have; for Theodorus says that I resemble you.' We can easily imagine how awkward an ingenuous youth would feel under such a scrutiny, and how little he would relish the compliment involved. Socrates, however, who seldom failed to return a sarcasm, tells him, that if Theodorus had been a painter or a sculptor, his opinion on the re

semblance of faces might, perhaps, have been entitled to attention; but as he was only a geometrician, it was not worth while to pay the least regard to him on such a subject, whether he praised or blamed. To this Theætetus, no doubt very cordially, agrees.

These odd features, and strange manners to match -not seldom allied to great genius and its attendant simplicity-must have given to the real Socrates a marked external individuality. Of his absence of mind, more than one story is told in ancient history. Socrates himself was fully aware, both from reflection and experience, of this ludicrous side of the philosophic character; and in his beautiful contrast in the Theætetus, between the true philosopher, 'ignorant even of his ignorance' of common matters (as he strongly expresses it), and the keen man of the world, does not omit to mention it. He illustrates the subject by a humorous reference to the adventure of Thales, who, while astronomising as he walked, paid the penalty of unseasonable star-gazing by falling into a well; and was laughed at by a Thracian servant girl, for being so intent upon the distant as not to see what was at his feet. We are afraid that if it were worth while to retort the sarcasm on the multitude, it were easy to do so; for the great bulk of mankind are so intent upon what is close to them, that they hardly seem capable of reflecting on the distant and the future; so occupied with what is just at their feet, that they seldom raise their eyes to the starry heavens at all. Indeed, it is thus that Socrates turns the tables upon them. It is well, however, when the organs of mental vision, like the eye, can promptly adjust themselves to the degree of light and the distance or proximity of the object; and he who can do both these promptly, as the exigencies of the