may have been gradually coming into use for a century or two; that there are reasons why the Jews should have been led to adopt some such ceremony after the destruction of Jerusalem; that the form is such as their national observances would suggest; and that the way in which this rite is mentioned, is just what we should expect on the supposition that it came into use first about the third century, gradually gaining ground till, in the fifth century, it was firmly established. From these results we conclude that the Christian rite of baptism has no connection with the Jewish initiatory immersion of proselytes.

C. H. TOY.

GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA.

THE PLATONIC MYTHS.

MR.

The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English, with Analyses and In-
troductions, by B. JOWETT, M. A., Master of Balliol College, Regius
Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. In four vol-
umes, octavo. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1871.

Reprinted in New York, in four volumes, duodecimo, by Charles
Scribner & Co. 1871.

[R. JOWETT'S translation of Plato is probably the ablest contribution made by any living English scholar to the literature of classical philology. This work may be considered as an ample discharge of a debt long due from English scholarship to the writings of the great master of the Academy, who held imperial sway in the realm of Grecian thought and speech in the culminating era of its splendor and power. The classical scholars of England, though in more recent times they have risen above their traditional devotion to Greek metres. and their studious fondness for the graces, the deliciæ litterarum, of classical studies, and have emulated their learned neighbors of the continent in aspiring to the comprehension and interpretation of those leading minds of antiquity which, by their thinking, have to this day influenced the thought of the world, have yet hitherto fallen far behind the Germans in penetrating and working the veins of wisdom and truth which enrich the Greek of Plato, and in bringing forth to use their precious stores, whether by translation or by criticism or by commentary and exposition. It was one of the many distinctions achieved by Schleiermacher, that by his learned and enthusiastic labors on Plato's works, he introduced early in the present century

by far the most fruitful of the many eras of Platonic research and study, which have arisen at different periods in modern times, and given impulse and onward movement to the progress of human thought. That many-sided German, who by his writings and his lectures exerted a no less powerful influence upon the intellectual life of his times than upon its religious character by his eloquence and piety as a preacher, busy all the week, both at the university with his lectures two hours every day, and in his study in writing for the press, and crowning all this activity by preaching every Sunday to crowded congregations of the most thoughtful and cultivated people in Berlin, yet found time amidst all these labors for a profound and thorough study of Plato, continued through more than twenty years, the fruits of which he gave to the world in a masterly translation, accompanied by special introductions to the several dialogues, unfolding their plan and contents, together with a general introduction to the whole series. This great work of Schleiermacher affords a signal example of the quickening and productive influence of an original mind, occupied with all its powers upon exalted subjects of inquiry; like the living voice of Socrates and the written words of Plato himself, it planted the seeds of germinant thought in many kindred minds; it stimulated to a new intellectual life, not only the classical scholars of Germany who by professional occupation were lovers and teachers of Plato's Greek, but all thinking men among that intellectual people who, through their interest in other studies, theology, or philosophy, or morals, shared with these the love and pursuit of the imperishable thought enshrined in that matchless diction; and thus it gave rise to a succession of able works, exegetical, historical, and philosophical, in themselves a copious Platonic literature, which furnished ampler and better means than ever existed before, of gaining a comprehension and appreciation of the genius of Plato, and of the great and manifold value of his writings. This renewed ardor for the study of Plato was soon shared with the Germans by French scholars, and, most of all, by Cousin; whose residence and studies in Germany and intimate acquaintance with Schleiermacher and Schelling and Hegel, contributed to prepare him not only for his after brilliant successes at the Sorbonne, but for the higher and more enduring honor of doing for his countrymen the same noble service which Schleiermacher had done for the Germans, in the translation and exposition of the entire works of Plato. In England, too, the German Platonism was felt, and, though later, yet with a no less quickening force and with equally conspicuous results. The most general and most notable of these results was the marked change

which was made in the plan of education at Oxford; where the range of philosophical reading and study was so widened and liberalized that Aristotle, who had so long had exclusive sway in Greek philosophy, now came to hold a divided rule with the ascending influence of his master; and thus the hard logical discipline imparted by the Aristotelian ethics was blended with the far richer and more various mental culture yielded by those masterpieces of Platonic dialogue, in which poetry and philosophy join their forces in friendly contest of wit and reason, with all the muses assisting at the noble strife. Mr. Jowett was the earliest and foremost, not only of Oxford, but of all English scholars, in promoting this revival of the study of Plato in England, and the great work which he has now published is its latest and ripest fruit. It is a work which makes an epoch not only in the history of Greek study in England, but also, and far more, in the history of English literature, and in the general history of philosophy. So eminently has the author succeeded not only in translating Plato's language, but also by his introductions to the separate dialogues in translating the ideas of Plato; indeed he has created an English classic by reproducing, in a form alike fitted for general readers and scholars of higher culture, the entire works of the greatest literary and philosophical genius of ancient Greece. The author's beautiful dedication to his "former pupils in Balliol College who, during thirty years, have been the best of friends," to him, makes a very suggestive sentence on the first page of his book; it suggests with many other topics of thought on which one would gladly linger, the literary history of the work, and the genial air and fortunate conditions in which it gradually came into being. It is the mature production not of a thinker and scholar who has passed his life in the seclusion of lettered ease, in the solitary and luxurious enjoyment of delightful studies, but of a lifelong teacher and educator of the young, for whose training and culture all his own mental resources have been both acquired and employed,-a richly gifted and aspiring mind, possessed with a genuine philosopher's love of knowledge and truth, kindling in other and younger minds the same noble passion, and feeding and enriching them out of the stores of Attic wit and wisdom itself has so busily gathered.

Of Mr. Jowett's many qualifications for the great task accomplished in this work, his Greek scholarship, ripe and ample as it doubtless is, is not the one which excites the most admiration. The reader must infer that his mind is not one distinguished by what we may call the philological quality; it does not take kindly to niceties of verbal criticism, it certainly is not of the kindred of that unenviable

scholar who, at the end of a long life devoted to the elucidation of two Greek particles, profoundly regretted that he had not confined himself to one; it is evidently rather impatient of that study and appropriation of the minutiae of grammatical knowledge, which belongs to the highest order of faithful and accurate translation. But whatever defects may perhaps be set against Mr. Jowett's account in strict philological merits, especially in comparison with the elder English school of the Bentleys and Porsons, or with his immediate predecessor in the Oxford Regius Professorship, Mr. Gaisford, these are amply made up by the presence of other merits never possessed by those classical scholars, and which are especially required for the adequate translation and exposition of Plato. The chief of these, and that which must awaken the grateful admiration of his readers, consists in the fulness and fineness of his well-digested knowledge not only of Plato's thought, but of the whole history of philosophic thought in ancient and in modern times. During all his life a diligent student in philosophy, not only of the Greek masters, but of all who, in different countries in subsequent times, and especially the German in our own, have illustrated its successive annals, he has been able to avail himself of the lights of all the great philosophies of the world in contemplating and exhibiting that of Plato, his favorite and greatest master of all. This wealth of philosophic culture Mr. Jowett has dispensed with like wisdom and liberality in his admirable introductions, which for students of philosophy will make the chief value of his work, and for all minds have a surpassing educational value, and which will doubtless secure for him a permanent rank among the ablest interpreters of Plato's mind and philosophy of the present or of any age. But for a larger circle of readers, for all scholars of whatever degree of culture, the great charm and distinction of the work will be found in the rare assemblage of literary qualities which enrich and adorn its pages, and which invest it with the character of an original production of high literary art. Besides the fine gifts and large resources of a broad and generous scholarship, of the possession of which Mr. Jowett has given ample evidence in his former writings, he has here displayed the truly poetic faculty of conceiving and appreciating, with the charming scenery of Plato's dialogues, his manifold moods of thought, and tones of feeling and sentiment, and the varying hues of his many colored diction, and also of creating an English diction capable of bearing all this precious burden of intellectual wealth. It is this dramatic power of entering into and expressing in fitting English the subtleties and elegancies of Platonic thought and speech, which makes at once the boldness and the success