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perhaps, the only writer who in these particulars can be com'pared to him; his imitator, Cicero, sinks in the comparison into an ape mocking the gestures of a man.' In these expressions, however, so characteristic of his own temperament, Shelley recognises only one aspect, and that by no means the predominant aspect, of Plato's writing. He speaks as if Plato were always poetical, earnest, and intense,' whereas Plato is far more often dramatic, ironical, and humorous. It is easy to see that in translating Symposium,' Shelley mistook Plato's parodies of the fine writing of littérateurs for fine writing pure and simple on the part of Plato himself.

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No such mistake is ever made by Professor Jowett, whose greatest strength, as a translator, lies perhaps in his keen appreciation, and his lively reproduction, of the dramatic humour in Plato. Nothing can exceed the riotous good spirits, and therein perfect fidelity to the original, of his translation of Euthydemus,' in which the characters of two overbearing Sophists, a timid youth, and his straightforward and irascible friend, are played off against one another by the sagacious Socrates, and the fashion of quibbling and making verbal fallacies is turned to ridicule. There is another phase of Plato's Dialogues which Professor Jowett is peculiarly happy in representing, namely, wherever Socrates, with the greatest urbanity and politeness, and at the same time with consummate skill and relentless logic, keeps a rude antagonist in hand, and forces him by degrees to accept conclusions alien from, and higher than, his ordinary point of view. As an instance of this, the conversation with Callicles at the end of Gorgias' may be referred to. But almost any one of the Dialogues might serve as a study of the art of debating in private life; and this quality in them Professor Jowett admirably preserves.

It is only fair to consider the general effect, and the whole, in Professor Jowett's translation, before looking at the parts; because we cannot help believing that it has been his own method, as a translator, to think of the whole, that is of the spirit of Plato's writing, first, and to endeavour before all things to give a general impression of this. We think that this method must be the correct one, especially in making a translation which is meant for English readers; and not for scholars holding the Greek in one hand, and comparing it word for word with the English. Professor Jowett had to give an equivalent for smart and lively Greek conversations. Had he adopted the method of verbal renderings, with an eye merely to each separate clause as it came, the result would have been that the whole would have been heavy and unreadable. In

many respects the genius of the ancient Greek and of the English languages are different. English is more rough, abrupt, and elliptical; while in the Greek the sentences are smoothly connected together by particles indicating the course of thought. On the other hand, English has its own turns, and in some cases is more explicit than the equivalent Greek. Professor Jowett had all this to attend to, and in writing for English readers above all to write readable English. In this he has succeeded perfectly, and in the general manner of his renderings we have hardly anything to complain of. If in this respect he has a fault, it is that he has occasionally a little overdone what he legitimately aimed at. In making the dialogue lively, he has occasionally made it a little too smart; and in the compression which he has used, he seems to us to have occasionally made Plato a little too curt, and to have sacrificed sometimes, when he might have preserved, the stately rhythm of the original. Professor Jowett appears to conceive of translation as the art of giving analogous impressions. To produce an analogous impression he would not hesitate to make a long sentence short, or a short sentence long, or to entirely invert the order of clauses in a sentence. Nay, further, he would depart from the letter of the original altogether, and substitute for a literal translation of the Greek some catch-word of modern times, which is strongly suggested to his own mind, and which appears to him calculated to produce in the reader's mind an impression analogous to what the Greek text would have produced on the mind of an ancient Greek. Following out his method in this direction, he inclines to substitute for the words of Plato not only the conventional phrases of modern society, but also those stock phrases of English literature which have become household words' among us. Professor Jowett's own style of writing has always been what we might call a 'loaded' style-that is, rather over rich in literary allusion, and in the use of those

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'Jewels five-words-long

That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time
Sparkle for ever.'

And it comes quite naturally to him to employ the same style in translating Plato; he renders Plato into such English as he himself would use in writing-English not all fresh coined in his own mint, but ever and anon containing pieces as it were previously current, having been coined in the mints of the great masters of English poetry and prose. The result is, that to some extent a medley of styles is produced. On the one hand, we find the extremest modern colloquialisms used to

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represent Plato (such phrases, for instance, as and no mistake'); on the other hand, when, as often happens, the style of Shakspeare, and of the authorised version of the Bible, are resorted to, then an archaic phraseology makes its appearance. Professor Jowett's foible in this work seems to have been to train Plato to copy the Bible, as Lord Strangford was said to have taught the Lusian bard to copy Moore.' Thus, in Phædrus,' 243, E, we have aλμpàv (briny), translated gall ' and vinegar,' in obvious allusion to Psalm lxix. 22; in Sym'posium,' 197, D, we have Love described as 'making men to 'be of one mind at a banquet,' in reference to Psalm lxviii. 6, (Prayerbook version); in Phædo,' 66, C, we find the sentence καὶ γὰρ πολέμους καὶ στάσεις καὶ μάχας οὐδὲν ἄλλο παρέχει ἢ τὸ σῶμα καὶ αἱ τούτου ἐπιθυμίαι, rendered, For whence come wars and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lusts of the body?' in which the only point observable is the form of the sentence-chosen apparently to remind us of St. James Ep. iv. 1.

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One of the little devices which Professor Jowett employs to give a Scriptural colouring to the phraseology of Plato, is the frequent use of the archaic form, such an one,' instead of the modern such a one;' if, indeed, the phrase at all can be said to be in ordinary modern use. We confess that we do not see the advantage of turning the sentences of Plato so as to make them remind people of passages in the Bible. The allusive parts of Professor Jowett's translations grow out of, but are something different from, his method of analogous impressions, and are less justifiable. If the method of analogous impressions be accepted (and we think it fairly may be) as the legitimate mode of conveying the sense of an ancient Greek writer to the minds of English readers, then it becomes a matter of taste to settle within what limits it shall be used, how far a mixture of various styles may be allowed, and what amount of departure from the literal text may be permitted. As a crucial instance, we would ask, is, or is not, the following use of an analogous impression permissible? In Protagoras,' 328, E, Professor Jowett writes:- Protagoras ended, and in my ear

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"So charming left his voice, that I the while

Thought him still speaking; still stood fixed to hear."

The Greek is in plain prose, Πρωταγόρας μὲν τοσαῦτα καὶ τοιαῦτα ἐπιδειξάμενος ἀπεπαύσατο τοῦ λόγου. Καὶ ἐγὼ ἐπὶ μὲν πολὺν χρόνον κεκηλημένος ἔτι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔβλεπον ὡς ἐροῦντά τι, ἐπιθυμῶν ἀκούειν. But yet the quotation of which Professor

Jowett has availed himself gives an exactly analogous impression to that made by the words of the original.

The purists in Greek scholarship may cry out against a bold stroke like this, but this is not the sort of thing in Professor Jowett's translation to which we would take exception. There is no doubt that his method of aiming at general effect and of looking at speeches and remarks in the whole, has occasionally-we may say frequently-led to his dealing too loosely with particular clauses. He seems sometimes not to have looked hard enough at the Greek words. Hence, when rigidly compared with the Greek, his translation, though it comes out of the ordeal much better than many people might expect, frequently exhibits a looseness, sometimes even a disregard of accurate scholarship, which one must regret. And these are the blemishes which we should like to see removed. They lie on the surface, and we are only surprised that Professor Jowett's coadjutors, who are named in his Preface, should have suffered them to continue. To show exactly what we mean, we will go through one Dialogue-Symposium,' -which is one of the least exactly translated in all these volumes, and pick all the holes we are able in Professor Jowett's rendering of it. We have compared Professor Jowett's version with the translations both of Sydenham and Shelley, and there can be no doubt that it is far superior to both of them. Sydenham's is plain and praiseworthy, but heavy. Shelley's, with constant blunders of scholarship, is elegant, but loses all the dramatic humour. Professor Jowett's translation gives the dramatic effect of the whole, is for far the greater part as admirable as it is possible to be, and taking fault for fault is more correct even than Sydenham's. The following are the particular renderings in it to which we would venture to object :

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In Symposium,' 173, D, occurs an instance of Professor Jowett improving upon Plato, by introducing a play on words not to be found in the original. He renders v μèv yàp Tois λόγοις ἀεὶ τοιοῦτος εἶ, σαυτῷ τε καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀγριαίνεις πλὴν Zwкрáтous, for your humour is always to be out of humour ' with yourself and with everybody except Socrates.'

173, E, is another instance of a similar departure from simplicity. He translates διήγησαι τίνες ἦσαν οἱ λόγοι, " repeat the tale of love.'

Professor Jowett frequently resorts to daring and happy inversions of the Greek order of words and clauses, so as to give the exact sense of the original in a form thoroughly English and natural. But in page 174, D, E, he makes a

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slip in attempting an inversion of this kind. Aristodemus relates how Socrates stopped on his road to the party in a fit of abstraction, and that he himself went on before, not having been invited; and that, arriving at the house of Agathon, he found the door open, and that he felt rather absurd for the 'moment' (kai Ti ë‡η avtobɩ yeλoîov πaßɛîv) for a servant meeting him led him straight to where the guests were reclining. Professor Jowett takes the clause quoted, and transfers it from its place to the beginning of the whole incident, translating it: 'This was the style of their conversation as they went along; and a comical thing happened-Socrates stayed behind,' &c. It may be observed that Sydenham had rendered the clause correctly.

In 174, E, Professor Jowett, quite unusually for him, falls below the smartness of Plato. Aristodemus explains that he had come by the invitation of Socrates, who had been with him a moment before. You were quite right in coming, said Agathon, but where is the fellow?' (ảλλà πOÛ EσTIV OUTOS;) Professor Jowett writes, but where is he himself?'

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In 175, A, what looks like a serious slip in scholarship occurs. Καὶ ἓ μὲν ἔφη ἀπονίζειν τὸν παῖδα, ἵνα κατακέοιτο· ἄλλον δέ τινα τῶν παίδων ἥκειν ἀγγέλλοντα is translated Then he 'said that the attendant assisted him to wash, and that he lay 'down, and presently another servant came in and said.' Whereas it should have been: Then he said that while the 'attendant was washing his feet, in order that he might lie down, C another of the servants came and announced.'

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In the next line, the tone of the servant's announcement is unnecessarily altered. The Greek is Σωκράτης οὗτος ἀναχωρήσας ἐν τῶν γειτόνων προθύρῳ ἕστηκε, κἀμοῦ καλοῦντος οὐκ ἐθέλει εἰσίεναι. Mr. Jowett renders it: He said that our 'friend Socrates had retired into the portico of the neighbour'ing house."There he is fixed, and when I call to him," said the servant," he will not stir." Whereas the simple rendering would be- That Socrates is standing back in the neigh'bours' portico, and when I invite him to come in, he refuses.' In 175, D, there is the appearance of an inadmissible view of the text. Agathon bids Socrates sit next him, "va kaì Toû σοφοῦ ἁπτόμενός σου ἀπολαύσω, ὅ σοι προσέστη ἐν τοῖς πρόθυροις, which Mr. Jowett renders: that I may touch the sage, he 'said, and get some of that wisdom which came into your 'mind in the portico.' But Toù σopoû is neuter, and has nothing to do with aπTóμEvos. What Agathon says, is that by touching you I may have the benefit of that piece of wis'dom which came to you in the portico.'

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