draught, makes it the more worthy of remark that both should have obsti nately adopted the same disagreeable form of composition. Both exhibit the whole of their separate speculations under the form of dialogue. It is always Socrates and Crito, or So crates and Phædrus, or Socrates and Ischomachus; in fact, Socrates and some man of straw or good humoured nine-pin set up to be bowled down as a matter of course. How inevitably the reader feels his fingers itching, to take up the cudgels instead of Crito for one ten minutes! Had we been favoured with an interview, we can answer for it that the philosopher should not have had it all his own way: there should have been a "scratch" at least between us; and instead of waiting to see Crito punished without delivering one blow that would "have made a dent in a pound of butter," posterity should have formed a ring about us, crying out-" Pull baker, pull devil" according as the accidents of the struggle went this way or that. If dialogue must be the form, at least it should not have been collusive dialogue. Whereas, with Crito and the rest of the men who were in training for the part of disputants, it was a matter of notoriety-that, if they presumed to put in a sly thrust under the ribs of the philosopher, those about Socrates, οι αμφι τον ΣωκραTM, would kick them into the kennel. It was a permanent "cross" that was fought throughout life between Socrates and his obsequious antagonists.

As Plato and Xenophon must have hated each other with a theological hatred, it is a clear case that they would not have harmonized in any thing if they had supposed it open to evasion. They would have got another atmosphere had it been possible. Diverging from each other in all points beside, beyond doubt they would have diverged as to this form of dialogue, had they not conceived that it was essential to the business of philosophy. It is plain from this one fact, how narrow was the range of conception which the Socratic school applied to the possible modes of dealing with polemic truth. They represented the case thus:Truth, they fancied, offered itself by separate units, by moments, (to bor row a word from dynamics,) by what Cicero calls "apices rerum" and

"punctiunculae." Each of these must be separately examined. It was like the items in a disputed account. There must be an auditor to check and revise each severally for itself. This process of auditing could only be carried on through a brisk dialogue. The philosopher in monologue was like a champion at a tournament with nobody to face him. He was a chess-player with no opponent. The game could not proceed. But how mean and limited a conception this was, which lay as a basis for the whole Socratic philosophy, becomes apparent to any man who considers any ample body of truth, whether polemic truth or not, in all its proportions. Take Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses, and imagine a Socratic man dealing with that. How does Warburton establish that Moses held such a legation? He lays down a syllogism, the major of which asserts a general law with regard to false or unsound religions, viz., that no such religion could sustain itself, or rear itself, to any height or duration without the aid of a particular doctrine,— viz., the doctrine of a resurrection. This is the major; then for his minor. Warburton maintains, that the Mosaic religion did sustain itself without that doctrine. Whence the conclusion follows formally-that, having accomplished what was hopeless for a merely human invention, the Mosaic dispensation could not have been such a human invention; that it enjoyed a secret support from God; and that Moses was truly what he represented himself God's ambassador. Consider how little the Platonic and Xenophontic mode of philosophizing would apply to this case. You may see fit to deny the entire major proposition of the bishop, and yet you may find it impossible to quarrel with the separate arguments, with each of them or with all of them, on which the major is built. All may be unexceptionable; and yet, when the record is closed, you may see cause to say, "Bishop, your materials are good; but they are not strong enough to support the weighty column which you have built upon them." But, this is an objection which cannot be made until you have heard him to the end. You must suspend; whereas the Socratic man never does suspend. A man who brings an alphabet of rea

sons, which are professedly to avail cumulatively in proof of his thesis, will not consider himself answered because you object to P or Q amongst his arguments. "My proofs are separate and independent," he replies; "it is my glory that I can afford to give you a pawn or so, and yet win the game. Another mode of proceeding against the bishop would be this: :-you might concede his major, and utterly deny, as many men have denied, his minor. But whether you see cause to go against the upper or lower proposition; against the rule, or against the subsumption under the rule; equally you find that the Socratic mode of process is quite unavailing, or availing only by accident. And even this is not by any means the worst case supposable. Here, by the supposition, you have a long train of arguments, which may be valid as a cumulus, notwithstanding that, Socratically, you might find this or that in particular to be a hollow nut. And again, such a train may be supposed, to which, Socratically, you force an assent seriatim and articulatim; all the items, what the Romans called the nomina in a creditor's account, are unimpeachable; and yet, as a whole, as the "tottle of a whole," you protest against them as insufficient for the probandum. They are good; but not good for so much. They are available, and for the length of a mile, suppose; but they do not reach the three miles of the object in question. In the first case, Socrates negatives some of the parts, and yet he cannot negative the result. He is partially victorious, and yet is beaten as to the whole. In the second case, Socrates affirms all the parts, and yet cannot affirm the result. He is universally victorious in the detail, and yet is beaten upon the whole question. Yet, in all this, we repeat-the Socratic weakness is not adequately exposed. There is a far larger and subtler class of cases where the arguments for and against are not susceptible of this separate valuation. One is valid only through and by a second, which second again is involved in a third; and so on. Thus, by way of a brief instance, take all the systems of political economy which have grown up since Turgot and Quesnel. They are all polemic-that is, all have moulded themselves in hostility to some other

ideas-all had their birth in opposition. But it would be impossible to proceed Socratically with any one of them. If you should attempt to examine Ricardo sentence by sentence, or even chapter by chapter, his apologist would loudly resist such a process as inapplicable. You must hold on-you must keep fast hold of certain principles until you have time to catch hold of certain others-seven or eight, suppose; and then from the whole taken in continuation, but not from any one as an insulated principle, you come into a power of adjudicating upon the pretensions of the whole theory. The doctrine of value, for example-could you understand that taken apart? could you value it apart? As a Socratic logician, could you say of it either affirmatur or negatur, until you see it coming round and revolving in the doctrines of rent, profits, machinery, &c., which are so many functions of value; and which doctrines first react with a weight of verification upon the other?

These, unless parried, are knockdown blows to the Socratic, and therefore to the Platonic philosophy, if treated as a modus philosophandi; and if that philosophy is treated as a body of doctrines apart from any modus or ratio docendi, we should be glad to hear what they are. For we never could find any either in Plato or Xenophon, which are insisted on as essential. Accidental hints and casual suggestions cannot be viewed as doctrines in that sense which is necessary to establish a separate school. And all the German Tiedemanns and Tennemanns, the tedious men and the tenpenny-men, that have written their twelve or their eighteen volumes viritim upon Plato, will find it hard to satisfy their readers unless they make head against these little objections ; because these objections seem to im peach the very method of the "Socratica Charta," and except as the authors or illustrators of a method, the Socratici are no school at all.

But are not we travelling a little out of our proper field, in attacking this method? Our business was with this method considered as a form of style, not considered as a form of logic. True, O rigorous reader. Yet digressions and moderate excursions have a license. Besides which, on strict consideration, doubts arise

whether we have been digressing. For whatsoever acted as a power on Greek prose, through many ages, whatsoever gave it a bias towards any one characteristic excess, becomes important in virtue of its relations to our subject. Now, the form of dialogue so obstinately maintained by the earliest philosophers, who used prose as the vehicle of their teaching, had the unhappy effect of impressing from the earliest era of Attic literature a colloquial taint upon the prose literature of that country. The great authority of Socrates, maintained for ages by all sorts of fables, naturally did much to strengthen this original twist in the prose style. About fifty years after the death of Socrates, the writings of Aristotle were beginning to occupy the attention of Greece; and in them we see as resolute a departure from the dialogue form as in his elders of the same house the adherence to that form had been servile and bigoted. His style, though arid from causes that will hereafter be noticed, was much more dignified, or at least more grave and suitable to philosophic specula tion than that of any man before him. Contemporary with the early life of Socrates was a truly great man, Anaxagoras, the friend and reputed preceptor of Pericles. It is probable he may have written in the style of Aristotle. Having great systematic truths to teach, such as solved existing phenomena, and not such as raised fresh phenomena for future solution, he would naturally adopt the form of continuous exposition. Nor do we

at this moment remember a case of any very great man who had any real and novel truth to communicate, having adopted the form of dialogue, excepting only the case of Galileo. Plato, indeed, like Galileo, demanded geometry as a qualification in his students-that is, in those who paid him a didazrgy or fee for the privilege of personally attending his conversations; but he demanded no such qualification in his readers; or else we can assure him that very few copies of his Opera Omnia would have been sold in Athens. This low qualification it was for the readers of Plato, and still more for those of Xenophon, which operated to diffuse the reputation of Socrates. Besides, it was a rare thing in Greece to see two men sounding the trumpet on behalf of a third,

And we hope it is not ungenerous to suspect, that each dallied with the same purpose as our Chatterton and Macpherson, viz. to turn round on the public when once committed and compromised by some unequivocal applause, saying, "Gentlemen of Athens, this idol Socrates is a phantom of my brain: as respects the philosophy ascribed to him, I am Socrates."

But in what mode does the conversational taint, which we trace to the writings of the Socratici, enforced by the imaginary martyrdom of Socrates, express itself? In what forms of lan guage? By what peculiarities? By what defects of style? We will endeavour to explain. One of the Scaligers (if we remember it was the elder,) speaking of the Greek article, , ro, called it loquacissimæ gentis flabellum. Now, pace superbissimi viri, this seems nonsense; because the use of the article was not capricious, but grounded in the very structure and necessities of the Greek language. Garrulous or not, the poor men were obliged by the philosophy of their tongue to use the article in certain situations. And, to say the truth, these situations were very much the same as in English. Allowing for a few cases of proper names, participles, or adjectives postponed to their substantives, &c., the two general functions of the article were,-1. to individualize, as, e. g. "It is not any sword that will do, I will have the sword of my father ;" and 2. the very opposite function, viz., to generalize in the highest degree-a use which our best English grammars wholly overlook-as e. g., "Let the sword give way to the gown;" not that particular sword, but every sword, where each is used as a representative symbol of the corresponding professions. "The peasant presses on the kibes of the courtier," where the class is indicated by the individual. In speaking again of diseases, and the organs affected, we usually accomplish this generalization by means of the definite article. say, "He suffered from a headache;" but also we say, "from the headache;" and invariably we say, "He died of the stone," &c. And though we fancy it a peculi arity of the French language to say, "Le cœur lui étoit navré de douleur," yet we ourselves say, "The heart was

We

affected in his case." In all these uses of the definite article, there is little real difference between the Greek language and our own. The main difference is in the negative use -in the meaning implied by the absence of the article, which, with the Greeks, expresses our article a, but with us is a form of generalization. In all this there was nothing left free to the choice. And Scaliger had no right to find any illustration of Greek levity in what was unavoidable.

But what we tax as undignified in the Greek prose style, as a badge of garrulity, as a taint from which the Greek prose never cleansed itself, are all those forms of lively colloquialism, with the fretfulness, and hurry, and demonstrative energy of people unduly excited by bodily presence and by ocular appeals to their sensibility. Such a style is picturesque no doubt; so is the Scottish dialect of low life as first employed in novels by Sir Walter Scott: that dialect greatly assisted the characteristic expression: it furnished the benefit of a Doric dialect; but what man in his senses would employ it in a grave work, and speaking in his own person? Now, the colloquial expletives, so profusely employed by Plato, his age, his fs, &c., the forms of his sentences, the forms of his transitions, and other intense peculiarities of the chattering man, as opposed to the meditating man, have crept over the face of Greek literature; and though some people think every thing holy which is printed in Greek characters, we must be allowed to rank these forms of expression as mere vulgarities. Sometimes, in Westmoreland, if you chance to meet an ancient father of his valley, one who is thoroughly vernacular in his talk, being unsinged by the modern furnace of revolution, you may have a fancy for asking him how far it is to the next town. In which case, you will receive for answer pretty nearly the following words:" Why like, it's gaily nigh like, to four mile like." Now, if the pruriency of your curiosity should carry you to torment and vex this aged man, by pressing a special investigation into this word like,

the only result is likely to be that you will kill him, and do yourself no good. Call it an expletive, indeed! a filling up! Why, to him it is the only indispensable part of the sentence; the sole fixture. It is the balustrade which enables him to descend the stairs of conversation, without falling overboard; and if the word were proscribed by Parliament, he would have no resource but in everlasting silence. Now, the expletives of Plato are as gross, and must have been, to the Athenian, as unintelligible as those of the Westmoreland peasant. It is true the value, the effect to the feelings, was secured by daily use, and by the position in the sentence. But so it is to the English peasant. Like in his use is a modifying, a restraining particle, which forbids you to understand any thing in a dangerous, unconditional, sense. But then, again, the Greek particle of transition, that eternal d, and the introductory formula of us and , how. ever earnestly people may fight for them, because in fact Greek, is now past mending. The d is strictly equivalent to the whereby of a sailor: "whereby I went to London; whereby I was robbed; whereby I found the man that robbed me." All relations, all modes of succession or transition are indicated by one and the same particle. This could arise, even as a license, only in the laxity of conversation. But the most offensive indication of the conversational spirit, as presiding in Greek prose, is to be found in the morbid energy of oaths scattered over the face of every prose composition which aims at rhetorical effect. The literature is deformed with a constant roulade of " by Jove," "by Minerva," &c., as much as the conversation of high-bred Englishmen in the reign of Charles II. In both cases, this habit belonged to a state of transition; and if the prose litera ture of Greece had been cultivated by a succession of authors as extended as that of England, it would certainly have outworn this badge of spurious energy. That it did not, is a proof

that the Greek literature did not reach the consummation of art.

[SEVERAL legal topics have been touched upon in these papers, which seem to have attracted some little attention amongst legal readers, as, at least, would appear from various communicationss-some at considerable length, some anonymous, others not -addressed, through the publishers, to "The Author of Ten Thousand a-Year, in Blackwood's Magazine." The principal matters thus discussed are, the power of an heir, in the lifetime of his ancestor, (to speak popularly, though not with legal accuracy, since nemo est hæres viventis,) to convey away his expectancy in fee, so as to bind himself, and those claiming under him, by estoppel on the subse. quent descent of the estate. On this point have been received several communications-one of them from, perhaps, the greatest lawyer in England. 'Tis doubtless an important point; and where doctors differ I am not presumptuous enough to volunteer an opinion, though I entertain a pretty decisive one. Those who think that I am wrong, had better, perhaps, again refer to their books. Mine I had consulted pretty anxiously before sending off my MS. to the press. The next point is, the effect given by Lord Widdrington, C.J., at the trial, (in which he is represented as being subsequently confirmed by the decision of the Court of King's Bench,) to the ERASURE in the deed of confirmation. From two letters I learn that three or four clients of the writers of them have conceived great aların on this subject, and have directed all their deeds to be overhauled, and, in case of an erasure being discovered, submitted to eminent counsel! Such erasures have been discovered, it would seem, in two instances. In one, the counsel differed from Lord Widdrington; in the other he agreed.

Hor. Carm. Lib. iii, 49.

The question, then, here is, Whether, when an ancient deed (i. e. upwards of thirty years old, after which period a deed is said to prove itself) is produced from the proper custody in support of the rights of the party producing it, and there proves to be an erasure in it in an essential part of the deed-such deed ought to be rejected, unless the erasure can be accounted for; or admitted upon the presumption that such erasure occurred before the execu tion of the deed? Now, upon this point also I have formed a pretty strong opinion, and referred again to the authorities; and venture to give in my adhesion to the opinion of Lord Widdrington and his court. It is rather singular that, about a fortnight ago, Lord Brougham, in delivering the judgment of the House of Lords in three appeal cases from Scotland, each of which was a case depending upon the effect of an erasure, expressly declared the Scotch law to be to the effect laid down in these papers, and decided accordingly, admitting the cases to be full of grievous hardship

in one instance, a widow losing the whole of the provision which had been made for her by her deceased husband. Whether or not my notions of the English law on this subject are antiquated, and contrary to those entertained by the judges and the bar since I ceased practising, I leave for them who are competent to form an opinion to decide. As for several other communications of a different naturesome similarly, others differently addressed-surely, on consideration, the authors of them cannot expect any answer, nor yet construe silence into discourtesy.-Z.

, near London, 14th August 1840.]