Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/337

GREATNESS OF PLATO 313 him. Dionysius's criticism (see pp. 325, 326) actually takes the sham speech of the Menexenus to compare with that On the Crown ! But Plato's range is longer ; he has more delicacy and depth, and a wider imaginative horizon than was possible to the practical statesman and pleader. You feel in reading him, that, in spite of all the overstatements and eccentricities into which his temperament leads him, you are really dealing with a mind for which no subtlety is too difficult, no specula- tive or moral air too rarefied. The accusations against him come to nothing. His work in the world was to think and write, and he did both assiduously at a uniform level of loftiness. Little call was made upon him for action in the ordinary sense ; when a call did come, as in Dion's case, he responded with quixotic devotion. But if a man's life can be valued by what he thinks and what he lives for, Plato must rank among the saints of human history. His whole being lay iv rw Ka(^ ; and there is perhaps no man of whom one can feel more certainly that his eyes were set on something not to be stated in terms of worldly success, and that he would without hesitation have gone through fire for the sake of it.^ ^ As to the Platonic Letters, each must be judged on its own inerits. I believe, for instance, that xiii. is probably gemdne {so W. Christ), and that vii. is an early compilation from genuine material. The tendency to reject all ancient letters as forgeries {see, e.g., Hercher's preface to Epistolographi Grceci) is a mere reactiott from the old Phalaris controversy.