8
INTRODUCTION.
minence in that last dialogue of Immortality—the other dialogue in this volume—which has been often said to paint to us the Christian before Christ. The reader will not fail to observe that when Plato records as the last words of Socrates the reminder that he owed a cock to Æsculapius, his purpose is to show that, however Socrates was accused of neglect of the gods, he was punctual in observance of the religious rites by which his countrymen declared that they could lift their eyes above the earth on which they trod.
The translation here given of the "Crito" and the "Phædo" is one that was published in 1783, a year before the death of Samuel Johnson.
H. M.
