90 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



among the German controvertists. Serranus has conferred great obli- 

 gations by his excellent edition of Plato ; and as the paging of that 

 edition has been universally adopted by scholars for reference, it has 

 been very judiciously continued in the margin of the Bipont edition, 

 and of the edition published by Mr. Bekker. The abstract of Plato's 

 ' Dialogues,' by Mr. Tiedemann, annexed to the Bipont edition, is 

 executed with considerable ability ; but the author is somewhat too 

 fond of deviating into mystical disquisitions, and has rendered the 

 work less intelligible and less generally useful than it otherwise would 

 have been, by a constant reference to the philosophy which then 

 prevailed in Germany. 



In Germany, indeed, Plato has uniformly been the favourite of the 

 ablest philosophers ; and whether the mystic Reuchlin, or Leibnitz, 1 

 or Kant, brought their own theories to light, they all equally acknow- 

 ledged Plato to be the great object of their admiration among ancient 

 English writers. In Britain, the professed translators of Plato have been 

 omato ns Sydenham, Spens, and Taylor. Of Sydenham's translation, every 

 scholar will speak with respect, and every man of taste with regard 

 and fondness. Its imperfect and unfinished condition bears with it a 

 deep interest as a memorial of Sydenham's melancholy fate ; when a 

 man of the highest talents, and the most elegant accomplishments, after 

 struggling with the inequalities of fortune, and suffering mortifications 

 not the less galling because concealed and uncommunicated, gave way 

 to the sudden impulse of his indignant spirit, and quitted a world 

 which he disdained to flatter. Spens' work bears marks of being a 

 version from the French, and not from the original. It is impossible 

 to speak otherwise than with respect of Mr. Taylor, as a self-taught 

 scholar, and a student of unwearied industry ; but his translation of 

 Plato is in every higher quality a lamentable contrast to the work of 

 his predecessor Sydenham. It is written without spirit, without taste, 

 without, as it should seem, even a suspicion of the lighter shades of 

 language, and it is disfigured throughout with the unintelligible jargon 

 of the Alexandrian school. 



His admirers Among the British admirers of Plato, besides the cabalists Gale 

 in Britain. an( j More, and the indefatigable and eloquent pupil of the Alexandrian 

 school, Cud worth, we may mention several of our ablest philosophers 

 and poets. Bacon never speaks of the political or moral works of Plato 

 without marked respect. Berkeley's enthusiastic admiration is well 

 known, and his dialogues are, perhaps, the only productions in the lan- 



1 The testimony of Leibnitz is very explicit. In one letter to Bierling, after 

 making some remarks on Cicero's 'Dialogues/ he continues thus: "Platonis 

 dialogi paulo minus accommodati sunt ad ingenium nostri sseculi. Mihi tamen vix 

 quicquam in illis spernitur ; adeo multa agnosco consideratione profundiore digna." 

 And in another letter, in reply to some vague remarks made by the same cor- 

 respondent, he observes, " De Platone non sentio tarn con tern tim. Meditationes 

 ejus mihi et profundas passim et utiles videntur. Et habeo Giceronem non malum 

 judicem mecum sentientem. Non ita pridem didicimus plus Platonem in recessu 

 habere quam vulgo apparet." Leibnitii Epistol. in opp. vol. v. p. 368. 



