vi 



Demosthenes. The author had vindicated the Athenians and their demo- 

 cratic constitution from many unfair aspersions ; he now exposed their 

 real vices and degeneracy, their growing reluctance to personal military 

 service and to the sacrifices of war. The last and crowning exploit of the 

 historian was to unmask the world's conqueror and favourite, Alexander. 

 With the most ample acknowledgments of Alexander's military genius and 

 indefatigable activity, Mr. Grote has stripped his enterprizes and his con- 

 duct of every other virtue or merit ; and in so doing has read a moral lesson 

 against that adoration of force which has always lent a powerful aid to the 

 oppressors of mankind. 



It has been common to express a regret that the history was not con- 

 tinued down to the Roman conquest of Greece. The reason was charac- 

 teristic of the author. In the preface to the first volume he announced it 

 as his purpose to exhaust the free life of collective Hellas ; and at the 

 close of the twelfth, having to relate the honours bestowed upon Demo- 

 chares, the nephew of Demosthenes, for acting on suppliant embassies to 

 the foreign masters of Greece, he said that when such begging missions 

 are the titles to honour of Athenian citizens, " the historian accustomed 

 to the Grecian world as described by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xeno- 

 phon, feels that the life has departed from his subject, and, with sadness 

 and humiliation, brings his narrative to a close." 



There is no doubt that Mr. Grote was especially cast for an historian, 

 although in his time he played many parts. He had an intense interest in 

 human beings, and a strong passion for narrative ; he had read the history 

 of every country that had a history ; while his memory for historical facts 

 and dates was of the first order. In his study of science, and especially of 

 the moral and political sciences, he was strongly arrested by the modes of 

 arriving at scientific doctrines, and by the struggles of the mind in the 

 pursuit. This more particularly qualified him to be the historian of 

 philosophy. 



The original scheme of the ' History of Greece ' comprised a full account 

 of Greek literature and Greek speculation. The chapters on Homer, on 

 Lyric Poetry and the Seven Wise Men, on the Ionic Philosophers, on the 

 Drama, Rhetoric, Dialectic, and the Sophists, and, finally, on Socrates 

 were in fulfilment of the scheme. The remaining portion, including Plato 

 and Aristotle, was postponed for a separate work. " Plato and the other 

 Companions of Socrates," the first instalment, occupied nine years, and 

 was published in 1865. 



This great work brought into prominence characteristics of the author's 

 mind that had been but little apparent in the ' History of Greece. 5 It 

 comprises a full analysis of all the Platonic writings, with a rediscussion of 

 the numerous questions (Logical, Ethical, Psychological, and Metaphy- 

 sical) that are broached by Plato. He introduces a marked division be- 

 tween two classes of the Dialogues, — the one class Socratic, or Dialogues of 

 Search, whose conclusion is usually negative ; the other class Dialogues 



