duller wits of the Lacedaemonian and Cretan, who at first start
back in surprise. More than in any other writing of Plato the tone is
hortatory; the laws are sermons as well as laws; they are considered to
have a religious sanction, and to rest upon a religious sentiment in the
mind of the citizens. The words of the Athenian are attributed to the
Lacedaemonian and Cretan, who are supposed to have made them their own,
after the manner of the earlier dialogues. Resumptions of subjects which
have been half disposed of in a previous passage constantly occur: the
arrangement has neither the clearness of art nor the freedom of nature.
Irrelevant remarks are made here and there, or illustrations used which
are not properly fitted in. The dialogue is generally weak and laboured,
and is in the later books fairly given up, apparently, because unsuited
to the subject of the work. The long speeches or sermons of the
Athenian, often extending over several pages, have never the grace
and harmony which are exhibited in the earlier dialogues. For Plato is
incapable of sustained composition; his genius is dramatic rather than
oratorical; he can converse, but he cannot make a speech. Even the
Timaeus, which is one of his most finished works, is full of abrupt
transitions. There is the same kind of difference between the dialogue
and the continuous discourse of Plato as between the narrative and
speeches of Thucydides.

3. The perfection of style is variety in unity, freedom, ease,
clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note in the
scale of human feelings without impropriety; and such is the divine gift
of language possessed by Plato in the Symposium and Phaedrus. From this
there are many fallings-off in the Laws: first, in the structure of
the sentences, which are rhythmical and monotonous,--the formal and
sophistical manner of the age is superseding the natural genius of
Plato: secondly, many of them are of enormous length, and the latter end
often forgets the beginning of them,--they seem never to have received
the second thoughts of the author; either the emphasis is wrongly
placed, or there is a want of point in a clause; or an absolute case
occurs which is not properly separated from the rest of the sentence; or
words are aggregated in a manner which fails to show their relation to
one another; or the connecting particles are omitted at the beginning of
sentences; the uses of the relative and antecedent are more