the terms on which, after allowing that comedies may be
performed, but only by slaves and hirelings, he proceeds to allow serious
poetry.

And if any of the serious poets, as they are termed, who write tragedy,
come to us and say--'O strangers, may we go to your city and country,
or may we not, and shall we bring with us our poetry? What is your will
about these matters?'--how shall we answer the divine men? I think that
our answer should be as follows:--

'Best of strangers,' we will say to them, 'we also, according to our
ability, are tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest: for
our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life.... You are
poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and
antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law alone can perfect,
as our hope is. Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow
you to erect your stage in the Agora, and introduce the fair voices of
your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our
women and children and the common people in language other than our
own, and very often the opposite of our own. For a State would be mad
which gave you this license, until the magistrates had determined
whether your poetry might be recited and was fit for publication or
not. Wherefore, O ye sons and scions of the softer Muses! first of all
show your songs to the Magistrates and let them compare them with our
own, and if they are the same or better, we will give you a chorus; but
if not, then, my friends, we cannot.'

Lame conclusion! Impotent compromise! How little applicable, at all
events, to our Commonwealth! though, to be sure (you may say) we possess
a relic of it in His Majesty's Licenser of Plays. As you know, there has
been so much heated talk of late over the composition of the County
Magistracy; yet I give you a countryman's word, Sir, that I have heard
many names proposed for the Commission of the Peace, and on many grounds,
but never one on the ground that its owner had a conservative taste in
verse!

Nevertheless, as Plato saw, we must deal with these poets somehow. It is
possible (though not, I think, likely) that in the ideal State there
would be no Literature, as it is certain there would be no Professors of
it; but since its invention men have never been able to rid themselves of
it for any length of time. _Tamen usque recurrit._ They may forbid
Apol