eages, Laches, and Lysis, which are maieutic
dialogues. The Cratylus is ranked in the last place, not so much because
the subject of it is etymology, as because a great part of it is deeply
theological; for by this arrangement, after having ascended to all the
divine orders and their ineffable principle in the Parmenides, and thence
descended in a regular series to the human soul in the subsequent
dialogues, the reader is again led back to deity in this dialogue, and
thus imitates the order which all beings observe, that of incessantly
returning to the principles whence they flew.

After the dialogues[28] follow the Epistles of Plato, which are in every
respect worthy that prince of all true philosophers. They are not only
written with great elegance, and occasionally with magnificence of
diction, but with all the becoming dignity of a mind conscious of its
superior endowments, and all the authority of a master in philosophy.
They are likewise replete with many admirable political observations,
and contain some of his most abstruse dogmas, which though delivered
enigmatically, yet the manner in which they are delivered, elucidates at
the same time that it is elucidated by what is said of these dogmas in
his more theological dialogues.

-----------------
[28] As I profess to give the reader a translation of the genuine works
of Plato only, I have not translated the Axiochus, Demodoeus, Sisyphus,
&c. as these are evidently spurious dialogues.
-----------------

With respect, to the following translation, it is necessary to observe, in
the first place, than the numbers of legitimate dialogues of Plato is
fifty-five; for though the Republic forms but one treatise, and the Laws
another, yet the former consists of ten, and the latter of twelve books,
and each of these books is a dialogue. Hence, as there are thirty-three
dialogues, besides the Laws and the Republic, fifty-five will, as we have
said, be the amount of the whole. Of these fifty-five, the nine following
have been translated by Mr. Sydenham; viz. the First and Second Alcibiades,
the Greater and Lesser Hippias, the Banquet (except the speech of
Alcibiades), the Philebus, the Meno, the Io, and the Rivals.[29] I have
already observed, and with deep regret, that this excellent though
unfortunate scholar died before he had made that proficiency in the
philosophy of Plato which might have been reasonably expected from so fair
a beginning. I personally knew him only i