s to impair his style; at least his gift of expression does
not keep up with the increasing difficulty of his theme. The idea of the
king or statesman and the illustration of method are connected, not like
the love and rhetoric of the Phaedrus, by 'little invisible pegs,'
but in a confused and inartistic manner, which fails to produce any
impression of a whole on the mind of the reader. Plato apologizes for
his tediousness, and acknowledges that the improvement of his audience
has been his only aim in some of his digressions. His own image may be
used as a motto of his style: like an inexpert statuary he has made the
figure or outline too large, and is unable to give the proper colours
or proportions to his work. He makes mistakes only to correct them--this
seems to be his way of drawing attention to common dialectical errors.
The Eleatic stranger, here, as in the Sophist, has no appropriate
character, and appears only as the expositor of a political ideal, in
the delineation of which he is frequently interrupted by purely logical
illustrations. The younger Socrates resembles his namesake in nothing
but a name. The dramatic character is so completely forgotten, that a
special reference is twice made to discussions in the Sophist; and this,
perhaps, is the strongest ground which can be urged for doubting the
genuineness of the work. But, when we remember that a similar allusion
is made in the Laws to the Republic, we see that the entire disregard
of dramatic propriety is not always a sufficient reason for doubting the
genuineness of a Platonic writing.

The search after the Statesman, which is carried on, like that for
the Sophist, by the method of dichotomy, gives an opportunity for many
humorous and satirical remarks. Several of the jests are mannered and
laboured: for example, the turn of words with which the dialogue
opens; or the clumsy joke about man being an animal, who has a power
of two-feet--both which are suggested by the presence of Theodorus, the
geometrician. There is political as well as logical insight in refusing
to admit the division of mankind into Hellenes and Barbarians: 'if a
crane could speak, he would in like manner oppose men and all other
animals to cranes.' The pride of the Hellene is further humbled,
by being compared to a Phrygian or Lydian. Plato glories in this
impartiality of the dialectical method, which places birds in
juxtaposition with men, and the king side by side with the bird-catche