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    which the vulgar praise as virtue . A soul so affected will be tossed about for 9000 years , on tbe earth and under it / Here Socrates terminates his long discourse , winding it up by a prayer to Love , to whom he offers the discourse as a Palinodia ; and whose pardon he implores for having blasphemed against him , and lays the whole blame upon Lysias , whose mind he beseeches the god to turn to philosophy .

    Phaedrus warmly applauded this discourse , which he allowed to be greatly superior to that of LyBias . I am afraid , said he , that Lysias would appear but poor , even if he attempted to write another speech against it . And , by the way , one of our politicians the other day inveighing against him , reproached him through the whole of his invective with being a \© yoy /> cty © c , or speech-writer . Perhaps , therefore , he may , from care of his own estimation , give up the practice . Socrates laughed , and told Phaedrus that he mistook his friend if he thought him so fearful of censure . So you think , he added , that the man who thus

    reproached him meant what he said ? It seemed so , answered Phsedrus , and you are yourself aware that the men of importance and gravity in a state are ashamed to write speeches , and leave writtenme *'^ morials of themselves behind them , being afraid lesV-thoy BhuuhTnereafter be reputed sophists . * Socrates replied jocularly , that on the contrary none were -fonder of leaving written memorials behind them , and of being thought good writers , than politicians : for when they write

    any thing , they are so fond of those who applaud it , as always to name them at the very beginning of the writing . Do not their writings always begin , Resolved by the senate , or by the people , or by both , on the proposition of such a one , meaning very gravely the writer himself ; and does lie not then go on showing off his own wisdom to his applauders , to the end of sometimes a very long paper ? And if this be blotted out from the tablet on which it is inscribed , do not the composer and all his friends go

    away dissatisfied ; and if it be thought worthy of being written and permanently recorded , is he not pleased ? and if any of these men , either by his ascendency as an orator , or by authority as a king , obtains the power of Lycurgus , or Solon , or Darius , which enables him to become a writer for immortality , does he not appear both to himself , and to posterity who read his writings , almost a god ? It is evident , therefore , that such a man . if he reproaches Lysiaa , does not reproach him for being a

    writer . To write , therefore , is not disgraceful . To write ill , is so . What then is the manner of writing well or ill ? Shall we ask this of Lysias , or any other writer who ever wrote either in poetry or prose ? 'Shall we ? ' tays Phaedrut—' what else do we live for , but for such pleasures as these ? Not certainly for those pleasures , to the enjoyment of which a previous state of pain is necessary ; which is the case with almost all tne bodily pleasures ; for which reason they are justly called servile . * 'We have leisure / answered Socrates , " and th « cicada ! who

    are chirping and conversing with one another , in the trees over our heads , would despise us if we , like the vulgar , instead of conversing , * We think it not useless to note as it occur * , for the confusion of the Tory pervertera of Grecian history , the evidence which perpetually presents itself of the disrtpute in which the sophist * were held b y the Qretkf , especially by the very class whom they are alleged to have corrupted ; tnose , namely , who considered themselves aa * hat in modern phrase would be styled ' men of the world . '

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    Plato's Dialogues ; ike Phadru * . 419

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    2 G 2

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 419, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/37/