his thought was sounding its hundred fathoms of depth. It is the eloquence, not of the orator, but of the philosopher. Neither is its impression simply an affair of style. The previous convictions of the judgment come in for a full share of the effect. Like that same broad river, made up of tributary streams, his myths, his comparisons, his proposition settled here and there, his recondite divings after foundation principles, all tell upon the mind, sweeping it along as with the force of a mighty current. And this, perhaps, is the most striking characteristic of Plato. We forget his very eloquence in his power. He gives us new ideas, and permanent ones. He fixes every nail he undertakes to drive. He starts us off upon new tracks of inquiry, and makes us feel as though our minds had become more prolific of thought, and our faculties endued with a fresh activity. When we rise up from his vindication of virtue, we find that we have had demonstrated to our inner sense, many a lofty maxim of moral, yes, of Christian virtue, which before were little beyond well-sounding words. We know ourselves wiser, we hope ourselves better men. It is this success, which makes us feel, on closing a volume of Plato, that we have been conversing with one of the mighty intellects of our species.

In a mere compend of the History of Philosophy, like that whose title stands at the head of this article, the notice of Plato must of necessity be short. It gives us, in fact, only a naked summary of his doctrines, conveying to one versed in his writings, perhaps a sufficiently accurate notion of the main points of his scheme, and its relations to earlier schools; but, to one approaching the subject of ancient opinions for the first time, likely to give erroneous or defective views, or even to be unintelligible. Indeed it is impossible that the case should be otherwise. In this kind of reduction, unlike the pictures of a convex lens, subjects must be exhibited without their variety of coloring, all nicer traits and touches be left out, proportions be altered, and embellishments stripped away. The Plato of such a system is to the real Plato as the skeleton hung together by wires, that stands in the doctor's shop, is to the breathing, animated, and gesticulating orator, who is entrancing the crowded hall with his eloquence. It strikes us also, that even the 5

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young student of Plato, desirous of more insight into his author, will not find this work of much use in clearing up his difficulties: an object which demands a certain degree of detail for its accomplishment. All this, however, is no dispraise of the work, which, indeed, is an excellent one for the end it contemplates. It is evidently the product of a deep acquaintance with the wide range of opinions it reviews; and there is about it such a skill in exhibiting the development of one school from another, such acuteness in comparing system with system, and detecting their true relations, and, in general, such a felicity of compression as make it an admirable manual. To the student of this subject in any of its departments, it will render such aid as a bird's-eye view of the field he is investigating can afford; nor will it fail to have interest even for the unlearned and general reader. It will show him how, in what is generally considered the most shadowy and uncertain realm of human knowledge, there has been a progress, unsteady though it may be from the beginning; how metaphysical science, though like the flowing tide, it retreats as often as it advances, yet, like that, is still gaining by its fluctuations. We intend to return to this manual in a future number, for the purpose of examining it, as also the additions of its learned and able editor, more critically. In the meantime, a short extract, upon the morals of Plato, will af ford some idea of the style and character of the work.

"Morals expresses the laws of the soul as loving, and, consequently, as acting, in virtue of the affections which govern it.

Just as in logic, taken in a comprehensive sense, the soul imitates the Logos, the Divine Word, so in morals the soul imitates God as loving and acting.

God, who loves ideas with an infinite love, acts without himself only in order to realize these arche-types of all things. Man ought, therefore, in like manner, to subordinate inferior loves, the love of sensible and mutable good, to the love of ideas, of the absolute good; and to act only for the sake of realizing within the sphere of his activity, and according to the measure of his power, the divine ideas.

The general principle of morality is therefore imita

tion of God.

The good is the realization of the true, of which the beautiful is the brightness or splendor. This nation of the beautiful, is the foundation of Plato's esthetics.

OLD LITERATURE.

UNDER this head of our Review we propose, from time to time, to call attention to such of the older English writers as, in our judgment, do not deserve to be entirely forgotten. It is our belief that no language possesses a richer mine of philosophic and poetic lore, than that which we have the happiness of speaking. Hoary sages it boasts, and masters of the lyre, reverend chroniclers and sacred inspirers of religion and virtue. To call up these from their forgotten resting-places, and remove the encrustments which time and neglect have permitted to gather over them, we deem one of the best services that can be rendered to American literature. Of some works we shall give complete analyses, together with biographical sketches of the authors, while productions of less merit will receive a notice proportionably concise. The literature of Spain, Italy, Germany and France will also deserve and receive some part of our attention. We shall apply the critical knife to all, and by severing the precious from the worthless, by giving characteristic extracts, and pointing to the most striking examples of original thought and apt expression, hope to furnish good entertainment and wholesome instruction to those who may avail themselves of our labors. The reader shall sit down, without loss of time and no trouble, to a banquet which we have prepared with much toil from far countries, he shall recline in the cool grove and by the shaded fountain without traversing the million acres of barrenness which often encircle them.

The name of Sir Philip Sidney, whose Defence of Poesy we shall briefly notice in this article, is consecrated in our memories by many pleasing and delightful associations. From the first dawn of his genius amid the glades of Penshurst to the full flood of golden light in which it set on the bloody field of Zutphen, we trace his course with

almost unqualified admiration. He was one of those rare spirits who seem born to redeem our nature by vindicating its high capabilities for good. From his ancestors he inherited all the noble and knightly qualities that belong to a hero of romance, courage that never wavered, a heart full of courtesy and fidelity unshaken. He was one of the brightest ornaments of a court which abounded in distinguished men, a radiant star in that constellation of genius which has rendered the reign of Elizabeth among the most remarkable in the annals of the British nation. He was the first who discovered and brought to light the genius of Spencer, "the English Ariosto," and was one of "that enchanted circle of which Shakspeare was the master magician and wizard supreme."

To write eloquently and act nobly, to surpass the wise in wisdom and the brave in valor, to delight courtiers with the elegance of his manners, and men of learning by the extent and solidity of his attainments, finally, "by the varied witchery of his powers" to take captive and to hold the hearts of all, these were his high prerogatives.

This great man died, as is well known, from wounds received in the battle of Zutphen, on the 16th of Oct., 1586, in the thirty-second year of his age. There are few, we imagine, who can read the account of his last hours and death without feeling deep emotion, or regretting that such noble powers should be lost to the world before time was given for their full development. The youthful warrior retained to the last, a soul full of high thoughts and glorious imaginings. He had accustomed himself to look far "beyond the remotest hills that bound the horizon of our earthly existence," and his heart exulted in the coming change. His sublime contemplations on the grave had robbed it of all that is terrible, so that his eye-lids closed in death,

"Calmly as to a night's repose."

The Defence of Poetry is the most elaborate and highly finished of all the author's compositions, and is, as its name imports, a vindication of the poetic art from the contempt into which it had fallen. The merits of poetry, about the time that this publication made its appearance, seem to have been but ill understood, and it must be

admitted, that the specimens of the art then most common, were not calculated to beget very high notions of its character. Pedantic and constrained, and full of farfetched conceits, it breathed little of the divine afflatus which a few years later inspired those bards who made glorious the heavens and the earth beautiful by the exhalations of their genius. There was too, at that time, a set of carping zealots who, horror-stricken at the license of certain wits, and from the example of these misconceiving entirely the nature and objects of poetry, looked upon it as an invention of the arch-enemy, a device to entrap unwary souls by the charm of numbers. Others there were who, with less virulence, regarding it merely as an idle pastime, still objected to it, that by filling the mind with frivolous thoughts, it distracted attention from the cultivation of more serious and important studies. These are the misconceptions and charges which the author, in the essay before us, sets himself to disprove and correct. Poetry he shows to be the eldest of the branches of learning, "the first law-giver to ignorance," the first form in which philosophy delivered its precepts, and to the flowers of which history owes its first introduction to "popular judgments." By "marking the scope of other sciences," he says, and the narrow limits by which they are bounded, we shall see how greatly poetry hath the advantage in being free from the laws to which they are subject.

"There is no art delivered unto mankind, that hath not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and by that he seeth, set down what order nature hath taken therein. So doth the geometrician and arithmetician, in their diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician, in times, tell you which by nature agree; which not. The natural philosopher thereon hath his name; and the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, or passions; and follow nature, saith he, therein, and thou shalt not. err. The lawyer saith what men have determined. The historian, what men have done. The grammarian speaketh only of the rules of speech; and the rhetorician and logician, considering what in nature will soonest prove and persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which still are compassed within the circle