Essays and Criticisms

PHÆDO

Η, ΠΕΡΙ ΨϒΧΗΣ

(Plat. Op. Serrani. Vol. 1, p. 57.)

This famous dialogue was supposed by Panaetius¹ the stoick, a great admirer of Plato, not to be genuine, or at least interpolated, rather, as it seems, from his own persuasion² of the soul's mortality, than from any thing in the piece itself unlike the manner or the tenets of the philosopher, to whom it has always been ascribed. The whole course of antiquity has regarded it as one of his principal works; and (what seems decisive) Aristotle³ himself cites it, as a work of his master.

The historical part of it is admirable, and, though written and disposed with all the art and management of the best tragick writer, (for the slightest circumstance in it wants not its force and meaning) it exhibits nothing to the eye but

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