prophetic art, the whole intercourse between gods and men. There is but one modification of the passion left neglected, the love

'Chi bramá assaì, molto spera e nulla chiede;'

but this was a delicacy of feeling which the Athenian authors never exhibited, at least while *democracy was in full vigour.

We have comprised in this short summary the topics of four of the speakers, and Aristophanes among them. Plato appears to have arranged their places, so as best to suit his own powers, by making each speaker rise above the other. The third place, therefore, which had been originally designed for Aristophanes, is transferred to Eryximachus, by inflicting on the poet a sudden fit of hiccups, the consequence of repletion or some other accident,' says Plato with a sly hit; and the dramatist, besides having an opportunity thus afforded of showing that he carried the same good-humour into private life, which he exhibits on the stage, is by this means raised another step in the scale of excel lence. Of his contribution to the general stock, we may perhaps find an opportunity to speak hereafter, when more room for discussing the particular merits of the admirable narrative in which it is embodied, may be at our command. We shall merely observe at present, that it perfectly justifies a theory formerly laid down in this Journal, (with how much ingenuity it is not for us to say,) by which the elements of the Aristophanic comedy were traced up to the commonest expressions of colloquial intercourse; the speech in question being evidently derived from an expression that has travelled down from antiquity to ourselves, and by which the objects of our affections are characterised as our better halves. Agathon and Socrates were now the only two speakers left, and the last place is of course reserved for the philosopher.

After the highly ingenious discourses which had already passed, a little diffidence might reasonably be allowed; and when Socrates recals to the mind of Agathon the courage and confidence which he had displayed but a day or two before in facing the crowded audience of a theatre, the tragic bard very justly observes, that to a sensible man the judgment of a few select clever judges is a much more fiery ordeal to pass, than the presence of thirty thousand mixed spectators, the usual number which crowded an Athenian theatre. We may be certain that this delay is meant to usher in a speech of more than usual effect;

We confine the term, because, in the writings of the later Greek dramatists, when, by a change of government, less scope was afforded to the most predominant passion of men's minds, ambition, specimens of the most delicate amatory feeling are to be found. and

and surely if ever writer had a right to value himself upon an ingenious trifle, Plato deserved that self-value for the speech which he here assigns to the tragic poet. It is the most delicate Euphuism of the most delicate language that ever was invented; and embodied, we must remember, by one, of whom it was said, that he had anticipated the language in which the gods would have chosen to hold intercourse with men. A burst of applause follows its delivery; and a way is thus opened for bringing forward a strong trait in the Socratic character-a peculiar sort of banter, which, by an affectation of undervaluing his own talents, left him the power of sneering delicately at those of others, and thus finally adding to himself the triumphs of modesty in company with the triumphs of superior intellect. This power of irony in their great master, the Socratic school appear to have appreciated very highly, and certainly not without reason: but to the uninitiated it afforded room for charging him with vanity and a desire of depreciating others; and it imparted to his whole conduct a sort of niaiserie, which, with the flashes that burst out in the midst of it, gave him somewhat of that appearance, which led the contemporaries of one of our own poets to characterise him as—an inspired idiot.

As the speech of Socrates developes the groundwork of his erotic philosophy, we shall give as long, and, with certain exceptions, as faithful an account of it as we can. An abridgment of any one of the Socratic discourses, however, is a difficult task; for, besides their intricate nature, their deliverer has a habit of mixing himself up so much with others, that he more resembles a ventriloquist furnishing a set of speakers out of himself, than a single person detailing his single ideas. Fond of ascribing all his knowledge to different persons, his skill in erotics in the present instance is attributed to the influence of a sort of prophetess named Diotima, of whom nothing more is known than what appears in the present dialogue, viz. that she had the power of deferring, for ten years, the plague, which, at the expiration of that time, visited Athens in a manner well known to the readers of Thucydides. By means of this lady, Socrates ascends in his usual way from premises the most simple to cogitations the most profound-from hair-splitting niceties of words to the noblest views of thingsfrom the lowest and most debasing pollutions of the senses to the loftiest speculations of the mind. But a few words will be previously necessary to put the reader in the right point of view. One of the most distinguishing features in the hero of Aristophanes' Clouds, is a deep spirit of mysticism, and a disposition to practise upon his followers all the arts and airs of an adept. This disposition the dramatist has embodied in a rich and harmonious versification, rising into the highest flight of poetical buffoonery.

buffoonery. The Platonic Socrates, which in many particulars does not very essentially differ from that of the dramatist, displays abundance of this mystic spirit; and in the present instance, where one of the most abstruse doctrines of the school was to be explained, the division of the subject and the tone of the language have not without reason been supposed to be borrowed from those hidden rites, which, as they contained the only real and effective portion of Athenian religion, were watched and guarded with the most suspicious jealousy. As in the sacred mysteries of Eleusis, purgation and illumination were employed, before the mysta could take upon him the character of an epopt, and be admitted to the Avroia and inmost glories of the sanctuary, so three branches may evidently be traced in the ensuing discourse; the first being employed in purging the hearers' minds of their errors, and the second in affording positive instructions in the doctrine of love, till, in the proper fulness of time, the veil is thrown aside, and the reward of their previous labours held before them in the most dazzling colours.

Socrates generally began with controverting the opinions of those who had spoken before him. The guests, in the present instance, had sung the praises of love as a god. Love is therefore proved not to be a god; for love, according to the Socratic opinion, is an appetite desirous of supplying a certain deficiency which it feels in itself, of the two great constituents of happiness, the good and the beautiful. But to call a being a god, in whom happiness is not essentially resident, is ridiculous. Love, being thus proved to be no god, he is assigned to that intermediate class between gods and men, which, in the Socratic school, was called dæmons. The ideas of Diotima or Plato, or Socrates, (for the three are all mixed up together,) are then developed, on the subject of dæmons, and we next come to the *birth and parentage

of

As the birth and parentage of this divinity entered largely into the philosophical and poetical theories of the Athenians, we must not be surprised to find their speculations furnishing mirth for the great satirist, whose judgment found as much offence in the absurdity of their ideas, as his ear did in the language in which they were conveyed. To these united feelings we are no doubt indebted for an Aristophanic chorus, where the Birds, after duly magnifying themselves, ridicule, in a sort of Darwinian verbiage, the cosmogonists and creation-mongers of the time.

Ye wingless forms, dull lumps of plastic-clay,
Darkling and blind-the beings of a day-
Fragile as leaves, short as a wintry gleam;-
Your forms a shadow, and your lives a dream;
Poor sons of weak mortality! draw near,
And truths divine from Birds immortal hear ;-
From Birds, who soar empyreal heights among,
For ever living, and for ever young;

Who,

of Love. At the time that Venus was born, the gods, it appears, were entertained with a banquet, and among the guests was Porus, (affluence, or income,) the son of Metis (prudential wisdom.) The end of a feast, in those days, was usually troubled with beggars, and to this feast came a very notable beggar, even Poverty herself. Porus, having taken more than his share of nectar, (for wine, says Plato, was a liquor not yet invented,) did the best which god or man can do on such occasions, he retired to the gardens of Jupiter, and fell into a deep sleep. This was an opportunity, for which Poverty had long been on the watch: she took her place by the side of Porus, and she became the mother of Love. It is

Who, as through air they ply their gladsome wings,
Think and devise imperishable things;-

With rev'rence hear; so shall ye rightly know
Of elemental things above, below;

Deep mysteries and high! of heaven and earth,
Of birds the nature and of gods the birth,
Chaos and Erebus :-and, thus discerning,
Bid Prodicus go hang with all his learning!
Chaos first reign'd (for fables oft tell right),
And Tartarus vast and Erebus and Night.
Earth was not then, nor air: no vaulted arch
Sped a bright sun upon his golden march.
The fruitful germ of Universal Things
Lay yet in NIGHT-her of the raven wings-
At length she felt the generative throe,
And lo! a wind-egg! (deep the truths we show.)
Past the long months, which Nature's laws assign,
Burst the full shell, and forth sprang Love divine!
Bright wings of gold adorn'd the flaming god;
His step was whirlwind, and like storm he trod.
On Chaos first he tried creative pow'r;
And we, the Birds, then knew our natal hour,—
So Love attractive ran through boundless space;
Hot leap'd to cold; and moist and dry embrace :
Thus Earth was form'd-the floods of Ocean roll'd,
Heav'n sprang to light, and gods, a new-made mould!
Thus stands our rank above supernal pow'rs,
And we can call Creation's birthright ours.

Nor wants there proof or full consenting sign,
That we,
the Birds, are sprung from Love divine.
For we, like Love, our glitt'ring pinions wear,
And lovers own and bless our guardian care.
Has some cold votarist of Dian's train,

Heard, with repulsive looks, th' impassioned swain,
As seasons pass, we ply th' obdurate fair,

Urge the warm suit and point the pleading prayer:
In birds, a sweet and tempting bait we spread;
Pigeon or ring-dove-lark with crested head,
Wood-loving quail, who sips the secret spring,
Porphyrion bright, or he of crimson wing-
With half-averted eye, the fair one views,
Loth to consent, unwilling to refuse-
Till, as her wishes rise her doubts subside,
And the coy maid yields to the joyful bride.

this circumstance which has made love the constant follower and attendant of Venus, because he was begotten at the celebra tion of her birth-day, and as he is by natural disposition fond of all beauty, so is he the more attached to Venus herself, on account of her being beautiful. Love, then,' continues the story, as being equally the child of Affluence and Poverty, is placed in the following condition. In the first place, he is ever poor: then, so far from being delicate and beautiful, as people generally imagine, he is, on the contrary, hard and dry, without shoes, (an indispensable requisite to qualify him for admission into the Socra tic school,) and without habitation. His lodging is on the ground -bed he has none-he sleeps at doors and in roads where there is no canopy but the sky-his physical qualities are those of his mother—want and he are close inmates. By the father's side, his propensities are to be full of designs upon the good and the beau tiful; he is bold, audacious, and vehement; an active sportsman,for ever devising new schemes, passionately desirous of wisdom, and full of resources: all his life through he is a philosopher; wonderfully quick and acute (*deos) at enchantments, deceptions, and sophistications. He can neither be called immortal after the manner of the Gods, nor mortal in the common way of mortality for sometimes the very same day sees him alive and flourishing, and a corpse. His physical dispositions by the father's sie resuscitate him what property he has, is in continual flux; so that love is neither rich nor poor.'

Love is then proved to be a philosopher, philosophy being taken as a medium between perfect wisdom (Goa), and perfect ignorance (aaa). For the case lies thus: no god is a philo sopher, nor desires to be perfectly wise; for he is so already. Nor do the perfectly wise philosophise. The perfectly ignorant again do not philosophise; for perfect ignorance has this mischief in it, that, under its influence, a man that is neither a gel tleman nor a man of sense, lays claim to the character of being both.' By another train of reasoning, we learn that the object of love is beauty, that its essence is desire, and its aim and end the possession of beauty, or, if already possessed of it, the perpetuity of that possession. Love is next considered as is beautiful; and it having been proved, that universally all de? the desire of good, whatever is beautiful being also good as it f sire of things good, and all that longing after happiness, which exists in every individual race, is the mighty deity of love, sub

AEIVOTNs and avagyia are opposites in the Greek language; the first signifying right minded cleverness--the second, crooked cleverness. We can make no apology

these minute observations; no languuge was ever so

precisely defined in its terms, ner

so carefully fitted to express every volition and habit of the intellect as the Greek.

duing