The revival of Platonic studies has also been a marked feature of our own age; and at last it is not merely Plato's doctrine of Ideas, or his proof of immortality, that we are studying, but Plato himself. It is true that these studies have grown up under the shadow of modern philosophy, and the interpretation of Plato and the estimate formed of his contemporaries have been coloured by the different phases of transcendentalism and eclecticism. The light which ideal thinkers reflect on their great prototype has been mistaken for his own. But there have not been wanting critics who have successfully made the effort to see Plato simply in himself, and in his relation to Greek thought and to his own age. The amiable Van Heusde* was probably one of the first who did so. Even Mr. Grote can hardly be dissatisfied with the treatment which the Sophists' received from him. Indications are already visible that the interest felt in this subject amongst our own countrymen is no longer confined to a few. It is, therefore, natural to ask what may be expected to be the effect of an increase of Plato's influence on education and literature at the present day. The most obvious elements of this influence are the scattered thoughts, modernisms' as they have been sometimes called, which are equally intelligible to every time, and often admit of an immediate application to our own circumstances. The description of the scepticism resulting from the rash and inconsiderate use of dialectic, as the state of one who has been brought ́ up as a supposititious child, and discovers that those whom he has called his parents are not really so, before he has found those who are t the repeated warning that controversy, as such, leads only to the hatred of inquiry, and despair of truth; the humorous description of this word-fencing, reminding one of Squire Ralpho's account of logic which want of space alone prevents us from | minant beliefs, cannot have been lost to other quoting, is very instructive, and admirably clear. countries and succeeding generations. We are glad to be able thus to praise in departing from Dr. Whewell's book. We have no wish to depreciate a work which will be most valuable in exciting, and, in a measure, satisfying, the curiosity of the English public on the questions, What did Plato say? and, What did he mean ?-a work from which the most advanced Platonic scholar may learn something. Only it is surely matter for regret that an undertaking of so much promise should have been allowed to suffer in its execution through occasional mistakes of scholarship, through a piecemeal mode of treatment which was unnecessary, and through an apparent unwillingness to trace the subtle gradations of the develop ment of a most subtle and ever-growing mind. A few words may be added in conclusion on modern Platonism, which has at different periods become the ally of literature and art, of romantic friendships, of immutable' systems of morality, of idealizing Divinity, of revolutionary schemes of government, and of an anti-social communism. In each case, only a fragment of Plato's real meaning has been retained. Either his poetic symbolism has been treated as if it were the substance of his thought, or that which he descried as the distant goal of his forward endeavour has been isolated, and made the starting-point of a mystical and abstract logic; or his resolution of the apparent fixity of the objects of sense has been turned to the denial of the reality of material substances; or a single feature of his imaginary state has been made the basis of an actual attempt to reconstruct society. By such means there is obtained only a partial and distorted image of the Socratic inspiration and the Platonic faith; which must be understood in themselves and as a whole, in order to become really fruitful. Yet even when not fully comprehended, the influence of these writings has been powerful. In the fifteenth century, when the Florentine Academy under Marsiglio Ficino was esteemed the brightest point in the galaxy of intellectual light, the New Philosophy,' though tinged with Neo-platonic fancies, was a great help to the world in throwing off the trammels of Scholasticism and Superstition, and, itself constituting a new beginning in speculation, must have contributed not a lit-perfect than the actual, the analysis of the tle towards the free exercise of thought. The Medici, perhaps, hailed it as an inspiration congenial to the spirit of Italian poetry and art, and as providing fresh aliment for a waning faith. But there is little doubt that the intellectual force there gathered, and the spirit of freedom instilled by the words of one who had opposed the strength of mind to do 'This pagan heathenish invention Is good for nothing but contention; § the satire directed against a method which substitutes the imputation of inconsistency in opponents for a real examination of the matter in hand; the observation that in the nature of things the ideal must ever be more ridiculous:*-these, and numberless similar hints, cannot but suggest useful thoughts. The person of Socrates is another unfailing * Theæt., p. 168. Initia Platonica.' Leyden, 1842. Theæt.' p. 164. Phileb.,' p. 48. source of interest; although we have not in Plato the literal faithfuluess of Boswell-Apollodorus, who, for three years at least, took daily note of everything which Socrates said and did.* Even the superficial study of Plato is of real value. The image of our highest natural powers, in their freshest vigour, the unattainable grace of the prime of manhood,' is to be seen there as it is not elsewhere, even in classic literature. The mind which has only slightly tasted of them must be raised and purified by great thoughts and beautiful imaginations, expressed in the most perfect language. cation to a new subject-matter of the 'crossquestioning' method which has so far been employed on things external to the mind, is it unreasonable to hope that the truly inductive method of Plato, whose deepest intuitions are ever accompanied with the appeal to consciousness and experience, may afford a preliminary training which even the greatest minds can hardly dispense with in endeavouring to place the science of human nature on a sure foundation? What if it should be found that Plato's philosophy in its different aspects is a true epitome of the mental progress of the race; that as his ideal theory is a sort of prophecy which his dialectical energy is ever striving to fulfil, so faith is the mystic anticipation of reason, and reason but the gradual verification of faith; while, as Jeremy Taylor says, Faith must ever take something into her heart which Reason cannot take into her eye?' The Christian is indeed the recipient of a far deeper spirit than Plato knew. There was a veil upon the heart of the heathen world which has been removed. On the other hand, external facts exercise a more powerful influence now that they are better But the essential interest of Plato lies in this, that in his works we have clearly presented to us the first complete and harmonious impress of philosophy upon the human mind. The true elements of scientific method are there-not separate, but blended; ideal anticipation followed by inductive verification; analogy and hypothesis pointing the way to truth, but not slackening the search for it. The field of observation has been wonderfully enlarged since Plato's time; but though the contents of experience are different, the spirit in which all inquiry should be conducted is the same. There is a lesson which the world has not ex-known. hausted yet, in his union, or rather identification of religion with science; in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake considered as a religious duty; and in the belief repeatedly expressed and implied throughout in the absolute goodness of the Supreme Being, the idea of Whom philosophy approaches, but cannot wholly grasp. Plato never loses sight of the admission that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy; but for this very reason he is ever striving to test the reality of his dream. His thoughts are never lost in mysticism, nor will he suffer them to be bound within the limits of what is known positively, as by a sort of fate. The difficulty which haunted him, that of bridging over the chasm between idea and fact, is parallel to many difficulties in our own day. And if the human mind, after passing forth out of the sphere prescribed by Socrates-after measuring the earth and spanning the heaven' (Plat. Theæt., p. 173), and bringing all things in the sensible universe within the reach of human knowledge and power-has now come full circle, and is again seeking to read in the large letters,' not of an imaginary Greek community, but of human history, the laws which the Creator has impressed on his creature man; if inductive science, after traversing the field of Nature, is turning inwards, and falters in the appli 6 Symp., p. 172. That influence may be partly corrective and partly blinding. But neither the priceless possession of a holier faith, nor the extended range of our observation, can make less interesting or less instructive to us the spectacle of human intelligence consciously growing into perfect beauty. The pure love of truth (than which nothing is more delightful to investigate, or more beautiful to contemplate, when found '*), which Plato made the rule of his life, may be an example to us in times of intellectual perplexity. His belief in God and immortality may even now be a support to faith. The delight of reading him is that of drinking from a living fountain. He has objected to all written composition that it must fall dead, in comparison of that oral teaching which is adapted to create new thoughts in the spirit of one loved and known. He seems to have been oppressed, in writing, with something of Goethe's feeling 'Mein Lied ertönt der unbekannten Menge;' but he has provided that his own works should belie his foreboding, and be the excep tion to prove his rule. So long as there is a mind devoted to classical studies, in which the faculties of reflection and imagination are united in any degree of power, so long his written converse will retain its creative force, generating and preserving, in the soul of a friend, thoughts kindred to his own. * Scotus Erigena. ART. III.-1. The Journal and Correspon- | feminine element of Court life had no longer dence of William Lord Auckland. By that connexion with public policy which once the Right Hon. and Right Rev. the Bi- for a brief space it had possessed; and the shop of Bath and Wells. Vols. III. and resemblance to French manners in this respect grew less and less till it disappeared altogether with the accession of George III. IV. 1862. 2. The Private Diary of Richard Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. In 3 Vols. 1862. THE class of memoirs to which our attention will chiefly be directed in this article differs very widely from those which are known as illustrating the manners rather than the politics of French or German Courts. This difference is but the reflection of another: of that which exists between two quite distinct modes of government; between parliamentary government and closet government; between the mace of the House of Commons and the fan of the Duchess de Longueville. In French memoirs, politics and scandal, the jokes of the salons and the counsels of the cabinet, are inextricably mixed up together, and reveal a political system in which the authority exercised under free institutions by men had been transferred to the art, the tact, and the accomplishments of the female sex. If France was a despotism tempered by epigrams, it was the life of the salons which brought those epigrams to perfection; and the salons thus constituted a sort of social parliament, which, though unable to stop the supplies or withhold the Mutiny Acts, still possessed a formidable weapon of offence in the power of making the government ridiculous. England, as we need hardly say, has never had a government of this description. The nearest approach to it which she has ever seen was under the sway of Charles II., and accordingly the nearest approach to French memoirs which our literature possesses, is in the volumes of Pepys and Hamilton. Some of the characterististics of the reign of Charles II. reappeared partially and in a very unattractive form under the two first Georges, and have served to impart a tinge of French colour to the memoirs which describe their Courts. But, fortunately for England, neither Walpole nor his royal master were men of refined taste. It would have been hard for a monarch like Charles II., or a minister like Lord Bolingbroke, to resist the charms of those beautiful and sprightly girls who sparkle like diamonds in all the memoirs of that time. Their influence was but small. George I. and his successor pursued their unwieldy loves and enjoyed their boorish romps in a style not seductive to English gentlemen. Politics were surrendered to Walpole; and the consequence was that, although there was plenty of immorality under those gracious sovereigns, yet the Thus in that witty and amusing style of memoir in which grave and gay are treated on the same level, in which drawing the sword against an enemy or throwing the handkerchief to a lady, treaties of peace or canons of taste, a fresh famine or a new play, are of equal importance, England is unquestionably | deficient. We have some such memoirs and letters, no doubt, though they are not equal to the French. Hamilton, and Pepys, and Walpole, and Chesterfield, and Selwyn, and Hervey, to say nothing of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lady Suffolk, Madame D'Arblay, and others, have written to a certain extent in that style. But these are nearly all that we have, and even these betray their native soil. There is, however, another class of memoirs more truly deserving the title of political, in which English literature is absolutely without a rival: as in England alone are to be found institutions under which they flourish. We mean the diaries, correspondence, and biographies of that long succession of eminent public men who have conducted our parliamentary system during the last hundred years. The study of constitutional government through the medium of these pages is like the contemplation of bees under a glass hive. We see the secret and intermittent processes by which great events have been matured. We see how curiously patriotism and selfishness, a sincere faith in principles and an obstinate love of power, may be united in the same men. their busy movements to and fro, their mines and counter-mines; the disgust after failure, the elation after victory. We see the strangest inconsistencies and contradictions; and, not losing our faith in excellence or greatness, we learn at the same time to be more charitable and less credulous. We see In our examination of this class of memoirs, we will begin with the accession of George III., as the epoch at which the memoirs devoted to Court gossip and anecdote may be said in general terms to have been replaced by matter which is more purely political. The character of the memoir affords one sufficient reason for making that date our startingpoint. But in the character of the period itself we shall find still stronger motives. In the first place, from 1715 to 1760 our parliamentary contests were, with one exception, confined to our parliamentary parties and unconnected with the powers of the Crown. That exception was a war. When George II. heard of any fighting to be done, he pricked up his ears and required to have a hand in the business. But to all other questions he was comparatively indifferent. Excise Bills and Septennial Acts were nothing to him, and the Tory party, being left without a natural head, was reduced either to declamation against bribery and perpetual dictatorship, or to the declaration of opinions which might have brought the professor to the Tower. Throughout the whole period, then, the battles of Parliament were fought over particular measures, or were mere scrambles for place between the various sections of the Whig party, which did not even profess to be separated from each other by any distinctions of principle. But with the accession of George III. a new political element was at once introduced. The country seemed only to have been waiting for a sovereign who would assert his rights, to become the scene of a violent reaction. It had never been intended by the leaders of the Revolution of 1688 that Parliament should rule without the King. The object of that great change had been that the King should not rule without the Parliament. When the House of Hanover was placed upon the throne as a further guarantee of these principles, the Whig party became the inevitable depository of power. But they had gone too far. They had abused the trust committed to them; and now, when a King had risen up to restore the balance of the constitution, the English nation would support him. Thus, we may be sure, reasoned a large portion of the public in those days; for on no other hypothesis is the success of George III. intelligible. And now began a struggle hardly less important in principle than that which took place between Charles I. and his Parliament. Toryism had again become practical; it rallied round an actual living representative, to whom obedience was not treason. Tories either had, or had good reason to believe they had, the constitution on their side. The Sovereign was young, popular, and bold; and, all things considered, the two armies joined battle upon far less unequal terms than at first sight we might suppose. Our two great political parties were now, therefore, for the first time after nearly eighty years drawn out against each other upon a perfectly distinct issue, upon a great constitutional question; not upon any mere measure, however momentous or interesting, but upon the method of government itself. In the second place it is to be observed that the history of the reign of George III. has still to be written. Lord Stanhope brings us to the Peace of Versailles. But from 1783 downwards, we have no History that is qualified to rank as a classic. Mr. Massey will not in our judgment supply the want: though we desire to do full justice to the spirited style and generally useful character of the volumes which he has already published. There are obvious reasons, therefore, for endeavouring to gauge the extent and estimate the value of the materials which the future historian will command: to ascertain how much of the rapidly accumulating mass of Political Memoirs is useful, and how much of it is not; and to classify the works in question according to the period of which they treat and the tone in which they are composed. One very marked impression which remains upon the mind after the study of any number of these memoirs, is that Tradition is generally trustworthy. From the first William Pitt down to Sir Robert Peel, few statesmen emerge from the cross-examination to which their characters are submitted in these volumes either whiter or blacker than before. There are exceptions, but the conclusion is valuable because it confirms our faith in history. We see that acquaintance with the private side of a public man's character, while it enables us to fill in particular details, leaves the broad outlines untouched. We are led to reflect how improbable it is that men of eminence, whose lives and actions have been exposed to the full light of publicity for some thirty or forty years, should be greatly misjudged by their contemporaries. The existence of political memoirs affords, no doubt, an excellent security against falsehood. Even an historian who is not very anxious for truth, will be checked by the knowledge that his misstatements can be confuted from the papers which are pretty certain to emerge, sooner or later, from old family repositories; and we think with Lord Hailes, that they who suppress such memoirs do all that in them lies to leave history in darkness. There is, however, thus much to be said, that a limited and partial study of these memoirs is worse than no study at all. An interested or onesided writer may construct any conceivable case upon any question out of these abundant materials, without a chance of being confuted, except by one who knows them all. He who possesses that knowledge will be armed against such political representations as we too often find in the Liberal historians of the present day. These memoirs, if read aright, will throw great light upon various complicated passages of our political and Parliamentary history, and in many instances materially change our opinion of them. But we shall usually find that change to be one which tends rather to reconcile our previous estimate of the actors with facts which had perplexed us, than to gaze invariably turned inwards, and seem to overthrow that previous estimate. On the have judged of men and events by criteria of other hand, it is to be remarked that much their own. But the opinion of the vulgar world more vigilance is necessary in scanning the not unfrequently set at defiance the predictions accounts of transactions than in reading the of the wisest statesmen. Nothing is more recharacters of individuals. Writers or editors markable throughout these voluminous mewho are reluctant to libel persons, are yet apt moirs than the contrast which they present beto misrepresent events, in their anxiety to ex- tween the opinions of the initiated few and the hibit their own conduct or that of their friends actual issues of affairs. The downfall of minisin a favourable light; and leaving the reader ters, for instance, is constantly predicted, beto draw certain inferences for himself, they cause they were deficient in those qualities delude themselves into the belief that they which at White's and Brooks's were held to be have avoided all personalities. Upon the essential to success-brilliant eloquence, or whole, however, we repeat that it is events great connexions, or striking administrative rather than persons which are affected by talent. The moral support which a ministry these publications. We have not, after the derives from feeling itself in unison with the perusal of forty works of this nature, changed popular opinion of the day went for little. Not our opinions of Lord Chatham, or the Duke even the large majorities which these doomed of Bedford, or Lord Temple; of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Governments regularly obtained in ParliaCanning, Lord Grenville, Mr. Fox, or Mr. ment seem to have affected this prejudice. Addington. But we have changed our opi- It led the Opposition into a confident way of nion of, or rather perhaps gained a clearer talking, and has introduced into memoirs of insight into, certain phases of the Catholic the time assertions of ministerial weakness, question; certain events of the war; some mi- which, not being founded upon fact, are calnisterial embarrassments; and certain trans-culated to mislead us very much in our estiformations of party. We gather, indeed, from this course of reading, that the boundaries of party have been observed much more laxly than some modern politicians suppose The facts which show this may be read in any ordinary history; but all which draws attention to those facts we find in the political memoir. A casual reader of history would see that one ministry succeeded another, and that certain statesmen were in Cabinet, without thinking, perhaps, of inquiring if that is where he should expect to see them. But when a member of one party passed over into the ranks of another, it was, of course, a fine theme for political correspondents and diarists. Yet, whatever the comments they provoke, we are startled to find how frequently and easily events of this nature occurred or were considered to be ripe for occurrence. Although there was a very clear distinction between Whig and Tory on the one fundamental principle of the King's right to choose his own ministers, yet individual statesmen passed backwards and forwards between the two rival camps, without provoking more or even so much disapprobation as such conduct would elicit now. Public opinion appears to have exercised in former days a very slight influence upon the calculations of statesmen. Sometimes, indeed, it spoke out with sufficient plainness, as against the Excise Bill of Walpole and against the India Bill of Fox; but at other periods it remained comparatively sluggish, and then it seems to have been forgotten. Statesmen moved in a small circle, with their mate of particular transactions. Such is one source of error peculiar to the political memoirs of this period, which is perhaps only to be detected by close study of their contents. Another is more obvious. We mean that, unless edited with extreme care, the journals, letters, and miscellaneous remains of public men are sure to represent so much of personal prepossession as greatly to impair their value for historical purposes. The first idea which occurs to the mind of any man interested in such subjects, on seeing or hearing of a fresh issue of family papers, is that now at length we shall have the true history of some hitherto mysterious transactions; that we shall be admitted behind the scenes, and see the actors in great events with their stage costume thrown aside. Well, we do see all this; but in proportion to the freedom with which transactions are discussed and motives acknowledged in such documents, is the openness with which personal prejudices are indulged and political enemies defamed. Thus what we gain on one side we are in danger of losing on the other. We are certainly admitted to disclosures which could never have been made in Parliament; but we are also distracted by interruptions which greatly obscure their moral lesson. The saints of old are said to have suffered much from the malignity of demons, who would interpose themselves between the pages of a good book and the eyes of the devout reader, leading away his thoughts to unholy objects, and making the words of truth and wisdom unintelligible. The reader of political memoirs is tormented in the same |