' And I hope she will determine
to fight for them. With this, however, you and I shall have nothing
to do; ours being truly the case wherein '_Non tali auxilio, nec
defensoribus istis, tempus eget_.' Quitting this subject, therefore, I
will turn over another leaf.
I am just returned from one of my long absences, having been at my
other home for five weeks past. Having more leisure there than here for
reading, I amused myself with reading seriously Plato's Republic. I
am wrong, however, in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest
task-work I ever went through. I had occasionally before taken up some
of his other works, but scarcely ever had patience to go through a
whole dialogue. While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and
unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself,
how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to
give reputation to such nonsense as this. How the soi-disant Christian
world, indeed, should have done it, is a piece of historical curiosity.
But how could the Roman good sense do it? And particularly, how could
Cicero bestow such eulogies on Plato? Although Cicero did not wield
the dense logic of Demosthenes, yet he was able, learned, laborious,
practised in the business of the world and honest. He could not be the
dupe of mere style, of which he was himself the first master in the
world. With the moderns, I think, it is rather a matter of fashion and
authority.
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