Socrates^ Schleiermacher^ and Delbrueck. 569 thing which savours of these qualities in Plato'^s work ought to be rejected as spurious. Then indeed the question is shifted to a different ground, and it is Plato, whom his style betrays as the author of the whole speech, that must answer for having inserted these offensive parts, in which he must at his own discretion have filled up some gaps, which Socrates, who spoke unprepared, left in his argument. As Plato cannot now defend himself Mr D calls up an advocate for him^, who however only brings his client into fresh difficulties, for which he is soundly rated by Mr D. According to Xenophon, whom Mr D. believes to be the author of the Apology which bears his name, Socrates was really desirous of escaping from life by the quiet and easy death which the law inflicted as the punishment of his imputed offense. In this feeling Xenophon finds a natural explanation of the lofty tone he maintained at his trial, which might other- wise appear rather foolish than admirable (Xenoph. Apol. 1). But as if this had been the case Socrates would have been guilty of mean hypocrisy, in concealing his real wishes, and affecting to be heroically unconcerned at the thought of parting with life, when in fact he was weary of it ; Plato, if he was ac- quainted with the secret motives of Socrates, would have prac- tised a wilful fraud upon posterity, in suppressing them, and attributing to magnanimity what was in fact an effect of weak- ness. And though the advocate assigned to Plato by Mr D. may have pleaded his cause injudiciously, there seems but little hope that one of even greater skill would succeed in shewing, that the same passages which, if they are supposed to be the real language of Socrates, are a grievous blot upon his character, would not affect Plato'^s in nearly the same degree, if he invented them. So that still it seems impossible to save the honour of the master, except at the expense of his most illustrious scholar. And if the offense itself is not lessened by being shifted from Socrates, there is evidently no reason for transferring it to Plato. Such appears to have been the result to which Mr D. was led in the first instance by these reflexions : for they left him for some time a prey to a deep melancholy, which, as he informs us, arose from the thought : Who can rely upon himself, or on
- In speaking of Mr D.'s work (i. p. 535) I meant to allude to this passage^ where,
I see, I have inadvertently written the name of Socrates for Plato,
