student of the Dialogues, as he reads them. So it is as an art lover that Pater comes to Plato, and it is this side of Plato's philosophy that receives most attention at the hands of the author. One is very glad, too, to have so masterly and sympathetic a spirit to interpret for us this aspect of Platonism. Jowett's Introductions have done much, but we have no volume which sets forth in such clear and charming way the literary, æsthetic, and political features of this philosophy. It is not a book which he who 'runs may read,' though a very interesting volume. It is less readable than some of the preceding works of Pater, owing partly to the nature of the subject and partly to the fact that the volume, as a series of lectures delivered to university students, has an academical air. One may not take an easy pace and keep even with the writer, and unless a sharp lookout is kept up all the way much will elude the reader. It is not a book for a summer holiday, nor will the entirely uninitiated in the Platonic and Greek philosophy be able to keep step with the author's pages at all. The style itself is frequently involved to a degree that is surprising in so great a stylist, and this, added to the character of the subject-matter, will not increase the popularity of the work. Students of philosophy, however, and of Greek literature, who already know their Plato more or less minutely, will find a deal of delight in the book and no little enlightenment. Those persons who are in quest of the conventional treatise on the metaphysics of Plato will not turn to this quarter. The main features, however, of this side of his philosophy are given us in luminous exposition, and there are side lights thrown on numberless details, apparently trivial matters ordinarily neglected or not seen, but to which Pater skilfully gives a meaning and importance. Many will read the book because Pater wrote it, and all will have some good from it, though in various degrees; in any case, valuable service has been done for the study of Plato, and a valuable contribution to higher English prose. The philosophical genealogy of Platonism is admirably given in the first five lectures (in a highly polished and artistic, though exotic, English): Plato and the Doctrine of Motion; Plato and the Doctrine of Rest; Plato and the Doctrine of Number; Plato and Sokrates; Plato and the Sophists. In these five lectures Pater portrays Plato the Philosopher as the lineal descendant of Herakleitos, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Sokrates, and as not a little influenced by that much maligned band of teachers, the Sophists. The sixth lecture, on "The Genius of Plato"—a study of Plato's personality, literary and art characteristics—was published a year and
