erves, is better than
all human prudence, spontaneously adapts itself to its producing cause,
imitates a supernatural power as far as this can be effected by words,
and thus necessarily becomes magnificent, vehement, and exuberant; for
such are the characteristics of its source. All judges of composition
however, both ancient and modern, are agreed that his style is in general
graceful and pure; and that it is sublime without being impetuous and
rapid. It is indeed no less harmonious than elevated, no less accurate[27]
than magnificent. It combines the force of the greatest orators with the
graces of the first of poets; and in short; is a river to which those
justly celebrated lines of Denham may be most pertinently applied:

Tho' deep, yet clear; tho' gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o'erfowing full.

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[27] The reader will see, from the notes on Plato's dialogues, and
particularly from the notes on the Parmenides and Timaeus, that the style
of that philosopher possesses an accuracy which is not to be found in any
modern writer; an accuracy of such a wonderful nature, that the words are
exactly commensurate with the sense. Hence the reader who has happily
penetrated his profundity finds, with astonishment, that another word
could not have been added without being superfluous, nor one word taken
away without injuring the sense. The same observation may also be applied
to the style of Aristotle.
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Having thus considered the philosophy of Plato, given a general view of
his writings, and made some observations on his style, it only now
remains to speak of the following arrangement of his dialogues and
translation of his works, and then, with a few appropriate observations,
to close this Introduction.

As no accurate and scientific arrangement then of these dialogues has
been transmitted to us from the ancients, I was under the necessity of
adopting an arrangement of my own, which I trust is not unscientific,
however inferior it may be to that which was doubtless made, though
unfortunately lost, by the latter interpreters of Plato. In my
arrangement, therefore, I have imitated the order of the universe in
which, as I have already observed, wholes precede parts, and universals
particulars. Hence I have placed those dialogues first which rank as
wholes, or have the relation of a system, and afterwards those in which
these systems are branch out into particulars. Thu