Pagina 445 de 1391

Why Plato, who was himself a poet, and whose dialogues are poems

and dramas, should have been hostile to the poets as a class, and

especially to the dramatic poets; why he should not have seen

that truth may be embodied in verse as well as in prose, and that

there are some indefinable lights and shadows of human life which

can only be expressed in poetry-some elements of imagination

which always entwine with reason; why he should have supposed

epic verse to be inseparably associated with the impurities of

the old Hellenic mythology; why he should try Homer and Hesiod by

the unfair and prosaic test of utility,-are questions which have

always been debated amongst students of Plato. Though unable to

give a complete answer to them, we may show-first, that his views

arose naturally out of the circumstances of his age; and

secondly, we may elicit the truth as well as the error which is

contained in them.