--3. Aeschylus, the
grandest of the three tragedians, who has given us under a thin veil
the first plantation of Europe. The "Prometheus" is a poem of the
like dignity and scope as the book of Job, or the Norse "Edda."--4.
Of Plato I hesitate to speak, lest there should be no end. You find
in him that which you have already found in Homer, now ripened to
thought,--the poet converted to a philosopher, with loftier strains
of musical wisdom than Homer reached, as if Homer were the youth,
and Plato the finished man; yet with no less security of bold and
perfect song, when he cares to use it, and with some harpstrings
fetched from a higher heaven. He contains the future, as he came out
of the past. In Plato, you explore modern Europe in its causes and
seed,--all that in thought, which the history of Europe embodies or
has yet to embody. The well-informed man finds himself anticipated.
Plato is up with him, too. Nothing has escaped him. Every new crop
in the fertile harvest of reform, every fresh suggestion of modern
humanity is there. If the student wish to see both sides, and
justice done to the man of the world, pitiless exposure of pedants,
and the supremacy of truth and the religious sentiment, he shall be
contented also. Why should not young men be educated on this book?
It would suffice for the tuition of the race,--to test their
understanding, and to express their reason.
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