CURRENT LITERATURE.
Socrates : a Translation of the Apology, Crito, and Parts of the Phaedo of Plato. (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York ; Sampson Low and Co., London.)—This volume should meet with a hearty welcome. It is a really excellent translation, in good, idiomatic English, which always keeps quite close enough to the original. It is all the better, in our judgment, for the discretion with which the translator has omitted parts of the somewhat tedious argument of the Phaedo. We should have liked, however, to have had the "myth" at full length. A careful examination of the greater part of the Apology has shown but very few blemishes, and these of a trifling kind. We have noted "many of you," for ot iroAxot, on p. 4; and on p. 30 there is a certain failure to give the force of the original. The transla- tion runs, "For if you kill me, you will not readily find another Mall who will be (if I may make so ridiculous a comparison) fastened upon the State as I am, by God. For the State is exceedingly like a power- ful, high-bred steed, which is sluggish by reason of his very size, and so needs a gad-fly to wake him up." It is quite right to break up un- manageable sentences, but unfortunately the tos 7eXcuti7-epov eiweiv has thus got separated from what it belongs to. In the English, the "ridiculous comparison" seems to refer to "fastened upon the State," when, of course, it really refers to the "powerful, high-bred steed," &c.
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