Page:The Republic (Spens, 1919).djvu/11

INTRODUCTION

The greatest authors of the world have bestowed a portion of their immortality upon legions of translators and commentators, parasite growths which, in default of such stems to cling to, would hardly have risen above the common level. It is the special distinction of Plato to have been thus ministered to by men of real genius, who, even were everything they accomplished for him effaced from the roll of their achievements, would still have left very considerable names. Passing over the Plotinus and Proclus of antiquity, and the Pletho and Ficinus of the Renaissance, we find this eminently true of those illustrious moderns, Schleiermacher, Victor Cousin, and Benjamin Jowett. If all the labours upon Plato which formed so conspicuous a part of these distinguished men's performance could be obliterated, their names would still endure ; but conversely, these would be sufficiently preserved by their work on Plato had they no other title to perpetuity : and, in estimating their claims on the gratitude of posterity, their service to Plato occurs most readily to the mind. Homer and Aristotle, Dante and Shakespeare, have had more numerous disciples and apostles, but it is Plato's special glory to have attracted so many men of genius. That service to Plato, nevertheless, is no sure passport to immortality is evinced by the complete oblivion which has overtaken the translation of Plato's Republic, by Dr. Harry Spens, although its priority to all other English translations, had it no other claim, should have kept it in remembrance. Published in 1763 at the Press of the University of Glasgow, by Foulis, the most eminent Scotch printer of the age, and dedicated to the Prime Minister, it appears to have attracted no notice from contemporaries, and has never been reprinted until now. The translator's own person is shrouded in almost equal obscurity. Though of sufficient consideration to fill the highest office to which a clergyman of the