[19] It would seem that those intemperate critics who have thought proper
to revile Plotinus, the leader of the latter Platonists, have paid no
attention to the testimony of Longinus concerning this most wonderful
man, as preserved by Porphyry in his life of him. For Longinus there
says, "that though he does not entirely accede to many of his hypotheses,
yet he exceedingly admires and loves the form of his writing, the density
of his conceptions, and the philosophic manner in which his questions are
disposed." And in another place he says, "Plotinus, as it seems, has
explained the Pythagoric and Platonic principles more clearly than those
that were prior to him; for neither are the writings of Numenius,
Cronius, Moderatus, and Thrasyllus, to be compared with those of Plotinus
on this subject." After such a testimony as this from such a consummate
critic as Longinus, the writings of Plotinus have nothing to fear from
the imbecile censure of modern critics. I shall only further observe,
that Longinus, in the above testimony, does not give the least hint of
his having found any polluted streams, or corruption of the doctrines of
Plato, in the works of Plotinus. There is not indeed the least vestige of
his entertaining any such opinion in any part of what he has said about
this most extraordinary man. This discovery was reserved for the more
acute critic of modern times, who, by a happiness of conjecture unknown
to the ancients, and the assistance of a good index, can in a few days
penetrate the meaning of the profoundest writer of antiquity, and bid
defiance even to the decision of Longinus.

[20] Of this most divine man, who is justly said by the emperor Julian to
have been posterior indeed in time, but not in genius even to Plato himself,
see the life which I have given in the History of the Restoration of the
Platonic Theology, in the second vol. of my Proclus on Euclid.
----------------------