1. The discourse of the three old men is described by themselves as an old
man's game of play. Yet there is little of the liveliness of a game in
their mode of treating the subject. They do not throw the ball to and fro,
but two out of the three are listeners to the third, who is constantly
asserting his superior wisdom and opportunities of knowledge, and
apologizing (not without reason) for his own want of clearness of speech.
He will 'carry them over the stream;' he will answer for them when the
argument is beyond their comprehension; he is afraid of their ignorance of
mathematics, and thinks that gymnastic is likely to be more intelligible
to them;--he has repeated his words several times, and yet they cannot
understand him. The subject did not properly take the form of dialogue,
and also the literary vigour of Plato had passed away. The old men speak
as they might be expected to speak, and in this there is a touch of
dramatic truth. Plato has given the Laws that form or want of form which
indicates the failure of natural power. There is no regular plan--none of
that consciousness of what has preceded and what is to follow, which makes
a perfect style,--but there are several attempts at a plan; the argument
is 'pulled up,' and frequent explanations are offered why a particular
topic was introduced.

The fictions of the Laws have no longer the verisimilitude which is
characteristic of the Phaedrus and the Timaeus, or even of the Statesman.
We can hardly suppose that an educated Athenian would have placed the
visit of Epimenides to Athens ten years before the Persian war, or have
imagined that a war with Messene prevented the Lacedaemonians from coming
to the rescue of Hellas. The narrative of the origin of the Dorian
institutions, which are said to have been due to a fear of the growing
power of the Assyrians, is a plausible invention, which may be compared
with the tale of the island of Atlantis and the poem of Solon, but is not