poetical fancies.

The scene is laid in Crete, and the conversation is held in the course of
a walk from Cnosus to the cave and temple of Zeus, which takes place on
one of the longest and hottest days of the year. The companions start at
dawn, and arrive at the point in their conversation which terminates the
fourth book, about noon. The God to whose temple they are going is the
lawgiver of Crete, and this may be supposed to be the very cave at which
he gave his oracles to Minos. But the externals of the scene, which are
briefly and inartistically described, soon disappear, and we plunge
abruptly into the subject of the dialogue. We are reminded by contrast of
the higher art of the Phaedrus, in which the summer's day, and the cool
stream, and the chirping of the grasshoppers, and the fragrance of the
agnus castus, and the legends of the place are present to the imagination
throughout the discourse.

The typical Athenian apologizes for the tendency of his countrymen 'to
spin a long discussion out of slender materials,' and in a similar spirit
the Lacedaemonian Megillus apologizes for the Spartan brevity (compare
Thucydid.), acknowledging at the same time that there may be occasions
when long discourses are necessary. The family of Megillus is the proxenus
of Athens at Sparta; and he pays a beautiful compliment to the Athenian,
significant of the character of the work, which, though borrowing many
elements from Sparta, is also pervaded by an Athenian spirit. A good
Athenian, he says, is more than ordinarily good, because he is inspired by
nature and not manufactured by law. The love of listening which is
attributed to the Timocrat in the Republic is also exhibited in him. The
Athenian on his side has a pleasure in speaking to the Lacedaemonian of
the struggle in which their ancestors were jointly engaged against the
Persians. A connexion with Athens is likewise intimated by the Cretan