PROFESSOR JOWETT has accomplished a great feat in giving to the world a complete English translation of Plato's 'Dialogues;' for it certainly is no small matter to have placed Plato in the hands of all, conveyed in language, divested, as far as possible, of mere technicalities and scholasticism, and put in a form equally accessible and alluring to average students of ancient or modern philosophy. And as this is a real benefit to non-classical readers, so the work itself is a real translation, in so far as nothing is intentionally omitted. We have the genuine Platonic dialogues in their integrity, without foot-note or comment, in the place of the excerpts or extracts which the nature of Mr. Grote's great work rendered necessary, and of the occasional and somewhat too frequent omissions of passages in Dr. Whewell's equally laudable, but, perhaps, not equally successful, endeavour to present Plato--in part, at least--in a popular form to the English reader. From the very nature of Plato's philosophy, which is to a considerable extent tentative and progressive, and which is constantly working out with variations the same leading ideas, it is essential to the English student to have the work complete. The _Republic_, of which an excellent version by Messrs. Davies and Vaughan has for some time been before the world, is to a considerable extent a _résumé_ of Plato's earlier views--an epitome of Platonism, in fact; but a student may know the _Republic_ fairly well, and yet have a vast deal to learn from such dialogues as the _Theætetus_, the _Philebus_, the _Parmenides_, the _Timæus_--all very difficult in their way; or from the more genial _Protagoras_, _Phædo_, and _Gorgias_; or the more transcendental and imaginative _Phædrus_ and _Symposium_, which last may be called the most fascinating and brilliant of the dialogues, excepting always the _Republic_ itself. Some of the minor, easier, and shorter dialogues, which fall within the range of average school reading--the _Apology_, the _Crito_, the _Menexenus_, the _Lysis_, the _Charmides_, the _Ion_--hardly touch the Socratic philosophy in its deeper sense; they are genial sketches of the idiosyncrasies of the wise old man, or deal with matters distinct from dialectics properly so called. Very little of Plato proper (so to speak) will be learnt from these alone. But the subtle reasonings of Plato, in some of his greater works, are sufficiently difficult to make even the best Greek scholars glad to have occasional recourse to studied English versions, on which they can with tolerable confidence rely.