With all this, and more that might be pleaded in Mr. Jowett's defence or excuse, there are certainly very many of his renderings which show a laxity that is neither necessary for the relief of the English reader nor satisfactory to the accurate Greek scholar. There seem to us even indications of haste, which, though not, perhaps, to be wondered at, when the vastness of the whole work is considered, must certainly be set down as a blemish in the performance of it. We may go considerably further, and express our fears that actual errors in the rendering are by no means very infrequent. We say this, not in a random way, nor from a casual inspection, but after having carefully gone over _five_ of the dialogues (_Phædo_, _Phædrus_, _Theætetus_, _Philebus_, _Symposium_) _verbatim_ with Plato and Mr. Jowett's translation. Some passages we have noted for critical remark, not, of course, as exhausting all that could be said with truth, but as examples of the kind of incompleteness, or vagueness, or faultiness of rendering of which we have taken occasion rather seriously to complain. Let us take first the opening of the _Symposium_, of which the following is a _close_ translation, made with due regard to tenses, moods, arrangement of words, and other niceties of the original: '_Apollodorus._ I flatter myself I am pretty well practised in the matter you are asking about. The fact is, only the day before yesterday I chanced to be going up to town from my house at Phalerum, when an acquaintance of mine, who had caught sight of me from behind, called to me from a distance, and with a joke on my name as he called, exclaimed, "_Ho there! you, Apollodorus, of Phalerum, wait for me!_" So I stopped till he came up. "Why, Apollodorus!" he said, "I was looking for you just now, as I wanted to hear a full account about the party Agathon gave to Socrates and Alcibiades and the rest of the company who were present at the feast,--in a word, to learn what was said in their speeches about _Love_. Another friend did indeed essay to give me some account--he had heard it from Phoenix, the son of Philippus, and he said that you also knew--but, to confess the truth, he had nothing definite to tell. Do _you_, therefore, give me information in full; for none so fit as yourself to report the conversations of your bosom-friend. But first tell me," he said, "Were you present yourself at this party, or not?"' We do not think that the above, though quite a literal version, strikes on the English ear as in any way harsh. Whether the much looser rendering of Professor Jowett has a more truly English ring, or any other advantage, as a set-off to the evident laxity of it, we leave as an open question for others to decide. Here it is _in extenso_:--