The place of Plato in the history of Greek literature is as unique as his place in the history of Greek thought. The literary genius shown in the dialogues is many-sided: it includes dramatic power, remarkable skill in parody, a subtle faculty of satire, and, generally, a command over the finer tones of language. In passages of continuous exposition, where the argument rises into the higher regions of discussion, Plato's prose takes a more decidedly poetical colouring--never florid or sentimental, however, but lofty and austere. In Plato's later works--such, for instance, as the _Laws_, _Timaeus_, _Critias_--we can perceive that his style did not remain unaffected by the smooth literary prose which contemporary writers had developed. Aristotle's influence on the form of Attic prose literature would probably have been considerable if his _Rhetoric_ had been published while Attic oratory had still a vigorous life before it. But in this, as in other departments of mental effort, it was Aristotle's lot to set in order what the Greek intellect had done in that creative period which had now come to an end. His own chief contribution to the original achievements of the race was the most fitting one that could have been made by him in whose lifetime they were closed. He bequeathed an instrument by which analysis could be carried further, he founded a science of reasoning, and left those who followed him to apply it in all those provinces of knowledge which he had mapped out.[6] Theophrastus, his pupil and his successor in the Lyceum, opens the new age of research and scientific classification with his extant works on botany, but is better known to modern readers by his lively _Characters_, the prototypes of such sketches in English literature as those of Hall, Overbury and Earle. Character of the creative age.