life, they should be happy walking with each other, and that, for their love’s sake, whenever they become winged, they should be winged together. ----- Footnote 127: “It,” memory. ----- These so great and divine things, my boy, will the affection of a lover confer on you. But the familiarity of one who is not in love, being mingled with mortal prudence, and dispensing mortal and niggardly gifts, generating in the beloved soul an illiberality which is praised by the multitude as virtue, will cause it to be tossed about the earth and beneath the earth for nine thousand years, devoid of intelligence. 84. To thee, beloved Love, this recantation, the most beautiful and the best, according to my ability, is presented and duly paid, both in other respects and by certain poetical phrases, of necessity, adorned for the sake of Phædrus. But do thou, pardoning my former speech, and graciously accepting this, propitiously and benignly, neither take from me the art of love which thou hast given me, nor maim it in thy wrath, but grant that even more than now I may be honoured by the beautiful. And if, in our former speech, Phædrus and I have said any thing offensive to thee, blaming Lysias as the author of the speech, make him desist from such speeches in future, and convert him to philosophy, as his brother Polemarchus has been converted, so that this lover of his may no longer remain neutral as now, but may wholly devote his life to love, in conjunction with philosophic discourses. _Phæ._ I join with you in praying, Socrates, that if this is better for us, so it may be. 85. But I have been long wondering at your speech, how much more beautiful you have made it than the former one; so that I am afraid that Lysias will appear to me but poor, even if he should be willing to produce another in opposition to it. For only the other day, my admirable friend, one of our public men, as he was attacking him, upbraided him with this very thing, and throughout the whole of his attack called him a writer of speeches. Perhaps, therefore, for ambition’s sake he will refrain from writing any more. _Socr._ The opinion you express, my youth, is ridiculous; and you very much mistake your friend, if you imagine him to be so easily frightened. Perhaps, too, you think that his assailant really meant what he said. 86. _Phæ._ He seemed to do so, Socrates; and you are doubtless yourself aware, that the most powerful and considerable men in a city are ashamed to write speeches, and to leave their own compositions behind them, through fear of the opinion of posterity, lest they should be called sophists.