And you may look for the correlative of that in Greek clay, in Greek marble, as you walk through the British Museum. But observe it, above all, at work, checking yet reinforcing his naturally fluent and luxuriant genius, in Plato himself. His prose is a practical illustration of the value of that capacity for correction, of the effort, the intellectual astringency, which he demands of the poet also, the musician, of all true citizens of the ideal Republic, enhancing the sense of power in one's self, and its effect upon others, by a certain crafty reserve in its exercise, after the manner of a true expert. Chalepa ta kala+—he is faithful to the old Greek saying. Patience,—"infinite patience," may or may not be, as was said, of the very essence of genius; but is certainly, quite as much as fire, of the mood of all true lovers. Isôs to legomenon alêthes, hoti chalepa ta kala.+ Heraclitus had preferred the "dry soul," or the "dry light" in it, as Bacon after him the siccum lumen. And the dry beauty,—let Plato teach us, to love that also, duly.
1891-1892.
NOTES
267. +Transliteration: Ta terpna en Helladi. Pater's translation: "all the delightful things in Hellas." Pindar, though I have not located the poem to which Pater refers.
267. +Transliteration: to ta hautou prattein. E-text editor's translation: "to do only things proper to oneself." Plato, Republic 369e.
267. +Transliteration: poikilia. Liddell and Scott definition: "metaph: cunning."
268. +Transliteration: Ar' oun kai hekastê tôn technôn esti ti sympheron allo ê hoti malista telean einai. E-text editor's translation: "Does there belong to each of the arts any advantage other than perfection?" Plato, Republic 341d. Pater's reading is perhaps anachronistic in suggesting that Plato anticipated modern thinking about the autonomy of art.
269. +Transliteration: lexis. Liddell and Scott definition: "a speaking, speech . . . a way of speaking, diction, style."
269. +Transliteration: logoi. Pater's contextual translation: "matter."
270. +Transliteration: mousikê. Liddell and Scott definition: "any art over which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung to music…."