His excellence consists especially in intuition, and
it is this faculty which raises him far above Aristotle, whose
genius, though vivid and various, is obscure in comparison with
that of Plato.
The dialogue entitled the Banquet, is called [word in Greek], or
a Discussion upon Love, and is supposed to have taken place at the
house of Agathon, at one of a series of festivals given by that
poet, on the occasion of his gaining the prize of tragedy at the
Dionysiaca. The account of the debate on this occasion is supposed
to have been given by Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, many
years after it had taken place, to a companion who was curious to
hear it. This Apollodorus appears, both from the style in which
he is represented in this piece, as well as from a passage in the
Phaedon, to have been a person of an impassioned and enthusiastic
disposition; to borrow an image from the Italian painters, he seems
to have been the St. John of the Socratic group. The drama (for so
the lively distinction of character and the various and well-wrought
circumstances of the story almost entitle it to be called) begins
by Socrates persuading Aristodemus to sup at Agathon's, uninvited.
The whole of this introduction affords the most lively conception
of refined Athenian manners.
[1818; publ. 1840] [UNFINISHED]
A DEFENCE OF POETRY
PART I
According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental
action, which are called reason and imagination, the former may be
considered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought
to another, however produced; and the latter, as mind acting upon
those thoughts so as to colour them with its own light, and composing
from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within
itself the principle of its own integrity.
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