Excerpt from The Works of Plato, Vol. 5: A New and Literal Version

In this volume, which completes the Works of Plato, generally admitted to be genuine, will be found the only English translation of the Laws, hitherto made directly from the Greek. For although they form part of Taylor"s publication, it is not too much to say that he can scarcely have looked at the original, but must have depended on the Latin version of Ficinus; and this too not the genuine one, but the refiction of it which was made by Symon Gryn?us to suit the printed text.

Of the grounds on which this suspicion rests, numerous proofs will be found in the notes. Not only has Taylor tacitly followed Ficinus in his omissions and insertions, but in numerous instances, where the genuine version had preserved the sense of the original, he has neglected it, in accordance with the revised version by Gryn?us.

For this dereliction of the first duty of a translator, Taylor would perhaps have pleaded, that, as he never presumed to rival Ficinus in his knowledge of Plato, whose writings the Italian scholar had studied from his earliest years, he conceived it far more advisable to follow the Latin version than to attempt to unravel the original Greek; where so numerous are the difficulties and so unaccountable the corruptions, as to render it frequently impossible to give even a readable, much less an elegant, rendering. And so too, it would seem, thought the French translator Grou; who, as remarked by Cousin, has frequently followed Ficinus; and even the German translator Schulthess seems to have found it easier to translate from the French than the Greek.

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