ABSTRACT
The history of these remarkable works has never, to my knowledge, been written. They had suffered the fate to which a hybrid genre is always liable but which it does not invariably merit, of being neglected by both the classes to whom it partially appeals. Lying between the purely dogmatic treatise, on the one hand, and the professed drama on the other, they have proved too doctrinal for the men of literature, too literary for the men of doctrine. Even in Germany, where the choicest specimens were produced, they have been relatively
neglected; and in England while every vestige of the drama has been laboriously exhumed, the numerous dialogues which slumber on the shelves of Lambeth and the Bodleian have for the most part ministered only to the brief curiosity of the bibliographer. I accordingly make no apology for offering, in the present chapter, not certainly a history of the Dialogue, but some contributions to such a history somewhat more extensive than my immediate subject demanded.
