Tolerably well-written dialogue is nowadays the rule rather than the exception.

When Dolce says that Titian painted with Giorgione at the Fondaco, "non avendo egli allora appena venti anni," he is only trying to make out that his hero, here as everywhere, was a most unusual person (the whole dialogue is a glorification of the master).

He was pre-eminently a great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his "Dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist.

The dialogue is half in French, and does not lend itself to quotation, but it compares very favourably with the more daring comedy of courtship in Jane Eyre.

The dialogue, whether it produce this effect on many readers or not, is very pleasant reading: and when we remember that the author wrote it when he was exactly in his grand climacteric, and addressed it to his friend Atticus, who was within a year of the same age, we get that element of personal interest which makes all writings of the kind more attractive.

Their period of action was the 18th century, and the dialogue was a cunning imitation of the language of that time.

The Socratic method, of which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the intellectus sibi permissus, the understanding which has made up all its bundles of associations under the guidance of popular phraseology.

Though its dialogues and descriptions are somewhat too long and interrupt the story, yet it shows Chaucer at his best in his dramatic power, his exquisite appreciation of nature, and his tender yet profound philosophy of living, which could overlook much of human frailty in the thought that Infinite been the sorwes and the teres Of oldë folk, and folk of tendre yeres.

In such a piece the dialogue is a matter of secondary consideration, and even the story is of no great importance.