[ Crawford / A Dissertation on the Phaedon of Plato ]
Crawford (1752 - ?) was an English author, born in Antigua, the West Indies, where his father owned plantations; educated in England, he spent twenty years in America before returning for the rest of his life to England. He was a prolific if not particularly successful poet and writer on religious and philosophical topics.
This particular work is a negative assessment of Plato's Phaedo, one of his philosophic dialogues in which Socrates ruminates on the afterlife. Crawford was particularly critical of Plato's acceptance of homosexuality.
This work, written while Crawford was a student at Cambridge (shortly before he was expelled), was first published in 1773, with a revised edition the following year.
Will not a dog defend the house, goods and person of a kind master, at the peril of his life, against all invaders? — I myself have known a large Newfoundland dog jump into the river where his master was bathing, and imagining he was going to be drowned, seize him by the hair with an intent to pull him to shore. What does all this proceed from, I would ask in the name of common sense, but from the complex idea of gratitude?