But great dramatic or even great rhetorical power is hardly consistent with firmness or strength of mind, and dramatic talent is often incidentally associated with a weak or dissolute character.
In the Tenth Book Plato introduces a new series of objections.

First, he says that the poet or painter is an imitator, and in the third degree removed from the truth.

His creations are not tested by rule and measure; they are only appearances.

In modern times we should say that art is not merely imitation, but rather the expression of the ideal in forms of sense.

Even adopting the humble image of Plato, from which his argument derives a colour, we should maintain that the artist may ennoble the bed which he paints by the folds of the drapery, or by the feeling of home which he introduces; and there have been modern painters who have imparted such an ideal interest to a blacksmith's or a carpenter's shop.