activity. Plutarch's treatise on Isis and Osiris is generally supposed to be a juvenile work suggested by his Egyptian travels. In all the Graeco-Egyptian lore he certainly became well skilled, although we have no evidence as to how long he remained in Egypt. He makes mention indeed of a feast given in his honour by some of his relatives on the occasion of his return home from Alexandria, but we can gather nothing from the passage as to his age at that time. One anecdote of his early life is as follows:-" I remember," he says, "that when I was still a young man, I was sent with another person on a deputation to the Proconsul; my colleague, as it happened, was unable to proceed, and I saw the Proconsul and performed the commission alone. When I returned I was about to lay down my office and to give a public account of how I had discharged it, when my father rose in the public assembly and enjoined mo not to say I went, but we went, nor to say that I said, but we said, throughout my story, giving my colleague his share." The most important event in the whole of Plutarch's pious and peaceful life is undoubtedly his journey, to Italy and to Rome; but hero again we know littlo moro than that he know but little Latin when ho wont thither, and was too busy when there to acquire much knowledge of that tongue. His occupation at Rome, besides antiquarian researches which were afterwards worked up into his Roman Lives, was the delivery of lectures on philosophical and other subjects, a common practice among the learned Grecks of his day. Many of theso lectures, it is conjeotured, were afterwards recast by him into the numerous short treatises on various subjects now included under the general name of Moralia. Plutarch's visit to Rome and business there is admirably explained in the following passage of North's Life of Plutarch':-"For my part, I Sot Leiz if he had Birch Den one day at the heart Basicas of Domit think Plutarch LIFE OF PLUTARCHI. friends he had there, especially by Sossius Senecio, that had been a Consull, who was of great estimation at that time, and namely under the Empire of Trajan. And that which maketh mo think so, is because of Plutarch's own words, who saith in the beginning of his first book of his discourse at the table, that ho gathered together all his reasons and discourses made here and there, as well in Rome with Senecio, as in Grecco with Plutarch and pains to have made so long a voyage, and to have como was drawn to Rome by meanes of some to such city where he understood not their vulgar considering tongue, if he had not been drawn thither by Senecio, and such other men; as also in acknowledgement of the good turnes and honour he had received by such men, he dediIcated diverse of his bookes unto them, and among others, the Lives unto Senccio, and tho nine volumes of his discourse at the table, with tho treaty, How a man may know that he profiteth in vertuo. Now for the time, curiosity, I suppose that he taught in Rome in the time of Titus and of Domitian: for touching this point, he maketh mention of a nobleman called Rusticus, who being no day at his lecture, would not open a letter which was brought him from the Emperor, nor interrupt Plutarch, but attended to the end of his declamation, and until all Rusticus was afterwards put to death by the commandment of Domitian. Furthermore, about the beginning of the Life of Demosthenes, Plutarch saith, that whilst he remained in Italy and at Rome, he had no leizure to study what he saith in the end of his book against the the hearers were gone away; and addeth also, that Latino tongue; as well for that he was busied at that time with matters he had in hand, as also to satisfie those that were his followers to learne philosophie of him." North's 'Plutarch,' 1621, p. 1194. one. A list of all Plutarch's writings would be a very long Besides the Lives, which is the work on which his fame chiefly rests, he wrote a book of Table Talk,' which may have suggested to Athenaeus the plan of his 'Symposium.' The most remarkable of his minor works is that 'On the Malignity of Herodotus.' Groto takes this treatise as being intended soriously as an attack upon the historian, and speaks of the "honourablo frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity." But it is probably merely a rhetor ical exercise, in which Plutarch has endeavoured to sco what could bo said against so favourito and well-known a writer. He was probably known as an author before he went to Rome. Large capitals have always had a natural attraction for literary genius, as it is in them alone that it can hope to be appreciated. And if this be the case at the present day, how much more must it have been so before the invention of printing, at a time when it was more usual to listen to books read aloud than to read them oneself? Plutarch journeyed to Rome just as IIerodotus went to Athens, or as he is said to have gone to the Olympian festival, in search of an intelligent audience of lucated men. Whether his object was merely praise, or whether ho was influenced by ideas of gain, wo cannot say. No doubt his lectures were not delivered gratis, and that they were well attended seems evident from Plutarch's own notices of them, and from the names which have been preserved of the eminent men who used to frequent them. Moreover, strango though it may appear to us, the demand for books seems to have been very brisk even though they were entirely written by hand. The epigrams of Martial inform us of the existence of a class of slaves whose occupation was copying books, and innumerable allusions in Horace, Martial, &c., to the Rome LIFE OF PLUTARCH. Sosii and others prove that the trade of a bookseller at was both extensive and profitable. Towards the end of the Republic it became the fashion for Roman nobles to encourage literature by forming a library, and this taste was given immense encouragement by Augustus, who established on the Mount Palatine, in imitation of that previously founded by Asinius Pollio. There were other librarios besides these, the most famous of which was the Ulpian library, founded by Trajan, who called it so from his own author, and this act of his clearly proves that there must have been during Plutarch's lifetime a considerable reading public, and consequent demand for books at a public library in the Temple of Apollo name, Ulpius. Rome. Now Trajan was a contemporary of our Of Plutarch's travels in Italy we know next to nothing. He mentions incidentally that he had seen the bust or statue of Marius at Ravenna, but never gives us another Wrote so much. No doubt his ignorance of the Latin language must not be taken as a literal statement, and probably means that he was not skilled in it as a spoken tongue, for we can scarcely imagine that he was without acquaintance with it when he first went to Rome, Bome and he literature of Rome. In some cases he has followed Livy's certainly afterwards became well read in tho narrative have been acquainted with that author either in tho original or in a translation, and the latter alternative is, with a closeness which proves that he must of the two, the more improbable. It seems to be now generally thought that his stay at Rome says was a short one. Clough, in his excellent Preface, the earlier biographies, from that of Rualdus downwards, on this subject, "The fault which runs through all in the Assumption, wholly untenable, that Plutarch passed many years, as many perhaps as forty, at Romo. The entire character of his life is of course altered by such an impression." IIo then goes on to say that in consequence of this mistakon idea, it is not worth while for him to quote Dryden's Life of Plutarch,' which was originally prefixed to the translations re-cdited by himself. Yet I trust I may be excused if I again quote North's 'Life of Plutarch,' as the following passage seems to set vividly before us the quiet literary occupation of his later days. "For Plutarch, though ho tarried a long while in Italy, and in Rome, yet that tooke not away the remembrance of the sweet aire of Greece, and of the little towne where he was borne; but being touched from time to time with sentence of an ancient poct, who saith that, In whatsoever countrey men are bred (I know not by what sweetnesse of it led), he resolved to go back into Grecce againe, there to end the rest of his daics in rest and honour among his citizens, of whom he was honourably welcomed home. Some judgo that he left Rome after the death of Trajan, being then of great yeares, to leade a more quiet life. So being then at rest, he earnestly took in hand that which he had long thought of before, to wit, the Lives, and tooke great pains with it until he had brought his worke to perfection, as we have done at this present; although that some Lives, as those of Scipio African, of Metellus Numidicus, and some other are not to be found. Now himselfe confesseth in some place, that when he began this worke, at the first it was but to profit others; but that afterwards it was to profit himselfe, looking upon those histories, as if he had Looked in a glasse, and seeking to reform his life in some sort, and to forme it in the mould of the vertues of these great mon; taking this fashion of searching their manners, |