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was perhaps praiseworthy, if he endeavoured to deliver Rome from such a monster of tyranny as Nero was then beginning to appear; his ambition too was the more excusable if he found in himself an ability of governing the world, and a desire of doing good to human kind; but as to his good fortunes with the empress, I know not what value ought to be set on a wise man for them: except it be that women generally liking without judgment, it was a conquest for a philosopher, once in an age, to get the better of a fool. However, methinks there is something of awkward in the adventure: I cannot imagine, without laughter, a pedant, and a Stoic, making love in a long gown; for it puts me in mind of the civilities which are used by the cardinals and judges in the dance of "The Rehearsal." If Agrippina would needs be so lavish of her favours, since a sot grew nauseous to her, because he was her husband, and nothing under a wit could atone for Claudius, I am half sorry that Petronius was not the man. We could have borne it better from his character, than from one who professed the severity of virtue, to make a cuckold of his emperor and benefactor. But let the historian answer for his own relation; only, if true, it is so much the worse that Seneca, after having abused his bed, could not let him sleep quiet in his grave. The Apocolocynthisis, or mock deification of Claudius, was too sharp and insulting on his memory; and Seneca, though he could preach forgiveness to others, did not practise it himself in that satire. Where was the patience and insensibility of a Stoic, in revenging his banishment with a libel? Where was the morality of a philosopher, in defaming and exposing of an harmless fool? And where was common humanity, in railing against the dead? But the talent of his malice is visible in

other places: he censures Mæcenas, and I believe justly, for the looseness of his manners, the voluptuousness of his life, and the effeminacy of his style; but it appears that he takes pleasure in so doing, and that he never forced his nature when he spoke ill of any man. For his own style, we see what it is; and if we may be as bold with him as he has been with our old patron, we may call it a shattered eloquence, not vigorous, not united, not embodied, but broken into fragments; every part by itself pompous, but the whole confused and unharmonious. His Latin, as Monsieur St Evremont has well observed, has nothing in it of the purity and elegance of Augustus his times; and it is of him and of his imitators that Petronius said,-pace vestrâ liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis. The controversia sententiis vibrantibus pictæ, and the vanus sententiarum strepitus, make it evident that Seneca was taxed under the person of the old Rhetorician. What quarrel he had to the uncle and the nephew, I mean Seneca and Lucan, is not known; but Petronius plainly points them out, one for a bad orator, the other for as bad a poet. His own Essay of the Civil War is an open defiance of the "Pharsalia ;" and the first oration of Eumolpus as full an arraignment of Seneca's false eloquence. After all that has been said, he is certainly to be allowed a great wit, but not a good philosopher; not fit to be compared with Cicero, of whose reputation he was emulous, any more than Lucan is with Virgil. To sum up all in few words:-consider a philosopher declaiming against riches, yet vastly rich himself; against avarice, yet putting out his money at great extortion here in Britain; against honours, yet aiming to be emperor; against pleasure, yet enjoying Agrippina, and in his old age

married to a beautiful young woman; and after this, let him be made a parallel to Plutarch.

And now with the usual vanity of Dutch prefa cers, I could load our author with the praises and commemorations of writers; for both ancient and modern have made honourable mention of him: but to cumber pages with this kind of stuff, were to raise a distrust in common readers that Plutarch wants them. Rualdus indeed has collected ample testimonies of them: but I will only recite the names of some, and refer you to him for the particular quotations. He reckons Gellius, Eusebius, Himerius the Sophister, Eunapius, Cyrillus of Alexandria, Theodoret, Agathias, Photius and Xiphilin, patriarchs of Constantinople, Johannes Sarisberiensis, the famous Petrarch, Petrus Victorius, and Justus Lipsius.

But Theodorus Gaza, a man learned in the Latin tongue, and a great restorer of the Greek, who lived above two hundred years ago, deserves to have his suffrage set down in words at length; for the rest have only commended Plutarch more than any single author, but he has extolled him above all together.

It is said, that, having this extravagant question put to him by a friend,—that if learning must suffer a general shipwreck, and he had only his choice left him of preserving one author, who should be the man he would preserve? he answered, Plutarch; and probably might give this reason, that, in saving him, he should secure the best collection of them all.

The Epigram of Agathias deserves also to be remembered. This author flourished about the year five hundred, in the reign of the Emperor Justinian; the verses are extant in the " Anthologia," and with the translation of them I will conclude

the praises of our author; having first admonished you, that they are supposed to be written on a statue erected by the Romans to his memory:

Σεῖο πολυκλήεντα τύπον στήσαντο Χερωνε
Πλούταρχε κρατερῶν ὑιέες ̓Αυσονίων·
Οττι παραλλήλοισι βίοις Ἕλληνας άριστες
Ρώμης υπολέμοις ήρμοσας ἐνναέταις"
̓Αλλὰ τοῦ βιοτοιο παράλληλον βίον ἄλλον

Ουδὶ σύγ ̓ ἂν γράψαις, ὁ γὰρ ὅμοιον ἔχεις.

Cheronean Plutarch, to thy deathless praise
Does martial Rome this grateful statue raise;
Because both Greece and she thy fame have shared,
(Their heroes written, and their lives compared ;)
But thou thyself could'st never write thy own;
Their lives have parallels, but thine has none.

SPECIMEN

OF

THE TRANSLATION

OF THE

HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE.

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