villages of New England, to
the backwoodsman's cabin in the West. It has taken its place on the
clock-shelf, with only the Bible, the "Pilgrim's Progress," and the
Almanac for its companions. No other classic author, with, perhaps, the
single exception of Aesop, has been so widely read in modern times; and
the popular knowledge of the men of Greece and Rome is derived more
from Plutarch than from all other ancient authors put together. The
often-repeated saying of Theodore Gaza, who, being once asked, if
learning should suffer a general shipwreck, and he had the choice of
saving one author, which he would select, is said to have replied,
"Plutarch,"--"and probably might give this reason," says Dryden, "that
in saving him he should secure the best collection of them all,"--this
saying is but a sort of prophecy of the decision of the common world,
who have chosen Plutarch from all the rest, and find, as Amyot says, "no
one else so profitable and so pleasant to read as he."[F]

[Footnote E: We have not spoken of Mr. Long's translations of Select
Lives from Plutarch, which were published in the series of Knight's
Weekly Volumes, under the title of _The Civil Wars of Rome_, because,
although executed in a manner deserving the highest praise, they
presented to English readers but a limited number of Plutarch's
biographies. Mr. Clough says, justly, in his Preface, that his own work
would not have been needed, had not Mr. Long confined his translations
within so narrow a compass.]

[Footnote F: "De tous les auteurs," says the Baron de Grimm, "qui nous
restent de l'antiquite, Plutarque est, sans contredit, celui qui a
recueilli le plus de verites de fait et de speculation. Ses oeuvres sont
une mine inepuisable de lumieres et de connaissance; c'est vraiment
l'encyclopedie des anciens." _Memoires Historiques_, etc., I., 312.]

Nor is it merely the common mass of readers who have chosen Plutarch as
their favorite ancient. The list of great and famous men who have made
him their companion is a long one. Men of action and men of thought have
taken equal satisfaction in his pages. Petrarch, the first scholar of
the Revival, held him in high esteem, and drew from him much of his
uncommon learning. Erasmus, the first scholar of the Reformation, made
his writings a special study, and translated from the Greek a large
portion of his Moral Works. Montaigne has taken pains to tell us of his
affection for him, and his Essays are full of t