you. The best thing I can advise you is to do in this world
as you did in the other, keep happiness in your view, but never take the
road that leads to it. Remain on this side Styx, wander about without
end or aim, look into the Elysian fields, but never attempt to enter into
them, lest Minos should push you into Tartarus; for duties neglected may
bring on a sentence not much less severe than crimes committed.

DIALOGUE XXVIII.

PLUTARCH--CHARON--AND A MODERN BOOKSELLER.

_Charon_.--Here is a fellow who is very unwilling to land in our
territories. He says he is rich, has a great deal of business in the
other world, and must needs return to it; he is so troublesome and
obstreperous I know not what to do with him. Take him under your care,
therefore, good Plutarch; you will easily awe him into order and decency
by the superiority an author has over a bookseller.

_Bookseller_.--Am I got into a world so absolutely the reverse of that I
left, that here authors domineer over booksellers? Dear Charon, let me
go back, and I will pay any price for my passage; but, if I must stay,
leave me not with any of those who are styled classical authors. As to
you, Plutarch, I have a particular animosity against you for having
almost occasioned my ruin. When I first set up shop, understanding but
little of business, I unadvisedly bought an edition of your "Lives," a
pack of old Greeks and Romans, which cost me a great sum of money. I
could never get off above twenty sets of them. I sold a few to the
Universities, and some to Eton and Westminster, for it is reckoned a
pretty book for boys and undergraduates; but, unless a man has the luck
to light on a pedant, he shall not sell a set of them in twenty years.

_Plutarch_.--From the merit of the subjects, I had hoped another
reception for my works. I will own, indeed, that I am not always
perfectly accurate in every circumstance, nor do I give so exact and
circumstantial a detail of the actions of my heroes as may be expected
from a biographer who has confined himself to one or two characters. A
zeal to preserve the memory of great men, and to extend the influence of
such noble examples, made me undertake more than I could accomplish in
the first degree of perfection; but surely the characters of my
illustrious men are not so imperfectly sketched that they will not stand
forth to all ages as patterns of virtue and incitements to glory. My
reflections are allowed to be