ve also proceeded much upon the same plan with a spirit and
elegance which give their works no mean rank among the _belles lettres_.
I will own that, when there is wit and entertainment enough in a book to
make it sell, it is not the worse for good morals.

_Charon_.--I think, Plutarch, you have made this gentleman a little more
humble, and now I will carry him the rest of his journey. But he is too
frivolous an animal to present to wise Minos. I wish Mercury were here;
he would damn him for his dulness. I have a good mind to carry him to
the Danaides, and leave him to pour water into their vessels which, like
his late readers, are destined to eternal emptiness. Or shall I chain
him to the rock, side to side by Prometheus, not for having attempted to
steal celestial fire, in order to animate human forms, but for having
endeavoured to extinguish that which Jupiter had imparted? Or shall we
constitute him _friseur_ to Tisiphone, and make him curl up her locks
with his satires and libels?

_Plutarch_.--Minos does not esteem anything frivolous that affects the
morals of mankind. He punishes authors as guilty of every fault they
have countenanced and every crime they have encouraged, and denounces
heavy vengeance for the injuries which virtue or the virtuous have
suffered in consequence of their writings.

DIALOGUE XXIX.

PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS--CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR.

_Scipio_.--Alas, Caesar! how unhappily did you end a life made
illustrious by the greatest exploits in war and most various civil
talents!

_Caesar_.--Can Scipio wonder at the ingratitude of Rome to her generals?
Did not he reproach her with it in the epitaph he ordered to be inscribed
upon his tomb at Liternum, that mean village in Campania, to which she
had driven the conqueror of Hannibal and of Carthage? I also, after
subduing her most dangerous enemies, the Helvetians, the Gauls, and the
Germans, after raising her name to the highest pitch of glory, should
have been deprived of my province, reduced to live as a private man under
the power of my enemies and the enviers of my greatness; nay, brought to
a trial and condemned by the judgment of a faction, if I had not led my
victorious troops to Rome, and by their assistance, after all my offers
of peace had been iniquitously rejected, made myself master of a State
which knew so ill how to recompense superior merit. Resentment of this,
together with the secret machinations of env