ho was a great reader of Plutarch,
a just and solid thinker above the measure of his age, and not surpassed
in his way by any writer in our own, Montaigne, observes in his 'Essay
of the Education of Children'--"Let him enquire into the manners,
revenues, and alliances of princes, things in themselves very pleasant
to learn, and very useful to know. In this conversing with men, I mean,
and principally those who only live in the records of history, he shall
by reading those books, converse with those great and heroic souls of
former and better ages. 'Tis an idle and vain study, I confess, to those
who make it so, by doing it after a negligent manner, but to those who
do it with care and observation, 'tis a study of inestimable fruit and
value; and the only one, as Plato reports, the Lacedaemonians reserved
to themselves. What profit shall he not reap as to the business of men,
by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But withal, let my governor remember
to what end his instructions are principally directed, and that he do
not so much imprint in his pupil's memory the date of the ruin of
Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio; not so much where
Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of his duty that he died there.
That he do not teach him so much the narrative part, as the business of
history. The reading of which, in my opinion, is a thing that of all
others we apply ourselves unto with the most differing and uncertain
measures."[A] North, in his address to the Reader, says: "The profit of
stories, and the praise of the Author, are sufficiently declared by
Amiot, in his Epistle to the Reader: so that I shall not need to make
many words thereof. And indeed if you will supply the defects of this
translation, with your own diligence and good understanding: you shall
not need to trust him, you may prove yourselves, that there is no
prophane study better than Plutarch. All other learning is private,
fitter for Universities than Cities, fuller of contemplation than
experience, more commendable in students themselves, than profitable
unto others. Whereas stories are fit for every place, reach to all
persons, serve for all times, teach the living, revive the dead, so far
excelling all other books, as it is better to see learning in Noblemen's
lives, than to read it in Philosophers' writings."

GEORGE LONG.

[Footnote A: Cotton's Translation.]

CONTENTS.

LIFE OF PLUTARCH xxiii

LIFE O