Ir is not without reason that Plutarch's Lives, which formerly were so much read, have in the last twenty years been so much neglected. Plutarch wrote in the time of Trajan; and we have learnt the value of cotemporary statements: it is justly felt that for the time of Pericles, his evidence is not to be compared to that of Thucydides. Plutarch is a biographer and a moralist; and our recent curiosity has been rather for the politics of the ancient world. Plutarch, in writing lives, to illustrate a point of character, very naturally neglects the order of time; but we have been busy to establish an accurate chronology. The desire of the last twenty years has been to have the entire evidence, and receive a judgment upon it. 'It has been but little to this purpose to read a book of selected |