The French have, almost from the beginning of their national literature, been ardent admirers of Plutarch. Amyot reduced some of his precepts to rhyme in order that they might the more readily be taught to children, and regarded his writings as more profitable than any other except the Scriptures. Gui-Patin makes Pliny, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Seneca constitute an entire family,—father, mother, older and younger brother—and thus in a sense represent the whole circle of literature. Rollin copies his Parallel Lives almost literally into his Ancient History. Rousseau cites him among the few authors that he read in his old age. He is the last consolation of St. Pierre. Laharpe regards him as by nature the most moral man that ever lived; and Joubert calls him the Herodotus of Philosophy, and deems his Lives the wisdom of antiquity in its entirety. Montaigne says, “I never settled myself to the reading of any authors but Plutarch and Seneca.” Again, “Plutarch had rather we should applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have already read. He knew very well that a man may say too much even upon the best subjects, and that Alexandrides did justly reproach him who made very elegant but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: ‘O stranger, thou speakest the things thou oughtest to speak, but not after the manner thou shouldst speak them.’” Elsewhere he recurs to the subject with these words, “As to what concerns my other reading that mixes a little more profit with the pleasure and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch and Seneca. Both of them have this great convenience suited to my humor, that the knowledge I there seek is discoursed in some pieces that do not require any great trouble of reading long, of which I am incapable.” In his Essays, Montaigne refers to or quotes Plutarch more than two hundred times, and Seneca almost as often. So far as Plutarch’s Lives are concerned, the translation published by Jacques Amyot, bishop of Auxerre, in 1559, is still regarded as a masterpiece. This version is of special interest to English-speaking people, because from it Sir Thomas North made his translation, published some twenty years later, and Shakespeare, in turn, took the material for his plays dealing with antique life. Of later English translations, that of the Langhorne is undoubtedly the most popular, though the one known as Dryden’s, albeit he had little to do with it, as revised by A. H. Clough, is much read. That of Stewart and Long is not generally known. There seems to be no English translation of Plutarch’s Moral Writings except that made by a number of Oxford scholars some two centuries since and edited by Professor Goodwin. The German version made by Kaltwasser just one hundred years ago, is an excellent piece of work. The Lives have been frequently translated.