I doubt if a more virtuous imagination ever applied itself to literature. Plutarch’s unending quest was virtue, and no illustrious man ever sat to him for a portrait without discovering to him virtues that he would never have revealed to a scandalmonger such as Suetonius. It was as though moral dignity were the chief of the colours on Plutarch’s palette. He was fond of contrasting his heroes with one another, but, even when he took for heroes men who were mortal enemies, he would penetrate deep into the heart of each in search of some hidden or imprisoned nobleness. He cannot paint an Alcibiades or a Sulla as a model for children, but even in them he seems to perceive and reverence a greatness of spirit in ruins--some brightness of charm or courage beyond the scope of little men. No other writer except Shakespeare has had the same power of setting before the imagination characters that remain noble though undone by great vices. To do this is, to some extent, in the common tradition of tragedy, but there is in Shakespeare and Plutarch a certain sweetness and warmth of understanding--something even more than an enthusiasm for the best in full view and admission of the worst--unlike anything else in literature. It was not an accident that Shakespeare drew so freely and so confidently on Plutarch. The geniuses of the two men were akin. Plutarch, no doubt, was more consciously ethical than Shakespeare, but he was ethical not after the manner of the narrow propagandist, but after the manner of the imaginative artist. He does not write of model characters. He knows that there are no perfect human beings. He recognises the goodness in bad men, and the badness in good men. No biographer has been more keenly aware of the corruptibility of human nature. Hence the characters in his Lives are real men, with not a fault (and hardly the rumour of a fault) hidden. He will not bear false witness for the sake of making great men appear better than they are. He achieves the difficult feat of praising virtue without either canting or lying. He is not afraid to hold the mirror up to nature and to show us virtue fighting a doubtful battle in a corrupt and tragic scene. He does not believe that the virtuous man is necessarily secure either from corruption or defeat, but he believes that virtue itself is secure from defeat. His recurrent theme is the Christian theme: “Fear not them that kill the body.” He is the painter, not only of illustrious lives, but of illustrious deaths. He feels a spectator’s elation as he watches a noble fifth act. He obtains from the spectacle of virtue impavid amid the ruins an æsthetic as well as an ethical pleasure. If any man wishes to make a study of the æsthetics of virtue, he will find abundant material in Plutarch. Plutarch writes of the tragic hero as of a man playing a fine part finely. He delights in the moving speeches, in the very gestures. He makes us conscious of a rhythm of nobleness running through human life, as when he