life in close intimacy, are among the most interesting and the fullest of unintentional humour. Tacitus was the elder of the two; and Pliny, "when very young"--the words are his own,--had chosen him as his model and sought to follow his fame. "There were then many writers of brilliant genius; but you," he writes to Tacitus, "so strong was the affinity of our natures, seemed to me at once the easiest to imitate and the most worthy of imitation. Now we are named together; both of us have, I may say, some name in literature, for, as I include myself, I must be moderate in my praise of you." This to the author who had already published the _Histories!_ Before so exquisite a self-revelation criticism itself is silenced. The cult of Ciceronianism established by Quintilian is the real origin of the collection of Pliny's _Letters_. Cicero and Pliny had many weaknesses and some virtues in common, and the desire of emulating Cicero, which Pliny openly and repeatedly expresses, had a considerable effect in exaggerating his weaknesses. Cicero was vain, quick-tempered, excitable; his sensibilities were easily moved, and found natural and copious expression in the language of which he was a consummate master. Pliny, the most steady-going of mankind, sets himself to imitate this excitable temperament with the utmost seriousness; he cultivates sensibility, he even cultivates vanity. His elaborate and graceful descriptions of scenery--the fountain of Clitumnus or the villa overlooking the Tiber valley--are no more consciously insincere than his tears over the death of friends, or the urgency with which he begs his wife to write to him from the country twice a day. But these fine feelings are meant primarily to impress the public; and a public which could be impressed by the spectacle of a man giving a dinner-party, and actually letting his untitled guests drink the same wine that was being drunk at the head of the table, put little check upon lapses of taste.