It was toward the end of the seventeenth century that Dryden's translation appeared, and for about fifty years it held much the same place with the reading public that North's had filled for previous generations. It was, no doubt, in this version that Mrs. Fitzpatrick amused herself during her seclusion in Ireland, as she tells Sophia Western, with reading "a great deal in Plutarch's Lives." But this was at length superseded by the translation of the brothers Langhorne, which, spite of its want of vivacity, its labored periods, and formal narrative, has retained its place as the popular version of Plutarch up to the present day. One can hardly help wishing--so little of Plutarch's spirit survives in their dull pages--that a similar fate had overtaken these excellent men to that which carried off the gentle Abbé Ricard with the _grippe_, when he had published but half of his translation of the Philosopher of Cheronaea. It is a proof of the intrinsic charm of Plutarch's Lives, that thus, notwithstanding the imperfect manner in which they have been, up to this time, presented to English readers, they should have been so constantly and so generally read.[E] They have given equal delight to all ages and to all classes. The heavy folio has been taken from its place on the lower shelves in the quiet libraries of English country-houses, and been read by old men at their firesides, by girls in trim gardens, by boys who cared for no other classic. The cheap double-column octavo has travelled in peddlers' carts to all the villages of New England, to the backwoodsman's cabin in the West. It has taken its place on the clock-shelf, with only the Bible, the "Pilgrim's Progress," and the Almanac for its companions. No other classic author, with, perhaps, the single exception of Aesop, has been so widely read in modern times; and the popular knowledge of the men of Greece and Rome is derived more from Plutarch than from all other ancient authors put together. The often-repeated saying of Theodore Gaza, who, being once asked, if learning should suffer a general shipwreck, and he had the choice of saving one author, which he would select, is said to have replied, "Plutarch,"--"and probably might give this reason," says Dryden, "that in saving him he should secure the best collection of them all,"--this saying is but a sort of prophecy of the decision of the common world, who have chosen Plutarch from all the rest, and find, as Amyot says, "no one else so profitable and so pleasant to read as he."[F]