by his writings,) inclines us to believe, that our Sextus Chæroneus was of the Stoic sect; and consequently, that the world has generally been mistaken in supposing him to have been the same man with Sextus Empiricus, the sceptic, whom Suidas plainly tells us to have been an African. Now, Empiricus could not but be a sceptic, for he opposes all dogmatists, and particularly them. But I heard it first observed by an ingenious and learned old gentleman, lately deceased, that many of Mr Hobbes his seeming new opinions, are gathered from those which Sextus Empiricus exposed. The book is extant, and I refer the curious to it, not pretending to arraign or to excuse him. Some think the famous critic, Longinus, was of Plutarch’s family, descended from a sister of his; but the proofs are so weak, that I will not insert them: they may both of them rely on their proper merits, and stand not in want of a relation to each other. It is needless to insist on his behaviour in his family. His love to his wife, his indulgence to his children, his care of their education, are all manifest in that part of his works, which is called his “Morals.” Other parts of his disposition have been touched already; as, that he was courteous and humane to all men, free from inconstancy, anger, and the desire of revenge; which qualities of his, as they have been praised by the authority of other writers, may also be recommended from his own testimony of himself:—“I had rather (says he) be forgotten in the memory of men, and that it should be said, there neither is, nor was, a man called Plutarch, than they should report,—this Plutarch was unconstant, changeable in his temper, prone to anger and revenge on the least occasions.”—What he was to his slaves, you may believe from this; that, in general, he accuses those masters of extreme hardness and injustice, who use men like oxen, sell them in their age when they can drudge no longer. “A man (says he) of a merciful disposition, ought not to retrench the fodder from his cattle, nor the provender from his horses, when they can work no longer, but to cherish them when worn out and old.” Yet Plutarch, though he knew how to moderate his anger, was not, on the contrary, subject to an insensibility of wrongs; not so remiss in exacting duty, or so tame in suffering the disobedience of his servants, that he could not correct, when they deserved it; as is manifest from the following story, which Aulus Gellius had from the mouth of Taurus the philosopher, concerning him: “Plutarch had a certain slave, a saucy, stubborn, kind of fellow; in a word, one of those pragmatical servants, who never make a fault, but they give a reason for it. His justifications one time would not serve his turn, but his master commanded him to be stripped, and that the law should be laid on his backside. He no sooner felt the smart, but he muttered that he was unjustly punished, and that he had done nothing to deserve the scourge. At last he began to bawl out