of victories.” In another place, he quotes Xenophon on the like occasion: “The sayings of great men in their familiar discourses, and amidst their wine, have somewhat in them which is worthy to be transmitted to posterity.” Our author therefore needs no excuse, but rather deserves a commendation, when he relates, as pleasant, some sayings of his heroes, which appear (I must confess it) very cold and insipid mirth to us. For it is not his meaning to commend the jest, but to paint the man; besides, we may have lost somewhat of the idiotism of that language in which it was spoken; and where the conceit is couched in a single word, if all the significations of it are not critically understood, the grace and the pleasantry are lost. But in all parts of biography, whether familiar or stately, whether sublime or low, whether serious or merry, Plutarch equally excelled. If we compare him to others, Dion Cassius is not so sincere; Herodian, a lover of truth, is oftentimes deceived himself with what he had falsely heard reported: then the time of his emperors exceeds not in all above sixty years; so that his whole history will scarce amount to three Lives of Plutarch. Suetonius and Tacitus may be called alike either authors of histories, or writers of lives; but the first of them runs too willingly into obscene descriptions, which he teaches, while he relates; the other, besides what has already been noted by him, often falls into obscurity; and both of them have made so unlucky a choice of times, that they are forced to describe rather monsters than men; and their emperors are either extravagant fools or tyrants, and most usually both. Our author, on the contrary, as he was more inclined to commend than to dispraise, has generally chosen such great men as were famous for their several virtues; at least such whose frailties or vices were overpoised by their excellencies; such from whose examples we may have more to follow than to shun. Yet, as he was impartial, he disguised not the faults of any man: an example of which is in the life of Lucullus; where, after he has told us that the double benefit which his countrymen, the Chæroneans, received from him, was the chiefest motive which he had to write his life, he afterwards rips up his luxury, and shews how he lost, through his mismanagement, his authority and his soldiers’ love.—Then he was more happy in his digressions than any we have named. I have always been pleased to see him, and his imitator, Montaigne, when they strike a little out of the common road; for we are sure to be the better for their wandering. The best quarry lies not always in the open field; and who would not be content to follow a good huntsman over hedges and ditches, when he knows the game will reward his pains? But if we mark him more narrowly, we may observe, that the great reason of his frequent starts is the variety of his learning; he knew so much of nature, was so vastly