all of them what he thought most excellent, out of the confusion, or rather mixture, of all their styles, he formed his own, which, partaking of each, was yet none of them, but a compound of them all; like the Corinthian metal, which had in it gold, and brass, and silver, and yet was a species by itself. Add to this, that in Plutarch’s time, and long before it, the purity of the Greek tongue was corrupted, and the native splendour of it had taken the tarnish of barbarism, and contracted the filth and spots of degenerating ages: for the fall of empires always draws after it the language and eloquence of the people; they, who labour under misfortunes or servitude, have little leisure to cultivate their mother tongue. To conclude; when Athens had lost her sovereignty to the Peloponnesians, and her liberty to Philip, neither a Thucydides nor a Demosthenes were afterwards produced by her. I have formerly acknowledged many lapses of our author, occasioned through his inadvertency; but he is likewise taxed with faults which reflect on his judgment in matters of fact, and his candour in the comparisons of his Greeks and Romans; both which are so well vindicated by Montaigne, that I need but barely to translate him:—“First, then, he is accused of want of judgment, in reporting things incredible; for proof of which is alleged the story he tells of the Spartan boy, who suffered his bowels to be torn out by a young fox which he had stolen, choosing rather to hide him under his garment till he died, than to confess his robbery. In the first place, this example is ill chosen, because it is difficult to set a bound to the force of our internal faculties; it is not defined how far our resolution may carry us to suffer. The force of bodies may more easily be determined, than that of souls. Then of all people, the Lacedemonians, by reason of their rigid institution, were most hardened to undergo labours, and to suffer pains. Cicero, before our author’s time, though then the Spartan virtue was degenerated, yet avows to have seen himself some Lacedemonian boys, who, to make trial of their patience, were placed before the altar of Diana, where they endured scourging till they were all over bloody, and that not only without crying, but even without a sigh or a groan: nay, and some of them so ambitious of this reputation, that they willingly resigned their lives under the hands of their tormentors.—The same may be said of another story, which Plutarch vouches with an hundred witnesses: that in the time of sacrifice, a burning coal by chance falling into the sleeve of a Spartan boy, who held the censer, he suffered his arm to be scorched so long without moving it, that the scent of it reeked up to the noses of the assistants.