!

THE

LIFE OF PLUTARCH.

AS, in the progress of life, we first pass through scenes

of innocence, peace, and fancy, and afterwards encounter the vices and disorders of society; so we shall here amuse ourselves awhile in the peaceful solitude of the philosopher, before we proceed to those more animated, but less pleasing objects he describes.

Nor will the view of a philosopher's life be less instructive than his labours. If the latter teach us how great vices, accompanied with great abilities, may tend to the ruin of a state ;....if they inform us how ambition attended with magnanimity, how avarice directed by political sagacity, how envy and revenge armed with personal valour and popular support, will destroy the most sacred establishments, and break through every barrier of human repose and safety; the former will convince us that equanimity is more desirable than the highest privileges of mind, and that the most distinguished situations in life, are less to be envied than those quiet allotments, where science is the support of virtue.

Pindar and Epaminondas had, long before Plutarch's time, redeemed, in some measure, the credit of Boeotia, and rescued the inhabitants of that country from the proverbial imputation of stupidity. When Plutarch appeared, he confirmed the reputation it had recovered. He shewed that genius is not the growth of any particular soil; and, that its cultivation requires no peculiar qualities of climate.

Charonea, a town in Boeotia, between Phocis and Attica, had the honour to give him birth. This place was remarkable for nothing but the tameness and servility of its inhabitants, whom Anthony's soldiers made beasts of burthen, and obliged to carry their corn upon their shoul

ders to the coast. As it lay between two seas, and was partly shut up by mountains, the air, of course, was heavy, and truly Boeotian. But situations as little favoured by nature as Charonea, have given birth to the greatest men; of which the celebrated Locke and many other are instances.

Plutarch himself acknowledges the stupidity of the Boeotians in general; but he imputes it rather to their diet than their air; for, in his Treatise on Animal Food, he intimates, that a gross indulgence in that article, which was usual with his countrymen, contributes greatly to obscure the intellectual faculties.

It is not easy to ascertain in what year he was born. Ruauld places it about the middle of the reign of Claudius; others, towards the end of it. The following circumstance is the only foundation they have for their conjectures.

Plutarch says, that he studied philosophy under Ammonius, at Delphi, when Nero made his progress into Greece. This, we know, was in the twefth year of that Emperor's reign, in the consulship of Paulinus Suetonius and Pontius Telesinus, the second year of the Olympiad 211, and the sixty-sixth of the christian æra. Dacier observes, that Plutarch must have been seventeen or eighteen at least, when he was engaged in the abstruse studies of philosophy; and he, therefore, fixes his birth. about five or six years before the death of Claudius. This, however, is bare suspicion; and that, in our opinion, not of the most probable kind. The youth of Greece studied under the philosophers very early; for their works, with those of the poets and rhetoricians, formed their chief course of discipline.

But to determine whether he was born under the reign of Claudius, or in the early part of Nero's reign (which we the rather believe, as he says himself, that he was very young when Nero entered Greece ;) to make it clearly understood, whether he studied at Delphi at ten, or at eighteen years of age, is of much less consequence, than it is to know by what means, and under what auspices, he acquired that humane and rational philosophy which is distinguished in his works.

Ammonius was his preceptor; but of him we know little more than what his scholar has accidentally let fall

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concerning him. He mentions a singular instance of his manner of correcting his pupils. "Our master,” says he, "having one day observed that we had indulged ourselves "too luxuriously at dinner, at his afternoon lecture, or"dered his freedman to give his own son the discipline of "the whip, in our presence; signifying, at the same "time, that he suffered this punishment, because he could "not eat his victuals without sauce. The philosopher "all the while had his eye upon us, and we knew well for "whom this example of punishment was intended." This circumstance shews, at least, that Ammonius was not of the school of Epicurus. The severity of his discipline, indeed, seems rather of the stoic cast; but it is most probable, that he belonged to the academicians; for their schools, at that time, had the greatest reputation in Greece.

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It was a happy circumstance in the discipline of those schools, that the parent only had the power of corporal punishment: the rod and the ferula were snatched from the hand of the petty tyrant: his office alone was to inform the mind: he had no authority to dastardize the spirit: he had no power to extinguish the generous flame of freedom, or to break down the noble independency of soul, by the slavish, debasing, and degrading application of the rod. This mode of punishment in our public schools is one of the worst remains of barbarism that prevails among Sensible minds, however volatile and inattentive in early years, may be drawn to their duty by many means, which shame, and fears of a more liberal nature than those of corporal punishment, will supply. Where there is but little sensibility, the effect which that mode of punishment produces is not more happy. It destroys that little, though it should be the first care and labour of the preceptor to increase it. To beat the body, is to debase the mind. Nothing so soon, or so totally abolishes the sense of shame; and yet that sense is at once the best preservative of virtue, and the greatest incentive to every species of excellence.

in acquiring the knowledge of things. They did not, like us, spend seven or ten years of scholastic labour, in making a general acquaintance with two dead languages. Those years were employed in the study of nature, and -in gaining the elements of philosophical knowledge from her original economy and laws, Hence all that Dacier has observed concerning the probability of Plutarch's being seventeen or eighteen years of age when he studied under Ammonius, is without the least weight,

The way to mathematical and philosophical knowledge was, indeed, much more easy among the ancient Greeks than it can ever be with us. Those, and every other science, are bound up in terms, which we can never understand precisely, till we become acquainted with the languages from which they are derived. Plutarch, when he learnt the Roman language, which was not till he was somewhat, advanced in life, observed, that he got the knowledge of words from his knowledge of things. But we lie under the necessity of reversing his method: and before we can arrive at the knowledge of things, we must 'first labour to obtain the knowledge of words.

However, though the Greeks had access to science without the acquisition of other languages, they were, nevertheless, sufficiently attentive to the cultivation of their own. Philology, after the mathematics and philosophy, was one of their principal studies; and they applied themselves considerably to critical investigation.

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A proof of this we find in that Dissertation which Plutarch hath given us on the word, engraved on the temple of Apollo at Delphi. In this tract he introduces the scholastic disputes, wherein he makes a principal figure. After giving us the various significations which others assigned to this word, he adds his own idea of it; and that is of some consequence to us, because it shews us that he was not a polytheist. ε, says he, Thou art; as if it "were, Thou art one. I mean not in the aggregate "sense, as we say, one army, or one body of men com"posed of many individuals; but that which exists dis"tinctly must necessarily be one; and the very idea of "being implies individually. One is that which is a "simple being, free from mixture and composition. To "be one, therefore, in this sense, is consistent only with "a nature entire in its first principle, and incapable of "alteration or decay."