PREFACE.

IF the merit of a Work may be estimated from the universality of its reception, Plutarch's Lives have a claim to the first honours of Literature. No book has been more generally sought after, or read with greater avidity. It was one of the first that were brought out of the retreats of the learned, and translated into the modern languages. Amiot, Abbe of Bellozane, published a French translation of it in the reign of Henry the Second; and from that work it was translated into English, in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

It is said by those who are not willing to allow Shakespear much learning, that he availed himself of the last-mentioned translation; but they seem to forget that, in order to support their arguments of this kind, it is necessary for them to prove that Plato too was translated into English at the same time; for the celebrated soliloquy, "To be, or not "to be," is taken, almost verbatim, from that philosopher; yet we have never found that Plato was translated in those times.

Amiot was a man of great industry and considerable learning. He sought diligently in the libraries of Rome and Venice for those Lives of Plutarch which are lost; and though his search was unsuccessful, it had this good effect, that, by meeting with a variety of manuscripts, and comparing them with the printed copies, he was enabled in many places to rec

tify the text. This was a very essent stance; for a few ancient writers ha more than Plutarch from the carelessn ters and transcribers; and, with all h was his fate, for a long time, to find no al The Schoolmen despised his Greek, be not the purity of Xenophon, nor the Att of Aristophanes; and, on that account, sonably bestowed their labours on those them less. Amoit's Translation was p the year 1558; but no reputable edi Greek text of Plutarch appeared till th in 1624. The above-mentioned transla ever, though drawn from an imperfect t through many editions, and was still Dacier, under better auspices, and in b attempted a new one; which he executed elegance, and tolerable accuracy. The lowed was not so correct as might have be for the London edition of Plutarch wa published. However the French langua that time in great perfection, and the language of almost every court in Europ translation came not only into the lib into the hands of men. Plutarch was read, and no book in those times had a n sive sale, or went through a greater nur pressions. The translator had, indeed himself in one respect with great happi book was not found to be French Greek carefully followed that rule, which no ought ever to loose sight of, the great mouring the genius, and maintaining th of his own language. For this purpose he broke the long and embarrassed periods of

ness, though not without verbosity. His translation had another distinguished advantage. He enriched it with a variety of explanatory notes. There are so many readers who have no competent acquaintance with the customs of antiquity, the laws of the ancient states, the ceremonies of their religion, and the remoter and minuter parts of their history and genealogy, that to have an account of these matters ever before the eye, and to travel with a guide who is ready to describe to us every object we are unacquainted with, is a privilege equally convenient and agreeable. But here the annotator ought to have stopped. Satisfied with removing the difficulties usually arising in the circumstances above-mentioned, he should not have swelled his pages with idle declamations on trite morals and obvious sentiments. Amiot's margins, indeed, are every were crowded with such. In those times they followed the method of the old Divines, which was, to make practical improvements of every matter; but it is somewhat strange that Dacier, who wrote in a more enlightened age, should fall into that beaten track of insipid moralizing, and be at pains to say what every one must know. Perhaps as the commentator of Plutarch, he considered himself as a kind of travelling companion to the reader; and, agreeably to the manners of his country he meant to shew his politeness by never holding his peace. The apology he makes for deducing and detailing these flat precepts, is the view of instructing younger minds. He had not philosophy enough to consider, that to anticipate the conclusions of such minds, in their pursuit of history and characters, is to prevent their proper effect. When examples are placed before them, they will not fail to make right inferences; but if those are made for them the dictatic air of information destroys their influence.

After the old English translation of Plutarch, which was professedly taken from Amiot's French, no other appeared till the time of Dryden. That

great man, who is never to be mentioned without pity and admiration, was prevailed upon, by his necessities, to head a company of translators; and to lend the sanction of his glorious name to a translation of Plutarch, written, as he himself acknowledges, by almost as many hands as there were lives. That this motley work was full of errors, inequalities, and inconsistencies, is not in the least to be wondered at. Of such a variety of translators, it would have been very singular if some had not failed in learning, and some in language. The truth is, that the greatest part of them were deficient in both. Indeed, their task was not easy. To translate Plutarch under any circumstances would require no ordinary skill in the language and antiquities of Greece: But to attempt it whilst the text was in a depraved state; unsettled and unrectified; abounding with errors, misnomers, and transpositions; this required much greater abilities than fell to the lot of that body of translators in general. It appears, however, from the execution of their undertaking, that they gave themselves no great concern about the difficulties that attended it. Some few blundered at the Greek; some drew from the Scholist's Latin; and others, more humble, trode scrupulously in the paces of Amiot. Thus copying the idioms of different languages, they proceeded like the workmen of Babel, and fell into a confusion of tongues, while they attempted to speak the same. But the diversities of style were not the greatest fault of this strange translation. It was full of the grossest errors. Ignorance on the one hand, and hastiness or negligence on the other, had filled it with absurdities in every life, and inaccuracies in almost every page. The language, in general, was insupportably tame, tedious, and embarrassed. The periods had no harmony; the phraseology had no elegance, no spirit, or precision.

Yet this is the last translation of Plutarch's Lives that has appeared in the English language, and the only one that is now read.