excellent in their kind, and already published, but also all sayings and discourses of wise men, which he had heard in conversation, or which he had received from others by tradition; as likewise the records and public instruments preserved in cities which he had visited in his travels, and which he afterwards scattered through his works. To which purpose he took a particular journey to Sparta, to search the archives of that famous commonwealth, to understand thoroughly the model of their ancient government, their legislators, their kings, and their Ephori; digesting all their memorable deeds and sayings with so much care, that he has not omitted those even of their women, or their private soldiers; together with their customs, their decrees, their ceremonies, and the manner of their public and private living, both in peace and war. The same methods he also took in divers other commonwealths, as his Lives, and his Greek and Roman Questions, sufficiently testify. Without these helps, it had been impossible for him to leave in writing so many particular observations of men and manners, and as impossible to have gathered them without conversation and commerce with the learned antiquaries of his time. To these he added a curious collection of ancient statues, medals, inscriptions, and paintings, as also of proverbial sayings, epigrams, epitaphs, apophthegms, and other ornaments of history, that he might leave nothing unswept behind him. And as he was continually in company with men of learning, in all professions, so his memory was always on the stretch to receive and lodge their discourses; and his judgment perpetually employed in separating his notions, and distinguishing which were fit to be preserved, and which to be rejected.

By benefit of this, in little time he enlarged his knowledge to a great extent in every science. Himself, in the beginning of the treatise which he has composed of Content and Peace of Mind, makes mention of those collections, or common places, which he had long since drawn together for his own particular occasions; and it is from this rich cabinet that he has taken out those excellent pieces which he has distributed to posterity, and which give us occasion to deplore the loss of the residue, which either the injury of time, or the negligence of copiers, have denied to us. On this account, though we need not doubt to give him this general commendation, that he was ignorant of no sort of learning, yet we may justly add this farther,-that whoever will consider through the whole body of his works, either the design, the method, or the contexture of his discourses, whether historical or moral, or questions of natural philosophy, or solutions of problems mathematical; whether he arraigns the opinions of other sects, or establishes the doctrines of his own; in all these kinds there will be found both the harmony of order, and the beauty of easiness: his reasons so solid and convincing, his inductions so pleasant and agreeable to all sorts of readers, that it must be acknowledged he was master of every subject which he treated, and treated none but what were improvable to the benefit of instruction. For we may perceive in his writings the desire he had to imprint his precepts in the souls of his readers, and to lodge morality in families, nay even to exalt it to the thrones of sovereign princes, and to make it the rule and measure of their government. Finding that there were many sects of philosophers then in vogue, he searched into the foundation of all their principles and opinions; and not content with this disquisition,

he traced them to their several fountains; so that the Pythagorean, Epicurean, Stoic, and Peripatetic philosophy, were familiar to him. And though it may be easily observed, that he was chiefly inclined to follow Plato, whose memory he so much reverenced, that annually he celebrated his birth-day, and also that of Socrates; yet he modestly contained himself within the bounds of the latter academy, and was content, like Cicero, only to propound and weigh opinions, leaving the judgment of his readers free, without presuming to decide dogmatically. Yet it is to be confessed, that in the midst of this moderation, he opposed the two extremes of the Epicurean and Stoic sects; both which he has judiciously combated in several of his treatises, and both upon the same account,-because they pretend too much to certainty in their dogmas, and to impose them with too great arrogance; which he, who, following the Academists, doubted more and pretended less, was no way able to support.. The Pyrrhonians, or grosser sort of Sceptics, who bring all certainty in question, and startle even at the notions of common sense, appeared as absurd to him on the other side; for there is a kind of positiveness in granting nothing to be more likely on one part than on another, which his Academy avoided by inclining the balance to that hand where the most weighty reasons, and probability of truth, were visible. The moral philosophy, therefore, was his chiefest aim, because the principles of it admitted of less doubt; and because they were most conducing to the benefit of human life. For, after the example of Socrates, he had found, that the speculations of natural philosophy were more delightful than solid and profitable; that they were abstruse and thorny, and much of sophism in the solution of appearances that the mathematics, indeed,

could reward his pains with many demonstrations, but though they made him wiser, they made him not more virtuous, and therefore attained not the end of happiness: for which reason, though he had far advanced in that study, yet he made it but his recreation, not his business. Some problem of it was his usual divertisement at supper, which he mingled also with pleasant and more light discourses; for he was no sour philosopher, but passed his time as merrily as he could, with reference to virtue. He forgot not to be pleasant while he instructed, and entertained his friends with so much cheerfulness and good humour, that his learning was not nauseous to them; neither were they afraid of his company another time. He was not so austere as to despise riches, but, being in possession of a large fortune, he lived, though not splendidly, yet plentifully; and suffered not his friends to want that part of his estate which he thought superfluous to a philosopher.

The religion he professed, to speak the worst of it, was heathen. I say, the religion he professed; for it is no way probable that so great a philosopher, and so wise a man, should believe the superstitions and fopperies of Paganism; but that he accommodated himself to the use and received customs of his country. He was indeed a priest of Apollo, as himself acknowledges; but that proves him not to have been a Polytheist.

I have ever thought, that the wise men in all ages have not much differed in their opinions of religion; I mean, as it is grounded on human reason for reason, as far as it is right, must be the same in all men.; and truth being but one, they must consequently think in the same train. Thus it is not to be doubted but the religion of Socrates, Plato, and Plutarch, was not different in the main;

who doubtless believed the identity of one Supreme Intellectual Being, which we call GOD. But because they who have written the Life of Plutarch in other languages, are contented barely to assert that our author believed one God, without quoting those passages of his which would clear the point, I will give you two of them, amongst many, in his "Morals." The first is in his book of the Cessation of Oracles; where arguing against the Stoics, (in behalf of the Platonists,) who disputed against the plurality of worlds with this argument," That if there were many worlds, how then could it come to pass that there was one only Fate, and one Providence to guide them all? (for it was granted by the Platonists that there was but one;) and why should not many Jupiters or gods be necessary for government of many worlds?" To this Plutarch answers," That this their captious question was but trifling; for where is the necessity of supposing many Jupiters for this plurality of worlds, when one excellent Being, endued with mind and reason, such as he is, whom we acknowledge to be the Father and Lord of all things, is sufficient to direct and rule these worlds; whereas if there were more Supreme Agents, their decrees must still be the more absurd and contradictious to one another." I pretend not this passage to be translated word for word, but it is the sense of the whole, though the order of the sentence be inverted. The other is more plain; it is in his comment on the word EI, or those two letters inscribed on the gates of the temple at Delphos; where, having given the several opinions concerning it, as first, that signifies if, because all the questions which were made to Apollo began with If; as suppose they asked,-If the Grecians should overcome the Persians,--σ such a marriage should come to pass, &c.; and af