banishment for a certain revolution of ages. Of this last nature was the war of the giants against the gods; the dispossession of Saturn by Jupiter; the banishment of Apollo from heaven; the fall of Vulcan, and many others; all which, according to our author, were the battles of these Genii, or Demons, amongst themselves. But supposing, as Plutarch evidently does, that these spirits administered, under the Supreme Being, the affairs of men, taking care of the virtuous, punishing the bad, and sometimes communicating with the best, (as particularly the genius of Socrates always warned him of approaching dangers, and taught him to avoid them,) I cannot but wonder, that every one who has hitherto written Plutarch's life, and particularly Rualdus, the most knowing of them all, should so confidently affirm, that these oracles were given by bad spirits, according to Plutarch. As Christians, indeed, we may think them so; but that Plutarch so thought, it is a most apparent falsehood. It is enough to convince a reasonable man, that our author, in his old age, (and that then he doted not we may see by the Treatise he has written, that old men ought to have the management of public affairs,) I say, that then he initiated himself in the sacred rites of Delphos, and died, for aught we know, Apollo's priest. Now, it is not to be imagined that he thought the god he served a cacodemon, or, as we call him, a devil. Nothing could be farther from the opinion and practice of this holy philosopher than so gross an impiety. The story of the Pythias, or Priestess of Apollo, which he relates immediately before the ending of that Treatise concerning the Cessation of Oracles, confirms my assertion, rather than shakes it; for it is there delivered, "That going with great reluctation into

the sacred place to be inspired, she came out foaming at the mouth, her eyes gogling, her breast heaving, her voice undistinguishable and shrill, as if she had an earthquake within her, labouring for vent; and, in short, that thus tormented with the god, whom she was not able to support, she died distracted in few days after." For he had said before," that the divineress ought to have no perturbations of mind, or impure passions, at the time when she was to consult the oracle; and if she had, she was no more fit to be inspired, than an instrument untuned to render an harmonious sound." And he gives us to suspect, by what he says at the close of this relation," that this Pythias had not lived chastely for some time before it." So that her death appears more like a punishment inflicted for loose living by some holy power, than the mere malignancy of a spirit delighted naturally in mischief. There is another observation, which indeed comes nearer to their purpose, which I will digress so far as to relate, because it somewhat appertains to our own country:-"There are many islands (says he) which lie scattered about Britain, after the manner of our Sporades. They are unpeopled, and some of them are called the Islands of the Heroes, or the Genii. One Demetrius was sent by the emperor [who, by computation of the time, must either be Caligula or Claudius] to discover those parts; and arriving at one of the islands, next adjoining to the fore-mentioned, which was inhabited by some few Britons, (but those held sacred and inviolable by all their countrymen,) immediately after his arrival, the air grew black and troubled, strange apparitions were seen, the winds raised a tempest, and fiery spouts, or whirlwinds, appeared dancing towards the earth. When these prodigies were ceased,

the islanders informed him, that some one of the aërial beings, superior to our nature, then ceased to live. For as a taper, while yet burning, affords a pleasant harmless light, but is noisome and offensive when extinguished, so those heroes shine benignly on us, and do us good, but at their death turn all things topsyturvy; raise up tempests, and infect the air with pestilential vapours." By those holy and inviolable men, there is no question but he means our Druids, who were nearest to the Pythagoreans of any sect; and this opinion of the Genii might probably be one of theirs Yet it proves not that all demons were thus malicious; only those who were to be condemned hereafter into human bodies, for their misdemeanours in their aerial being.

But it is time to leave a subject so very fanciful, and so little reasonable as this. I am apt to imagine the natural vapours arising in the cave where the temple afterwards was built, might work upon the spirits of those who entered the holy place, (as they did on the shepherd Coretas, who first found it out by accident,) and incline them to enthusiasm and prophetic madness: that, as the strength of those vapours diminished, (which were generally in caverns, as that of Mopsus, of Trophonius, and this of Delphos,) so the inspiration decreased by the same measures; that they happened to be stronger when they killed the Pythias, who being conscious of this, was so unwilling to enter; that the oracles ceased to be given in verse, when poets ceased to be the priests; and that the genius of Socrates (whom he confessed never to have seen, but only to have heard inwardly, and unperceived by others) was no more than the strength of his imagination; or, to speak in the

language of a Christian Platonist, his guardian angel.

I pretend not to an exactness of method in this Life, which I am forced to collect by patches from several authors, and therefore without much regard to the connection of times which are so uncertain.

I will, in the next place, speak of his marriage. His wife's name, her parentage, and dowry, are no where mentioned by him, or any other, nor in what part of his age he married; though it is probable in the flower of it. But Rualdus has ingeniously gathered, from a convincing circumstance, that she was called Timoxena; because Plutarch, in a consolatory letter to her, occasioned by the death of their daughter, in her infancy, uses these words: "Your Timoxena is deprived, by death, of small enjoyments; for the things she knew were of small moment, and she could be delighted only with trifles." Now, it appears by the letter, that the name of this daughter was the same with her mother's; therefore it could be no other than Timoxena. Her knowledge, her conjugal virtues, her abhorrency from the vanities of her sex, and from superstition, her gravity in behaviour, and her constancy in supporting the loss of children, are likewise celebrated by our author. No other wife of Plutarch is found mentioned, and therefore we may conclude he had no more, by the same reason for which we judge that he had no other master than Ammonius; because it is evident he was so grateful in his nature, that he would have preserved their memory.

The number of his children was at least five, so many being mentioned by him. Four of them were sons; of the other sex only Timoxena, who died

at two years old, as is manifest from the epistle above mentioned. The French translator, Amiot, from whom our old English translation of the "Lives" was made, supposes him to have had another daughter, where he speaks of his son-in-law, Crato. But the word yaußpos, which Plutarch there uses, is of a larger signification; for it may as well be expounded father-in-law, his wife's brother, or his sister's husband, as Budæus notes: this I the rather mention, because the same Amiot is tasked for an infinite number of mistakes by his own countrymen of the present age, which is enough to recommend this translation of our author into the English tongue, being not from any copy, but from the Greek original. Two other sons of Plutarch were already deceased before Timoxena; his eldest, Autobulus, mentioned in his Symposiacks, and another, whose name is not recorded. The youngest was called Charon, who also died in his infancy. The two remaining are supposed to have survived him: the name of one was Plutarch, after his own; and that of the other Lamprias, so called in memory of his grandfather. This was he, of all his children, who seems to have inherited his father's philosophy; and to him we owe the Table, or Catalogue, of Plutarch's writings, and perhaps also the Apophthegms. His nephew, but whether by his brother or sister remains uncertain, was Sextus Chæroneus, who was much honoured by that learned emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and who taught him the Greek tongue, and the principles of philosophy. This emperor professing Stoicism, (as ap pears by his writings,) inclines us to believe, that our Sextus Charoneus was of the Stoic sect; and consequently, that the world has generally been mistaken in supposing him to have been the same