church and state pretend to a power superior to kingship. The fanatics derive their authority from the Bible, and plead religion to be antecedent to any secular obligation; by virtue of which argument, taking for granted that their own wosrhip is only true, they arrogate to themselves the right of disposing the temporal power according to their pleasure, -as that which is subordinate to the spiritual; so that the same reasons and scriptures which are urged by hopes for the deposition of princes, are produced by sectaries for altering the succession. The episcopal reformation has manumized kings from the usurpation of Rome, for it preaches obedience and resignation to the lawful secular power; but the pretended reformation of our schismatics, is to set up themselves in the papal chair, and to make their princes only their trustees; so that, whether they or the Pope were uppermost in England, the royal authority were equally depressed: the prison of our kings would be the same; the gaolers only would be altered. The broad republicans are generally men of atheistic principles, nominal Christians, who are beholding to the font only that they are so called; otherwise Hobbists in their politics and morals. Every church is obliged to them that they own themselves of none, because their lives are too scandalous for any. Some of the sectaries are so proud, that they think they cannot sin; those commonwealth men are so wicked, that they conclude there is no sin. Lewdness, rioting, cheating, and debauchery, are their work-a-day practice; their more solemn crimes are unnatural lusts, and horrid murders. Yet these are the patrons of the non-conformists; these are the swords and buck lers of God's cause, if his cause be that of separatists and rebels. It is not but these associates know each other at the bottom as well as Simeon knew Levi: the republicans are satisfied that the schismatics are hypocrites, and the schismatics are assured that the republicans are atheists; but their common principles of government are the chains that link them; for both hold kings to be creatures of their own making, and by inference to be at their own disposing; with this difference, notwithstanding, that the canting party face their pretences with a call from God, the debauched party with a commission from the people. So that if ever this ill-contrived and equivocal association should get uppermost, they would infallibly contend for the supreme right; and as it was formerly on

• Lord Howard, Sir Thomas Armstrong, Ford Lord Grey, and others among the opposers of government, notorious for being libertines even beyond the license of that age, seem to be here pointed at.

their money, so now it would be in their interest; "God with us" would be set up on one side, and "the Commonwealth of England" on the other. But I the less wonder at the mixture of these two natures, because two savage beasts of different species and sexes shut up together, will forget their enmity to satisfy their common lust; and it is no matter what kind of monster is produced betwixt them, so the brutal appetite be served. I more admire at a third party, who were loyal when rebellion was uppermost, and have turned rebels, (at least in principle,) since loyalty has been triumphant. Those of them whose services have not been rewarded, have some pretence for discontent; and yet they give the world to understand, that their honour was not their principle, but their interest. If they are old royalists, it is a sign their virtue is worn out and will bear no longer; if sons to royalists, they have probably been grafted on whig stocks, and grown out of kind,like China oranges in Portugal: their mothers part has prevailed in them, and they are degenerated from the loyalty of their fathers.

But if they are such, as many of them evidently are, whose service has been not only fully but lavishly recompensed with honours and preferment, theirs is an ingratitude without parallel; they have destroyed their former merits, disowned the cause for which they fought, belied their youth, dishonoured their age; they have wrought themselves out of present enjoyments for imaginary hopes, and can never be trusted by their new friends, because they have betrayed their old. The greater and the stronger ties which some of them have had, are the deeper brands of their apostacy; for archangels were the first and most glorious of the whole creation; they were the morning work of God, and had the first impressions of his image, what crea tures could be made; they were of kin to eternity itself, and wanting only that accession to be deities. Their fall was therefore more oppro brious than that of man, because they had no clay for their excuse; though I hope and wish the latter part of the allegory may not hold, and that repentance may be yet allowed them. But I delight not to dwell on so sad an object; let this part of the landscape be cast into shadows, that the heightenings of the other may appear more beautiful. For, as contraries, the nearer they are placed, are brighter, and the Venus is illustrated by the neighbourhood of the lazar, so the unblemished loyalty of your grace will shine more clearly, when set in competition with their stains.

These devices were impressed on the coin struck by the commonwealth.

When the malady which had seized the nobler parts of Britain threw itself out into the limbs, and the first sores of it appeared in Scotland, yet no effects of it reached your province; Ireland stood untainted with that pest; the care of the physician prevented the disease, and preserved the country from infection. When that ulcer was rather stopped than cured, (for the causes of it still remained,) and that dangerous symptoms appeared in England; when the royal authority was here trodden under foot; when one plot was prosecuted openly, and another secretly fomented, yet even then was Ireland free from our contagion. And if some venomous creatures were produced in that nation, yet it appeared they could not live there; they shed their poison without effect; they despaired of being successfully wicked in their own country, and transported their evidence to another, where they knew it was vendible; where accusation was a trade, where forgeries were countenanced, where perjuries were rewarded, where swearing went for proof, and where the merchandise of death was gainful. That their testimony was at least discredited, proceeded not from its incoherence, for they were known by their own party when they first appeared; but their folly was then managed by the cunning of their tutors; they had still been believed had they still followed their instructors; but when their witness fell foul upon their friends, then they were proclaimed villains, discarded and disowned by those who sent for them; they seemed then first to be discovered for what they had been known too well before; they were decried as inventors of what only they betrayed; nay, their very wit was magnified, lest, being taken for fools, they might be thought too simple to forge an accusation.* Some of them still continue here detested by both sides, believed by neither, (for even their betters are at last uncased ;) and some of them have received their hire in their own country. For perjury, which is malice to mankind, is always accompanied with other crimes; and though not punishable by our laws with death, yet draws a train of vices after it. The robber, the murderer, and the sodomite, have often hung up the forsworn villain; and what one sin took took on trust another sin has paid. These travelling locusts are at length swallowed up in their own Red Sea. Ireland, as well as England, is delivered from that flying plague; for the sword of justice in your grace's hand, like the rod of

Alluding to the Irish witnesses in the time of the Popish Plot; one set of whom came over to England, on purpose to support by their evidence that supposed conspiracy, but afterwards turned against their employer Shaftesbury.

Moses, is stretched out against them; and the third part of his majesty's dominions is owing for its peace to your loyalty and vigilance.

But what Plutarch can this age produce to immortalize a life so noble? May some excellent historian at length be found, some writer not unworthy of his subject; but may his employment be long deferted! May many happy years continue you to this nation and your own; may your praises be celebrated late, that we may enjoy you living rather than adore you dead! And since yet there is not risen up amongst us any historian who is equal to so great an undertaking, let us hope that Providence has not assigned the workman, because his employment is to be long delayed; because it has reserved your grace for farther proofs of your unwearied duty, and a farther enjoyment of your fortune; in which, though no man has been less envied, because no other has more nobly used it, yet some droppings of the age's venom have been shed upon you. The supporters of the crown are placed too near it, to be exempted from the storm which was breaking over it. It is true, you stood involved in your own virtue, and the malice of your libellers could not sink through all those folds to reach you. Your innocence has defended you from their attacks, and your pen has so nobly vindicated that innocence, that it stands in need of no other second. The difference is as plainly seen betwixt sophistry and truth, as it is betwixt the style of a gentleman and the clumsy stiffness of a pedant. Of all historians, God deliver us from bigots; and of all bigots, from our sectaries! Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understandings are warped with enthusiasm; for they judge all actions, and their causes, by their own perverse principles, and a crooked line can never be the measure of a

straight one. Mr. Hobbes was used to say,that a man was always against reason, when roason was against a man:-so these authors are for obscuring truth, because truth would discover them. They are not historians of an action, but lawyers of a party; they are retained by their principles, and bribed by their interests; their narrations are an opening of their cause; and in the front of their histories there ought to be written the prologue of a pleading, -"I am for the plaintiff," or "I am for the defendant."

We have already seen large volumes of state collections, and church legends, stuffed with detected forgeries in some parts, and gaping with omissions of truth in others: not penned, I suppose, with so vain a hope as to cheat posterity, but to advance some design in the present age; for these legerdemain authors are for telling sto

ries to keep their trick undiscovered, and to make their conveyance the more clean. What calumny your grace may expect from such writers, is already evident: but it will fare with them as it does with ill painters; a picture so unlike in all its features and proportions, reflects not on the original, but on the artist; for malice will make a piece more unresembling than ignorance; and he who studies the life, yet bungles, may draw some faint imitation of it, but he who

purposely avoids nature, must fall into grotesque, and make no likeness. For my own part, I am of the former sort, and therefore presume not to offer my unskilfulness for so excellent a design as is your illustrious life. To pray for its prosperity and continuance is my duty, as it is my ambition to appear on all occasions,

Your grace's most obedient

and devoted servant,

JOHN DRYDEN.

I KNOW not by what fate it comes to pass, that historians, who give immortality to others, are so ill requited by posterity, that their actions and their fortunes are usually forgotten; neither themselves encouraged while they live, nor their memory preserved entire to future ages. It is the ingratitude of mankind to their greatest benefactors, that they who teach us wisdom by the surest ways, setting before us what we ought to shun or to pursue, by the examples of the most famous men whom they record, and by the experience of their faults and virtues, should generally live poor and unregarded; as if they were born only for the public, and had no interest in their own well-being, but were to be lighted up like tapers, and to waste themselves for the benefit of others. But this is a complaint too general, and the custom has been too long established to be remedied; neither does it wholly reach our author. He was born in an age which was sensible of his virtue, and found a Trajan to reward him, as Aristotle did an Alexander. But the historians who succeeded him have either been too envious or too careless of his reputation; none of them, not even his own countrymen, having given us any particular account of him; or if they have, yet their works are not transmitted to us; so that we are forced to glean from Plutarch what he has scattered in his writings concerning himself and his original; which (excepting that little memorial that Suidas, and some few others have left concerning him,) is all we cancollect relating to this great philosopher and historian.

He was born at Charonea, a small city of Boeotia, in Greece, between Attica and Phocis, and reaching to both seas. The climate not much befriended by the heavens, for the air is thick and foggy; and consequently the inhabitants partaking of its influence, gross feeders and fat-witted, brawny and unthinking,-just the constitution of heroes, cut out for the executive and brutal business of war; but so stupid in the designing part, that in all the revolutions of Greece they were never masters, but only in

those few years when they were led by Epaminondas, or Pelopidas. Yet this foggy air, this country of fat wethers, as Juvenal calls it, produced three wits, which were comparable to any three Athenians; Pindar, Epaminondas, and our Plutarch; to whom we may add a fourth, Sextus Charonensis, the preceptor of the learned Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the nephew of our author.

Charonea, if we may give credit to Pausanias, in the ninth book of his description of Greece, was anciently called Arne, from Arne, the daughter of Æolus; but being situated to the west of Parnassus, in that lowland country, the natural unwholesomeness of the air was augmented by the evening vapours cast upon it from that mountain, which our late travellers describe to be full of moisture and marshy ground enclosed in the inequality of its ascents; and being also exposed to the winds which blew from that quarter, the town was perpetually unhealthful; for which reason, says my author, Charon, the son of Apollo and Thero, made it be rebuilt, and turned it towards the rising sun, from whence the town became healthful, and consequently populous; in memory of which benefit it afterwards retained his name. But as etymologies are uncertain, and the Greeks, above all nations, given to fabulous derivations of names, especially when they tend to the honour of their country, I think we may be reasonably content to take the denomination of the town from its delightful or cheerful standing, as the word Charon sufficiently implies.

But to lose no time in these grammatical etymologies, which are commonly uncertain guesses, it is agreed that Plutarch was here born; the year uncertain; but without dispute in the reign of Claudius.

Joh. Gerrard Vossius has assigned his birth in the latter end of that emperor; some other writers of his life have left it undecided whether then, or in the beginning of Nero's empire; but the most accurate Rualdus (as I find it in the Paris edition of Plutarch's Works) has mani

festly proved him to be born in the middle time of Claudius, or somewhat lower; for Plutarch, in the description at Delphos, (of which more hereafter,) remembers, that Ammonius, his master, disputed with him and his brother Lamprias concerning it, when Nero made his progress into Greece, which was in his twelfth year; and the question disputed could not be managed with so much learning as it was, by mere boys; therefore he was then sixteen, or rather eighteen years of age.

Xylander has observed, that Plutarch himself, in the Life of Pericles, and that of Antony, has mentioned both Nero and Domitian as his contemporaries. He has also left it on record in his Symposiacs, that his family was ancient in Chæronea, and that for many descents they had borne the most considerable offices in that petty commonwealth; the chiefest of which was known by the name of Archon amongst the Grecians, by that of Prætor Urbis among the Romans, and the dignity and power was not much different from that of our lord mayor of London. His great-grandfather, Nicarchus, perhaps enjoyed that office in the division of the empire betwixt Augustus Cæsar and Mark Antony; and when the civil wars ensued betwixt them, Charonea was so hardly used by Antony's lieutenant or commissary there, that all the citizens, without exception, were servilely employ ed to carry on their shoulders a certain proportion of corn from Chæronea to the coast over against the island of Antycira, with the scourge held over them, if at any time they were remiss. Which duty, after once performing, being en. joined the second time with the same severity, just as they were preparing for their journey, the welcome news arrived that Mark Antony had lost the battle of Actium ;* whereupon both the officers and soldiers belonging to him in Chæronea immediately fled for their own safety; and the provisions, thus collected, were distributed among the inhabitants of the city.

This Nicarchus, the great-grandfather of Plutarch, among other sons, had Lamprias, a man eminent for his learning, and a philosopher, of whom Plutarch has made frequent mention in his Symposiacs, or Table Conversations; and amongst the rest there is this observation of him,—that he disputed best, and unravelled the difficulties of philosophy with most success, when he was at supper, and well warmed with wine. These table entertainments were part of the education of those times, their discourses being commonly the canvassing and solution of some question, either philosophical

or philological, always instructive, and usually pleasant; for the cups went round with the debate, and men were merry and wise together, according to the proverb. The father of Plutarch is also mentioned in those discourses, whom our author represents as arguing of several points in philosophy; but his name is nowhere to be found in any part of the works remaining to us. But yet he speaks of him as a man not ignorant in learning and poetry, as may appear by what he says, when he is introduced disputing in the Symposiacs; where also his prudence and humanity are commended in this following relation: "Being yet very young," says Plutarch, "I was joined in commission with another in an embassy to the proconsul, and my colleague falling sick, was forced to stay behind; so that the whole business was transacted by me alone. At my return, when I was to give account to the commonwealth of my proceedings, my father, rising from his seat, openly enjoined me not to name myself in the singular number,-I did thus, or thus I said to the proconsul,-but, thus we did, and thus we said, always associating my companion with me, though absent in the management." This was done to observe, as I suppose, the point of good manners with his colleague; that of respect to the government of the city, who had commissioned both, to avoid envy; and perhaps more especially to take off the forwardness of a pert young minister, commonly too apt to overvalue his own services, and to quote himself on every inconsiderable occasion.

The father of Plutarch had many children besides him; Timon and Lamprias, his brothers, were bred up with him, all three instructed in the liberal sciences, and in all parts of philosophy. It is manifest from our author, that they lived together in great friendliness, and in great veneration to their grandfather and father. What affection Plutarch bore in particular to his brother Timon, may be gathered from these words of his: "As for myself, though fortune on several occasions has been favourable to me, I have no obligation so great to her as the kindness and entire friendship which my brother Timon has always borne, and still bears me; and this is so evident, that it cannot but be noted by every one of our acquaintance." Lamprias, the youngest of the three, is introduced by him in his "Morals," as one of a sweet and pleasant conversation, inclined to mirth and raillery; or, as we say in English, a well-humoured man, and a good companion.

The whole family being thus addicted to philosophy, it is no wonder if our author was initiated betimes in study, to which he was natu