'tis a study of inestimable fruit and value; and the only study, as
Plato reports, that the Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What
profit shall he not reap as to the business of men, by reading the
lives of Plutarch? But, withal, let my governor remember to what end
his instructions are principally directed, and that he do not so
much imprint in his pupil's memory the date of the ruin of Carthage,
as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio; nor so much where Marcellus
died, as why it was unworthy of his duty that he died there. Let him
not teach him so much the narrative parts of history as to judge them;
the reading of them, in my opinion, is a thing that of all others we
apply ourselves unto with the most differing measure. I have read a
hundred things in Livy that another has not, or not taken notice of at
least; and Plutarch has read a hundred more there than ever I could
find, or than, peradventure, that author ever wrote; to some it is
merely a grammar study, to others the very anatomy of philosophy, by
which the most abstruse parts of our human nature penetrate. There are
in Plutarch many long discourses very worthy to be carefully read
and observed, for he is, in my opinion, of all others the greatest
master in that kind of writing; but there are a thousand others
which he has only touched and glanced upon, where he only points
with his finger to direct us which way we may go if we will, and
contents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in the
nicest article of the question, whence we are to grope out the rest.
As, for example, where he says that the inhabitants of Asia came to be
vassals to one only, for not having been able to pronounce one
syllable, which is No. Which saying of his gave perhaps matter and
occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary Servitude." Only to
see him pick out a light action in a man's life, or a mere word that
does not seem to amount even to that, is itself a whole discourse.
'Tis to our prejudice that men of understanding should so immoderately
affect brevity; no doubt their reputation is the better by it, but
in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch had rather we should
applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather
leave us with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have
already read. He knew very well, that a man may say too much even upon
the best subjects, and that Alexandridas justly reproached him who
made very good but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said:
"Oh stranger! thou speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as
thou shouldst speak them." Such as have lean and spare bodies stuff
themselves out with clothes; so they who are defective in matter,
endeavor to make amends with words.

    Human understanding is marvelously enlightened by daily
conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up
in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own
noses. One asking Socrates of what country he was, he did not make
answer, of Athens, but of the world; he whose imagination was fuller
and wider, embraced the whole world for his country, and extended
his society and friendship to all mankind; not as we do, who look no
further than our feet. When the vines of my village are nipped with
the frost, my parish priest presently concludes, that the
indignation of God is gone out against all the human race, and that
the cannibals have already got the pip. Who is it, that seeing the
havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out, that the
machine of the world is near dissolution, and that the day of judgment
is at hand; without considering, that many worse things have been
seen, and that, in the meantime, people are very merry in a thousand
other parts of the earth for all this? For my part, considering the
license and impunity that always attend such commotions, I wonder they
are so moderate, and that there is no more mischief done. To him who
feels the hailstones patter about his ears, the whole hemisphere
appears to be in storm and tempest; like the ridiculous Savoyard,
who said very gravely, that if that simple king of France could have
managed his fortune as he should have done, he might in time have come
to have been steward of the household to the duke his master: the
fellow could not, in his shallow imagination, conceive that there
could be anything greater than a duke of Savoy. And, in truth, we
are all of us, insensibly, in this error, an error of a very great
weight and very pernicious consequence. But whoever shall represent to
his fancy, as in a picture, that great image of our mother Nature,
in her full majesty and luster, whoever in her face shall read so
general and so constant a variety, whoever shall observe himself in
that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than the
least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole, that
man alone is able to value things according to their true estimate and
grandeur.

    This great world which some do yet multiply as several species
under one genus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves,
to be able to know ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In
short, I would have this to be the book my young gentleman should
study with the most attention. So many humors, so many sects, so
many judgments, opinions, laws and customs, teach us to judge aright
of our own, and inform our understanding to discover its
imperfection and natural infirmity, which is no trivial speculation.
So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and so many turns and
revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough to make no
great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous victories
and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our hopes
ridiculous of eternizing our names by the taking of half-a-score of
light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its
ruin. The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps and ceremonies,
the tumorous majesty of so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and
fortify our sight without astonishment or winking to behold the lustre
of our own; so many millions of men, buried before us, encourage us
not to fear to go seek such good company in the other world: and so of
all the rest. Pythagoras was wont to say, that our life resembles
the great and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some
exercise the body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize;
others bring merchandise to sell for profit; there are, also, some