44 MEMOIR OF PLINY. 



The Natural History of Pliny, the last and most 

 important of his writings, may justly he said to have 

 introduced the second distinct epoch of physical 

 knowledge, which remained nearly in the state where 

 he left it for about 1500 years, without patronage 

 or cultivation, until the night of barbarism passed 

 away, and the restoration of letters awoke the dormant 

 energies of the human intellect. This great work 

 is the only one of his numerous perfornfances that 

 has come down to us ; the titles given to Titus in 

 the dedication, shew that it was concluded in the 78th 

 year of Christianity, that is, only one year before the 

 author's death. To gather the materials for it must evi- 

 dently have occupied the better part of his life ; since, 

 according to his own statement, it contains extracts 

 from more than two thousand volumes, written by au- 

 thors of every description, travellers, historians, geo- 

 graphers, philosophers, physicians, and others ; with 

 many of whom we only become acquainted in the pages 

 of Pliny. This immense magazine of information well 

 deserves to be denominated the Encyclopaedia of the 

 ancients ; it is certainly the most curious and extra- 

 ordinary work which the Roman literature ever pro- 

 duced, and may be considered as the depository of 

 all that was known in science and the arts from the 

 earliest ages of the human race. There is scarcely 

 a discovery or an invention, a department of nature, 

 or a region of the earth, with which antiquity was ac- 

 quainted, that it does not comprehend. It is not 

 only a valuable storehouse of intelligence but a 



