INTRODUCTION 



facture ; but among these topies, which are imphed 

 by the title, Phny inserts considerable essays on 

 human inventions and institutions (Book VII), as 

 well as minor digressions on similar subjects inter- 

 spersed in various other parts of the work. He 

 claims in his Preface that the work deals with 20,000 

 matters of importance, drawn from 100 selected 

 authors, to whose observations he has added many of 

 his own ; some of the latter he has indicated as they 

 occur, and there are doubtless others not so labelled, 

 but even so they form only a small fraction of the 

 work, which is in the main a second-hand compilation 

 from the works of others. In selecting from these 

 he has shown scanty judgement and discrimination, 

 including the false with the true at random ; his 

 selection is coloured by his love of the marvellous, 

 by his low estimate of human abiHty and his con- 

 sciousness of human wickedness, and by his mistrust 

 of Providence. Moreover his compilations show httle 

 methodical arrangement, and are sometimes un- 

 inteUigible because he fails to understand his 

 authority, or else because he gives wrong Latin names 

 to things dealt ^vith by his authorities in Greek. 



Nevertheless it is a mistake to underrate the value 

 of his work. He is dihgent, accurate, and free from 

 prejudice. Though he had no considerable first- 

 hand knowledge of the sciences and was not himself 

 a systematic observer, he had a naturally scientific 

 mind, and an unaffected and absorbing interest in 

 his subjects. If he gives as much attention to what is 

 merely curious as to what has an essential importance, 

 this curiosity has incidentally preserved much valuable 

 detail, especially as regards the arts ; moreover 

 anecdotes that used to be rejected by critics as 



ix 



