PLINY THE ELDER. 



81 



like that great philosopher, capable of apprehending 

 the laws and relations according to which Nature has 

 disposed her productions. He was in general merely 

 a compiler, and even in many instances a compiler 

 who, not having himself any knowledge of the objects 

 concerning which he collected the testimony of others, 

 was unable to appreciate the truth of these testimo- 

 nies, or even in all cases to comprehend their pre- 

 cise meaning. He is in short an author destitute of 

 critical acumen, who, after occupying a great deal 

 of time in making his extracts and arranging them in 

 certain chapters, has added to them reflections which 

 have no relation to science properly so called, but 

 present alternately the most superstitious impressions, 

 or the declamations of a peevish philosophy, which 

 is continually accusing man, nature, and the gods 

 themselves. The facts which he accumulates ought 

 not, therefore, to be considered in connexion with 

 the opinion which he forms of them ; but, on the con- 

 trary, ought to be restored in imagination to the 

 writers from whom he has derived them ; and the 

 rules of criticism should be applied agreeably to 

 what we know of those writers, and the circum- 

 stances in which they were placed. Studied in this 

 manner, the Natural History of Pliny is one of the 

 richest stores ; it being, according to his own state- 

 ment, composed of extracts from more than 2000 

 volumes, written by authors of all kinds, travellers, 

 historians, geographers, philosophers, and physi- 

 cians, — authors of whom there remain to us only 

 about forty, and of several of whom we have merely 

 fragments, or works different from those which 

 Pliny used ; and, even of those whose labours are 

 lost to us, there are many whose names have escaped 



