80 PLINY THE ELDER. 



tion. Not only was he acquainted with all that 

 was known in his time^, but he possessed that faci- 

 lity of forming comprehensive conceptions, which 

 multiplies science ; he possessed that delicacy of re- 

 flection on which depend elegance and taste ; and 

 he communicates to his readers a certain freedom of 

 mind, a boldness of thought, which is the germ of 

 philosophy. His work, which is as varied as Na- 

 ture, paints her always in a favourable light. It 

 may be said to be a compilation of all that had pre- 

 viously been written, a copy of every thing useful 

 and excellent that existed; but in this copy the 

 execution is so bold, — in this compilation the mate- 

 rials are disposed in a manner so new, that it is pre- 

 ferable to the greater part of the originals which treat 

 of the same topics.* 



The judgment of a recent author, founded also 

 on an extensive view of his character, is perhaps 

 more worthy of our confidence. It were impossible, 

 it is remarked, that in handling, even in the brief- 

 est manner, so prodigious a number of subjects, 

 he should not have made known a multitude of 

 facts, which are not only in themselves remark- 

 able, but so much the more valuable to us, that 

 he is the only author who has made mention of 

 them. Unfortunately, the manner in which he has 

 collected and expounded them detracts much from 

 their value ; while, from the mixture of truth and 

 falsehood, but more especially from the difficulty, 

 and even in some cases the impossibility, of making 

 out the objects of which he speaks, the reader is 

 often left in the dark. Pliny was not such an ob- 

 server as Aristotle ; much less was he a man of genius 



* Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, tome i. p. 54, edit. 1785. 

 5 



