LIPE AND WKITINGS OP PLIKY. Xxi 
wise with liis talent as a writer, and the immense treasury 
which he opens to us of Latin terms and forms of expres- 
sion : these, from the very abundance of the subjects upon 
which he treats, render his work one of the richest reposi- 
tories of the Roman language. Wherever he finds it possible 
to give expression to general ideas or to philosophical views, 
his language assumes considerable energy and vivacity, and 
his thoughts present to us a certain novelty and boldness 
which tend in a very great degree to relieve the dryness of 
his enumerations, and, with the majority of his readers, ex- 
cuse the insufficiency of his scientific indications. He is 
always noble and serious, full of the love of justice and 
virtue, detestation of cruelty and baseness, of which he 
had such frightful instances before his eyes, and con- 
tempt for that unbridled luxury w^hich in his time had 
so deeply corrupted the Eoman people. For these great 
merits Pliny cannot be too highly praised, and despite the 
faults which we are obliged to admit in him when viewed as 
a naturalist, we are bound to regard him as one of the most 
meritorious of the Roman writers, and among those most 
worthy to be reckoned in the number of the classics who 
wrote after the reign of Augustus," 
and of which he has given the pecuHar properties, would have swoUen, 
his book to a most enormous size, almost indeed beyond conception. 
